Board is a study in acrimony

The Housing Authority director's guilty verdict has some members trading barbs.

By DAN DEWITT
Published June 19, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Interim executive director Ronnie McLean [Times photo: Daniel Wallace] Betty Trent was found guilty of charges including fraud.

BROOKSVILLE - Donnamaria Lopez, a Brooksville Housing Authority board member, gasped in surprise when she heard Betty Trent had been found guilty of defrauding the federal government.

"I am surprised. The old members, they didn't think it would amount to anything," Lopez said of the case against Trent, who had served as the authority's executive director since 1980.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Tampa on Friday found Trent guilty of seven charges, including conspiracy to defraud the federal government, wire fraud and lying to an FBI agent.

Lopez's fellow board member, Paul Boston, had a different reaction to the verdict. He said he could see it coming.

"I've been saying this all along," Boston said. "The amount of corruption over there (at the authority) is appalling."

Lopez represents one group of current and former board members. They remained loyal to Trent and former program manager Joe Ann Bennett, even after the two were indicted on federal charges in November and after Bennett pleaded guilty to fraud in February.

The other group, which now appears to be in the majority, thinks the authority needs to be reformed and that they have found the person to do it, interim executive director Ronnie McLean.

"He's decisive. He seems to be taking charge of the situation and he strikes me as being very fair minded," said Vice Chairman Steve Zeledon, one of three new members appointed by the Brooksville City Council last month.

At the first meeting after these appointments, the board voted to hire McLean, though Lopez and board member Carl Pilcher, who testified to Trent's honesty at her trial last week, voted against him. Pilcher said the next day that McLean had no experience in low-income housing and that the board had not researched his background.

McLean, whose last job was monitoring foster children in Pasco County for a private contractor, ran for the Hernando County Commission last year.

At the time, he was still serving as commissioner with the Roosevelt Fire District in Long Island, N. Y., according to the district's Web site and the commission's vice chairman.

He said Monday an investigation in New York cleared him of any wrongdoing and pointed out that the fire commission job was not paid. Zeledon said he thought the issue was a "matter of miscommunication" and did not think it should disqualify McLean for the job.

"Somebody needs to make a commitment to make this a professional organization," McLean said. The financial records he has seen so far have been incomplete and poorly organized, he said. The previous repair work on the apartments the authority owns has "been subpar and the people here deserve better," McLean said.

Some of the differences on the seven-member board are personal, said Pilcher, who added that Trent may have exercised bad judgment but did not show "criminal intent."

"Paul (Boston) can't stand me and quite frankly I can't stand him," he said. "Paul Boston has his own agenda, which is basically a racist agenda: If you're not black, you're a thief."

Boston said Pilcher, who has been on the board about 12 years, is to blame for allowing corruption at the authority. He was the leader of the faction that supported Trent despite the evidence that she had stolen money, Boston said.

"He was always the voice behind (former board member) Helen Fleming and (current board member) Gertrude Mobley. They would look straight at Carl," Boston said.

Trent, 64, will be sentenced on Sept. 17, Cole said. Though she could spend 70 years in prison, the judge will take into consideration whether she has a criminal record and probably sentence her to less time, Cole said.

Or maybe, Trent said, she won't serve at all.

"I do plan to appeal and that's all I'm going to say," she said.

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6116.

[Last modified June 18, 2007, 21:27:58]