Jim Rosica
The Florida Commission on Ethics has approved an opinion that Tena Pate, former chair of the state’s parole panel, is not subject to the state’s two-year lobbying ban on high-level employees.
Commissioners unanimously OK’d the staff-written advisory opinion at their Friday meeting. She did not appear.
The document finds Pate would be banned from “representing persons or entities for compensation” before the Florida Commission on Offender Review itself until March 31, 2018, but that she is free now to lobby “the governor, members of the Cabinet, or the Legislature.”
That’s because they’re not “a government body or agency of which (Pate) was an officer or member,” the opinion says.
The approval came after pushback from some members, including board chair Matthew Carlucci, a Jacksonville insurance agent.
“I think to wait another couple of years is not too much to ask,” he said. “I just think we’re getting into a slippery slope. Let’s stay within the spirit of the two-year (ban). I think she’ll feel better about it.”
“…To me, she’s in violation” if she starts lobbying now, he added. “We’re moving the pendulum in the wrong direction.”
Commissioner Stanley Weston, a Jacksonville attorney, countered: “Regardless of the way we feel, we don’t have the authority to express something different. You may not like (the law), but we’re bound by it.”
Carlucci later voted to approve.
Pate chaired the offender commission, formerly known as the Florida Parole Commission, beginning in 2010, after being appointed in 2003.
She resigned to run for the nonpartisan Leon County supervisor of elections seat this year. Pate, a Republican, lost in a three-way race to state Rep. Alan Williams and voting systems manager Mark Earley, who will face each other in a runoff election.
