Jac VerSteeg: It’s not corruption, it’s politics as usual

I worked for decades in Palm Beach County – “Corruption County,” we called it in the heyday of watching elected officials troop off to prison. So you’d think I’d have a handle on what “corruption” is.

Yet I find, because of current events, that I don’t quite get it. Those events include Florida’s abrupt decision to scrap standards for pediatric cardiac care units and the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprising decision to hear former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s appeal of his corruption conviction and sentence.

As reported by CNN, Florida’s Department of Health scrapped rules governing cardiac units after the for-profit Tenet hospital chain donated $100,000 to Gov. Rick Scott and another $100,000 to the Republican Party.

A Tenet hospital in West Palm Beach had closed its pediatric cardiac care unit earlier in 2015 after a CNN story reported it had an unacceptably high mortality rate.

Now, the standards used to underpin that story are being abolished after being in place for 38 years.

“The whole situation is outrageous. It’s just outrageous,” said Louis St. Petery, according to the CNN story about the move to abolish the standards.

Petery is, CNN notes, “a pediatric cardiologist in Tallahassee and former executive vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

According to CNN’s reporting, “Doctors from around the state say the decision came right from the governor’s office.” However, “Representatives for Tenet and Scott deny conversations took place between them about getting rid of the standards.”

Good luck proving criminal corruption.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Special interests give donations. Special interests get favors. Politics as usual.

It’s hard to prove there’s a specific quid pro quo. And, just to throw a little more Latin at you, special interests who get favors after making political donations are protected by a thing called the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It means, “After this therefore because of this.”

Just because X happens after Y doesn’t mean that Y caused X. Just because the state killed cardiac unit rules after Tenet’s contributions doesn’t mean it happened because of Tenet’s contributions.

Every now and then, though, a politician does get charged with corruption. Often, the federal statute used to prosecute those politicians is the Honest Services Fraud statute. Between 2007 and 2009 three Palm Beach County Commissioners – Tony Masilotti, Warren Newell and Mary McCarty – all pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and subsequently served time in prison.

Their crimes involved a variety of things, including failure to disclose their interest in land deals and receiving kickbacks and free hotel rooms from folks doing business with the county.

But along the way, the Honest Services Fraud statute itself has come under fire for being too vague. Indeed, the exact ways in which politicians could deprive the public of their “honest services” has proved to be a slippery concept.

Critics of the statute said it criminalized normal political activity. In 2010 the Supreme Court threw out large parts of the law. Basically, getting a conviction under the law would require prosecutors to prove old-fashioned bribery and/or kickbacks.

Now the entire law might be in trouble. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear McDonnell’s appeal. The ex-Virginia governor and his wife were convicted in 2014 of violation the Honest Services Fraud law for accepting gifts, such as loans, a Rolex watch and picking up a $15,000 catering tab for the McDonnell’s daughter’s wedding, from a guy named Jonnie Williams. In return, McDonnell allegedly helped Williams arrange meetings with state officials and agencies as Williams tried to promote a tobacco-based health supplement.

Lower courts had upheld McDonnell’s conviction and 2-year sentence. But the unusual Supreme Court decision to take his case lets him stay out of prison on bond. Justices don’t say why they take specific cases. But speculation is that at least four justices either want to restrict the statute further or to kill it entirely.

If what McDonnell did is not criminal corruption, then I have to wonder if what the three Palm Beach County commissioners did was criminal corruption. Granted, they all three pleaded guilty, while McDonnell did not. But I know from extensive conversations with Warren Newell that he thought himself innocent but pleaded guilty because federal prosecutors threatened to plant him under the jail if went to trial and lost. Terrified at that prospect, he agreed to a three-year sentence, getting two years off for providing evidence against McCarty.

That tactic is common.

This is the same Supreme Court that, in the Citizens United decision, cleared the way for unlimited political donations. Now it might kill off a key prosecutorial tool for punishing the corruption such a flood of donations could unleash.

Except it wouldn’t be “corruption.” It would be politics as usual. Don’t even bother looking to see if there was anything criminal about the Tenet-Scott connection and the decision to snuff those cardiac rules.

Under that theory, McDonnell and Masilotti and Newell and McCarty didn’t screw the public. Instead, they got screwed by a bad law.

Then what would qualify as corruption? Damn little.

***

Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.