Opinion: Questionable judgment

A Times Editorial

Questionable judgment

It is true, as Gov. Jeb Bush, says, that Roy Cales, who had been serving as Florida's first technology czar, deserves the presumption of innocence as he prepares to defend himself against charges of grand theft. Cales is accused of using a phony letter from a television station to persuade a Tallahassee bank to lend him $35,000 five years ago. Cales resigned his $95,000 job this week, but his lawyer says his client "emphatically denies he did anything wrong, much less illegal."

However, it also is true, although the governor hasn't acknowledged as much, that Cales was a glaringly inappropriate choice for such a sensitive position in state government even before his current legal problems became known.

It's not just that Cales had never held any job with responsibilities remotely comparable to the ones he was given in the governor's office, where he was in charge of a $600-million-a-year budget. Cales also had a bankruptcy and a grand theft charge in his background when Bush made him the state's first chief information officer. In 1985, Cales was charged with embezzling $1,800 from a Leesburg lumber store where he worked. The charges were dropped after he acknowledged his guilt and repaid the money.

The new charges against Cales came to light after the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Tallahassee discovered that a letter on Cales' behalf, purportedly signed by TV station Fox 49's business manager, was fraudulent. The signature on the letter, which claimed that the station had a contract with Cales' computer business and would make joint payment on Cales' $35,000 loan, was crudely forged and misspelled.

Bush issued a statement calling Cales, who did computer work for him during the 1998 gubernatorial campaign, "my friend." As more becomes known about Cales' background, it looks as though that friendship constituted Cales' primary qualification for his job as chief information officer. Many Floridians had experience handling the kinds of budgetary and organizational responsibilities that position carries, but Cales wasn't one of them. The new criminal charges raise further questions about Cales' judgment. They also raise questions about the governor's.