shocking news: buddy johnson is a doofus

February 5, 2009 | tommy | 5 comments - add to the conversation!

Ernst and Young released their audit of our Supervisor of Elections budget:

… former Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson overspent his budget by nearly $1 million last year and then violated state law by failing to reimburse the county.

…former Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson mishandled grant money, failed to properly oversee finances within his office and broke state law by overspending his budget.

Buddy Johnson is the same guy who was recently sued for altering the terms in a real estate contract, and who is also currently going through a foreclosure on his personal property. And now we find out that he was unable to track money and blew the SOE budget.

This is a shocking revelation? You are kidding me, right? I mean, look at some of the things we have learned about Buddy over the past couple of years:

August 2006 – Johnson pays out a bunch of hush money
March 2007 – Johnson’s disturbing pattern of incompetence
December 2007- Johnson’s election office behind all others
April 2008 – Johnson late paying taxes, hires & promotes friends, and more!
August 2008 – Johsnon’s office delays results for primary
October 2008 – Johnson’s land not for agriculture after all
November 2008 – Johnson’s office delays results for 2 days after the general election
January 2009 – Johnson’s office lost ballots, lied on his expense reports, and more!

Keep in mind that this is just a quick overview of stuff we wrote about here on Sticks of Fire. The St. Pete Times has had much more on Buddy’s performance issues. There seems to be an article a day about his mishaps.

Seriously, this could very well be the basis of a sitcom.

Unfortunately, this is no sitcom. Buddy Johnson is our own reality show.

5 comments - add to the conversation! → “shocking news: buddy johnson is a doofus”

Mariella

1 year ago

And all the while Buddy Johnson was mishandling huge sums of our money, our County Commissioners were clueless and our County Administrator, Pat Bean, was, again, Sergeant Schultz.
Rob

1 year ago

And 233 thousand people *still* voted for him.
Clyde

1 year ago

This situation is appalling for what it says about the Hillsborough County electorate. You headline Johnson as a “doofus”. What does that say about the people who steadfastly ignored the record and voted for him? My fondest hope is that citizens will begin paying at least as much attention to their local government as they pay to, for instance, the selection of the new coach for the Bucs. Trust me, it really matters more who we elect to the BOCC than who is the Bucs coach.
Ed

1 year ago

Indeed, voter apathy is the ultimate isue we must adress to achieve any progress in Tampa Bay.
Tampa Is…? » Blog Archive » phyllis busansky – hillsborough loses a good one

8 months ago

[...] recently we were hoping she would somehow find a way out of the mess that Buddy Johnson left behind in the Supervisor of Elections [...]