Motions on passing on new allegations get only two of the three needed votes with Espinosa, Martinez abstaining
The Kissimmee City Commission voted 3-2 Tuesday to pause its process for approving ethics complaints and sending them along to court-appointed investigators.
With disagreement on what to do with two new complaints against Mayor Jackie Espinosa and Commissioner Janette Martinez, motions to accept them did not pass, getting only two votes with the commissioners named abstaining from voting.
Related to the motion to pause the process is a legal writ filed by Espinosa’s attorney, Migdalia Perez to stop the Ninth Circuit Court review of a complaint filed against the mayor in April. The challenge is that the court has no jurisdiction over such complaints and says they should be reviewed at the state level by the Florida Commission on Ethics.
Martinez, who was also named in an April complaint sent to a court investigator, voted against pausing the complaint process, along with Vice Mayor Angela Eady.
“Waiting six months is unacceptable. I want to get on with doing the business of the city,” Martinez said.
The moratorium gives City Attorney Kalanit Oded the opportunity, expected to take six months, to draft changes to city policy on the matter to be sure there are no conflicts with state and the Commission on Ethics Commission on Ethics process.
“This would not undo previous complaints, it would only apply to new complaints,” Oded said during the meeting. “We’re trying to figure out the format for these complaints to be addressed. Currently under (city code), there are no guardrails, it is not due process.”
City officials also noted Kissimmee is spending $475 per hour on the special prosecutor to work on the April complaints against Espinosa and Martinez.
The latest complaints against the commissioners are now in a “state of limbo” since commissioners voted 2-2 to accept them and, well, do something with them. Citizen Jeremy Fetzer, who also filed the first complaint against Martinez saying she helped a friend get a city permit to operate food trucks at a location where she had a company presence creating a conflict of interest, maintains in the new one that she operated her own food business, Coqui’s Kitchen, out of the downtown Kissimmee location of a friend, Kenny’s Cakes, and shared its Business Tax Receipt and state permit for a dine in restaurant, and notarized his paperwork to apply for the Business Boost small business funding program.
Tuesday, motions to accept and hold the complaint until the city redraws its process, and another to accept and transmit it to a court arbitrator like the previous complaint, only got two votes with Martinez abstaining.
The vote in a new complaint against Espinosa, filed by resident Lillian Evans claiming the mayor does not live within Kissimmee city limits, went the same way, Commission Noel Ortiz’s motion to accept it and hold it died for a lack of second, and Martinez’s motion to accept and transmit to the court went 2-2, with Ortiz and Alvarez voting nay and Jackie abstaining. With none of the motions getting three votes, the city effectively took no action.
Attorney Perez has intervened in the initial complaint against Espinosa, filed by resident Alex Alemi, centered on the mayor’s initial support of Business Boost 2.0, a city-sponsored plan to pass on federal COVID-19 pandemic recovery funds to local businesses adversely affected by the 2020 shutdowns. Three businesses Espinosa’s family run received $50,000 of those funds, which Alemi says violated state guidelines; he also said Espinosa led a move to terminate former City Attorney Olga Sanches de Fuentes related to disclosing such violations.
Perez said her filing, now with the Sixth District Court of Appeals, states any city policy does not pre-empt state law that such complaints must go to the State Commission on Ethics.
“This action is to prevent the city from sending something to the court that the county has no authority to do,” Perez said. “The Commission on Ethics is vested to take on this matter, and has exclusive jurisdiction.”
