Successful defense ... but

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Successful defense ... but

County News

Wednesday, 22 June 2011 13:51

With his ethics complaints now behind him, we urge district 1 Osceola County School Board Member Jay Wheeler to renew his focus on running our schools, which includes overseeing both the educational and business aspects of the School District.
While the ethics complaints filed against Wheeler by current School Board Member Tom Long when Long was a candidate for the district 5 seat were dismissed Friday by the Florida Commission on Ethics, the experience should be a reminder that candidates should be extremely cautious during campaigns in order to avoid trouble.
The rules are clear in that there is no room for any kind of campaigning on school grounds by school district employees on behalf of any candidate or by School Board members themselves.
Also, any kind of material handed out by a School Board member at a teach-in, for example, has to be approved by the superintendent no matter how innocuous. We urge our current superintendent to put the kibosh on anything that might be even remotely related to electioneering on school grounds, including banners purchased by candidates in support of any school organization that might have a candidate’s name on it that might be hung on school grounds.
Contrary to what Wheeler stated in his most recent email blast, we don’t believe Long wasted taxpayer money by filing the ethics complaints – it’s part of our political process.
The final hearing documents on the complaints and subsequent investigation details were scheduled to be released by the Commission on Ethics Wednesday, which was too late to be referenced in this editorial. Those documents, we expect, should be an interesting read.
Wheeler, though, is still not out of the woods in terms of complaints; he still faces allegations filed by Long with the Florida Elections Commission involving what Long says were campaign spending violations during the 2010 election cycle.
While Wheeler has claimed these allegations are false as well, we remind our readers that he did pay back several thousand dollars to his campaign, with the reimbursement for spending that Long said were improper.