Neil Combee adopts the public complaint norm and creates "function" on the Polk County Commission

Whatever one thinks of Neil (and I'm tougher on him in public than *any* of you) his act of formal, public confrontation with "Leadership Club" is a huge, positive moment for Polk County.

A rather momentous thing happened on the Polk County Commission a couple weeks ago: one sitting Republican county commissioner publicly and formally accused at least one other sitting Republican commissioner of committing an open government crime and an ethical violation in the political effort to get an ill-conceived road-building sales tax on the ballot for Polk County voters. Here’s the full background from The Ledger.

I do not know if these allegations are true. But Commissioner Neil Combee put his name and reputation at risk by making his allegations clearly, publicly, and formally, through the prescribed legal processes available to all Florida citizens. That forces our system of government to address the accusations on their merits and come to a public conclusion. That, dear readers, is “the system” functioning.

A thunderclap of behavioral discipline for elected officials

Forcing our system of self-government to function, based on the merits of a specific ethical situation, is why I have taken to filing formal complaints myself. I detailed this in an earlier article, sub-titled: “citizenship can discipline misbehaving leaders, if we use it.” You can read it here:

It’s sort of thrilling to see an elected official choose the same approach for basically the same stated reason I’ve given. Here’s Combee from The Ledger article:

“I’m in my 20^th year (as a commissioner) over a period of several decades of doing this, and I've served with at least 19 people that I can recall,” Combee told The Ledger, “I've never heard of a commissioner doing this with a fellow commissioner. I mean, there's no other way to look at it. It’s just misconduct. It’s an abuse of power, trying to use the power of the chair to coerce desired behavior in private.”

I know from personal experience that the political class in Polk, especially the countywide (as opposed to municipal) class, will look at Neil’s formal complaint with dismay. They will call it “dysfunction” on the County Commission.

That’s what they grumbled during my School Board term when I publicly and formally attempted to hold people of power, myself included, to a standard of ethical and moral and legal behavior. The discomfort that effort causes is what they consider “dysfunction.” And that is why I dubbed them, collectively, “Leadership Club.”

Leadership Club never cared about the underlying behavior of officials in the course of doing their important public jobs. They resented my talking about it, confronting it publicly, and trying to address it formally at my own political and personal risk.

The first rule of “Leadership Club” is you don’t talk about Leadership Club, or the behavior of its members. To do so is “dysfunction.”

But what I did (and what Neil Combee is doing) is actually the opposite of government dysfunction; it is function designed to discipline the behavior of officials on behalf of the public they are supposed to serve. And if there’s one thing the governing powers of this county do not want, it is someone to discipline them.

Will Brian Haas be able to duck investigating George Lindsey’s interactions with Rick Wilson and Martha Santiago?

Combee’s ethics complaint, which he released to the media when he submitted it to the Ethics Commission, accuses George Lindsey of threatening or cajoling county commissioners Martha Santiago and Rick Wilson in an out-of-the-Sunshine effort to get them to vote to place a sales tax referendum for road-building on the ballot.

The means of threat or inducement were seats on public committees that both commissioners wanted to retain or receive. Combee’s complaint does not specify how he learned of the alleged conversations.

But the entire scandal, if true, on its face, is a criminal violation of the spirit and intent of Florida’s open government laws. However, these laws are rarely enforced because most elected officials and their most powerful supporters are clubby and hostile to having self-government function with transparency and ethical intent.

About the only way to get these laws enforced is for someone like Combee to take the political and social risk of making the “leadership club” very uncomfortable in public.

The most uncomfortable person right now, I suspect, is 10th Circuit State Attorney Brian Haas. He has to decide whether to investigate George Lindsey, the object of Combee’s complaint and the county commissioner most closely identified with big Polk County developers and powerful leaders.

If you want to get a sense of the powers Neil Combee crossed by going public with this accusation, take a look at the newly formed “Friends of Grady Judd” political committee, chaired by Seth McKeel. You’ll see J.D. Alexander and the Cassidys and various other familiar folk. Grady has many many many more developer “friends” than he has law enforcement “friends.” He is the sheriff of the people who “run” Polk County. In the power structure, Grady Judd far outweighs Brian Haas, who does not have a “friends” committee of his own.

But I assure you Grady Judd and his wealthy developer donor “friends” are very high on any list of friends Haas wants to keep happy.

All of these folks (or their companies) — and I suspect Grady, too — will be far madder at Neil Combee for reporting George Lindsey’s alleged criminal behavior than they will be at George Lindsey for how he behaved, if he did what Neil alleges.

Call me old-fashioned, but that’s what I consider dysfunctional.

It’s a not a feud; it’s a formal complaint about specific behavior

The background of this complaint is a long-standing public antipathy between George Lindsey and Neil Combee. Lindsey blamed that feud for the complaint, according to The Ledger article.

“It was pretty inflammatory,” Lindsey said of the letter. “I'll respond in the appropriate forum and not to the media. I don't know what the timetable is for all that, but whatever it is, it will be made public when it's concluded and, as far as I'm concerned, the sooner the better.”

Lindsey suggested that Combee might have other motivations for filing a complaint against him, saying they had “crossed swords” many times over the years. Lindsey mentioned his opposition to a proposed increase in the homestead exemption when Combee was in the Florida Legislature, a referendum that if passed would have reduced property tax revenue to counties.

Lindsey also cited his vote in 2018 to remove Combee’s name from signs outside the county administration building in Bartow and his opposition to Combee’s push to have Polk County recognize a court ruling from Orange County requiring partisan elections for county constitutional officers. Lindsey said the change would benefit Combee, who is running next year for Polk County Property Appraiser as a Republican.

Lindsey also mentioned his support for Gow Fields, another Republican also seeking that position.

That doesn’t sound like much of a denial to me. Rather than worrying about whether Neil Combee is pure in his motives, George should probably worry about whether he actually did what Combee alleges.

And consider this from Commissioner Rick Wilson:

Asked if Lindsey had talked to him about the road tax outside of public meetings, Wilson said, “No, no, that wouldn't be a good thing if we did that. We’ve got to do it in public.”

We didn’t do it. And if we had done it, it would be bad, is quite a bit different than what George is saying. I wonder if Wilson will repeat that under oath if Haas does his job.

You can’t argue with the scoreboard

I have known and covered Neil Combee on and off since 1999, when I arrived in Polk County. We share a weird sort of personal affection and comradeship, for people with very different cultural and social points-of-view. Perhaps because of that, I have also been harder on Neil, in public, than probably any else I’ve covered, or at least written things more likely to be personally wounding than I have about anyone else.

I think Neil suffers from some MAGA gunsickness and is far too willing to believe J6ers are something other than what they do and did.

But he also has some pretty good moral and intellectual instincts at the local government level. And he’s now demonstrated a public courageousness no other currently sitting elected official in Polk County has demonstrated.

Various folks have sent me notes and eye-rolls that at least rhyme with George Lindsey’s take on this. Many suggest Neil has his own skeletons that make him vulnerable to retaliation. To that, I say: fine, if you’ve got goods on public officials, act on them in public.

Bring it.

That’s certainly what I said about myself when I was School Board member and the Ethics Commission swatted away two silly complaints against me without even investigating.

Neil Combee has put a substantive complaint on the scoreboard and served notice that private behavior in matters relevant to the public is now at risk of exposure from within. That fact alone will have a functional effect on the Polk County Commission.

If other officials follow suit — including against Neil himself if anybody has anything — it will create a massive, beneficial culture shift for the better.

So Bully for Neil; and let’s see what happens.