mark.young@manateeherald.com

I feel like saying, “I told you so,” is about as petty as one can sink.

But I told you so.

I have been pretty outspoken against Scott Hopes from the time he was initially being appointed as Manatee County Administrator and his ultimate hiring, much to the chagrin of a lot of Republicans in our area.

I took some heat for being critical of his leadership, even though the evidence of his less than savory actions were in plain sight.

I essentially took the heat because Hopes has friends in high places, and that is exactly why I thought his appointment and hiring was against good Conservative common sense.

It’s why I continue to argue against candidates or sitting elected officials – who on paper – may look promising, but their close ties to the county’s so-called elite is only a problem in the making.

I have nothing against Hopes as a person. I don’t know the guy. I also don’t know Joe Biden personally, but when you hold a public position, your job performance is up for scrutiny.

You are either good at it, or not. In both of these cases, the answer is not.

As of this visit, details are murky on Hopes’ departure and the only thing we know is that the board possibly gave Hopes the option to resign or his contract would not be renewed.

If the board had no intention of renewing his contract, then I applaud this action. No, not applaud. I give them a standing ovation, though a contract should have never been awarded in the first place.

However, they get a solid thumbs down for allowing Hopes to walk away with a golden parachute, which seems to be the norm when it comes to throwing away our tax dollars on bad employees.

His meager two years at the county helm proved to be a sinking ship as morale within the county was at an all time low. Too many contacts I still have in the county outlined an atmosphere of fear of losing their jobs if they did anything to contradict Hopes.

Hopes had already proven himself to be an ineffective leader during his tenure on the Manatee County School District board. Hopes did absolutely nothing to stem the corruption and never sought accountability for entirely too many scandals.

I guess now you know why. I would say now “we” know why, but as I noted, I gave these warnings well ahead of time that this would prove to be a disaster. And it was.

Quick examples are the way Hopes handled the code enforcement scandal regarding the Medieval Fair. Despite in-your-face evidence surrounding the code enforcement debacle of non enforcement just to do a colleague in Sarasota a favor, Hopes did nothing.

He simply let the owners of the fair, a former Sarasota County building official and her son, continue an illegal development through the powers of a special use permit, used to bypass public hearings.

In the meantime, the neighbors of the fair continue to have their properties affected to their detriment. The county has walked away from this issue under Hopes.

They got away with it. Plain and simple.

The only things Hopes did was to let the Manatee County building official retire with full benefits, kept the code enforcement supervisors who were directly involved in the scandal on staff, and allowed the whistleblower to be fired.

That, also, is going to cost county taxpayers dollars in a well-deserved wrongful termination suit.

The hostile takeover of the Coquina Beach Market where witnesses reported Hopes to be arrogant and hostile toward them, is just another small example of his leadership style.

The public revelations by Manatee County Clerk of Court Angelina Colonneso that Hopes was intentionally trying to get her to break the Sunshine Laws, and credible accusations of financial mismanagement, as well as attempts to provide his controversial friends with high-paying jobs, all should have pointed to a giant red flag.

Someone should have been screaming from the mountaintop the sheer number of wrongs being committed against Manatee County citizens.

Oh wait, yeah, that was me screaming from the mountaintop and all I got was grief for my efforts.

If this county commission’s intent was to just let Hopes’ contract run out before taking action, it’s not good enough. Doing nothing while Hopes was dragging this county down is a sign of weakness, or worse, corruption in its own right.

We’ll find out why Hopes is leaving the county – with a pocketful of our cash. It will come out eventually, but the damage has been done and it’s a time for reflection for this somewhat new county commission.

The Hopes catastrophe was spearheaded by at least one of the sitting commissioners, possibly two. I won’t call them out just yet because I’m not going to let speculation get in the way of facts, and I’m hoping they turn this around and make it right.

We don’t elect any of you to do favors for friends and push efforts to have them placed into high-paying positions using our money. When you do that, we get what we saw with Hopes.

The end result is what we see today. And we paid for all of it, in both money and reputation while the general public’s perception is that this has been a do-nothing commission when it comes to protecting friends.

This is unacceptable and I don’t care if you have a R or a D in front of your name. Just give me a transparent, fiscally responsible Conservative.

Hopes may be leaving but explanations are due. Accountability must be had, but there is time to do the right thing with a new makeup of this board.

If this was an attempt to do just that, then it’s a positive step, but far from enough. One thing that must stop is paying off bad employees with OUR money. Keep making that mistake, and I promise you – democrat or Republican – we’ll do the firing.

Keep hiding the truth from us and you’ll be fed a big piece of humble pie come election time.

We have enough of a fight on our hands to save our nation. Every single Republican on that board was elected so we would have the trust to focus on other battles. But if you want us to fight on two fronts, we are up to the task. We’ll do it again.

Do the right thing. Start taking responsibility and earn the trust of your constituents. Be transparent about Hopes’ departure, admit the wrongs and explain how it will be corrected. It is what we expect and we’ll be waiting.

Because we are vigilant, we are informed and we are spreading our message.