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Smith's galling exit from office
A Times Editorial
Published November 19, 2007
Jim Smith finally got one thing at least half right. The embattled Pinellas County property appraiser has decided he won't run for re-election next year. The more appropriate action would have been to resign immediately, but this at least starts the countdown to a day when the property appraiser's office will be in more responsible hands.
Smith remains oddly unrepentant, insisting in a television interview that he has done nothing deserving of criticism. As most everyone else understands, he was at the center of a scandal that reverberated through county government, bringing down the county attorney and the county administrator and clouding the political futures of some longtime county commissioners.
Smith's determination to sell his flood-prone home site in East Lake to the county government at the taxpayers' considerable expense, and the county's quick capitulation to his demands, led to a grand jury investigation and formal ethics complaints against Smith and other county officials. Still under investigation by the Florida Commission on Ethics, virtually abandoned by the local Republican leadership and facing challengers for the first time in years, Smith had little chance of winning support for a re-election bid. Yet he toyed with the public and would-be candidates for the property appraiser post, delaying an announcement that he should have made months ago.
Now Smith will continue to get his salary until the 2008 election and collect his $80,000 annual pension in retirement. That is particularly galling, because his behavior has been outrageous and he should have resigned after the grand jury's critical review.
His decision not to run for re-election at least spares voters the affront of listening to Smith, as a candidate, trying to convince them that Smith, the property appraiser, did not violate the public trust.
[Last modified November 18, 2007, 20:14:21]
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