When the Word Chaotic Just Won't Do

Colonnesso detailed a number of problems she had become aware of from a chaotic reorganization to financial issues that seemed to border on malfeasance. However, it was this very board that fired Hopes’ very qualified predecessor, Cheri Coryea, and installed the former school board member, despite Hopes having little to no relative experience in terms of the administration of a massive public enterprise, raising questions as to how bad–and public–things would have to get before they could be moved to take action.

Coryea, who’d spent three decades working her way up to the top post in Manatee County government (the first female to ever hold the position), was fired in February of 2021 (at great expense to taxpayers) after politically-connected developers Carlos Beruff and Pat Neal pressured board members to make a change at the top. Beruff, in particular, seemed obsessed with getting rid of anyone connected to his political rival Ed Hunzeker, who was Coryea’s predecessor before he ran afoul of the Medallion Homes CEO and was pushed out by the previous board.

The developers seemed to favor Dom DeMaio, a similarly-underqualified exec who was at the helm of an east county pro-development trade group at the time. However, their preference for DeMaio had been so publicly known by that point that a majority of commissioners were uncomfortable with nominating him. With the three new commissioners who joined then-chair Vanessa Baugh to form a new majority having owed their elections almost exclusively to Beruff’s generosity, Coryea’s fate may have been sealed, yet there was some dissent regarding who should be her replacement.

Current Chair Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who’d moved for Coryea’s termination at his very first meeting after being sworn into office, wanted Hopes from the start. His chief attraction seemed to be his own adherence to Van Ostenbridge’s ultra-right wing, pro-Trump rhetoric. Through haphazard reorganizations, Hopes has successfully transitioned much of the top brass out of the administration, while also provoking a mass exodus of employees who could no longer stand the chaos that ensued as institutional knowledge continued to be drained and replacements with no ties to the community or knowledge of the enterprise continued to supplant them, who themselves were sometimes quitting shortly after–or even before–they started.

The county has been operating without an HR Director for quite some time during a period of immense turnover, a recipe for disaster in and of itself. Hopes has installed a number of outsiders, while rumors swirl that Director of Public Safety Jacob Saur and Utilities Director Mike Gore–two longtime senior executives that worked under Hunzeker and Coryea–are slated for either reorganization or termination in the near future. From the look on her face during many of the meetings, it seems a minor miracle that Deputy Administrator Jan Brewer, the highest-ranking employee to remain, has held on as long as she has.

Of course, we’ll likely be told that this is allfake news, a political witch hunt, or a leftist conspiracy of some sort, despite all of the employees who detailed the chaotic culture and woeful morale to TBT in another article in this week’s edition. Several people who worked with Hopes in his capacity as a school board member described him as being far more impressed with himself than anyone not named Scott Hopes, and if you listen to any of his many interviews on the county video feed or with METV, you’ll get a good idea as to how well he sings his own praises.

In other words, contrition seems unlikely and might not even matter to a board that essentially told him it didn’t care when he took full responsibility for not communicating to commissioners expensive pay hikes that included his own compensation when presenting the most recent budget. You can read more about that here.

The current state of our local government administration is objectively awful, a direct reflection on the board that oversees it. This is primarily the result of special interests like Neal and Beruff successfully leveraging the political culture war so that real issues and qualifications no longer matter to a majority of voters. And if you’re waiting for it to get better after November, don’t hold your breath. The developer-sponsored clowns looking to replace our current crop are largely running on whether the incumbents are MAGA enough on issues like abortion and gun control with almost no reference to the actual issues the board is charged with governing.

Running a two-thousand-plus employee organization with an enormous budget is not something for which one can fake it until they make it. It is serious work that requires professional bureaucrats with historic knowledge of the community and its administrative organs. Telling people how extremely qualified you are as you enrich your own position and strangle independent thought for the sake of blind allegiance is no substitute for the actual ability to lead and inspire senior employees as well as the rank and file. Let us hope that commissioners come to terms with this reality, no matter what their paymasters think, but, again, I wouldn’t hold my breath.