MOB Rules

Worst of all, Fishkind never examined the unique way this project is being financed. Instead of taking a loan or floating bonds, the district is allowing the developers to play the role of financier. Had NBHD used a bank, the district could have owned the building outright in 20 or 30 years and paid a total of no more than $70 million instead of the $170 million it plans to pay Murphy and Stiles until 2060 or so.

District staff tell me they didn't want to finance the building traditionally because they feared it would affect NBHD's "A" credit rating.

That the district is so financially unsound it doesn't want to borrow money is no excuse to throw away $100 million to greedy developers. And if the office building is going to be such a big revenue generator -- as officials contend -- it would help the credit rating in the long run.

Fishkind, amazingly, didn't examine the crucial financing issue, writing only that the "unusual" 55-year lease was "advantageous to the district."

Because Fishkind offered no explanation for this fantastic conclusion, I called him about it. He abruptly hung up after a couple minutes, saying he didn't like the tenor of my questions. In lieu of his defense, I did some looking into his previous work and found that he has a long history of backing audacious developers' plans at the expense of the public.

Currently, he's best-known as a top cheerleader for the controversial plan by the St. Joe's Company to have state taxpayers finance a $210 million airport -- along with roads and infrastructure -- on its isolated property in the Panhandle. The plan stinks, but who cares? St. Joe pays Fishkind good U.S. currency.

Back in 2000, the Orlando Sentinel revealed that Fishkind wrote a report justifying an $84 million land price for a parcel actually appraised at just $8.8 million. According to the Sentinel, he was paid by a homeowners' governing district to conduct the study and, at the same time, was employed by the developer that was selling the land. Sweet.

Fishkind also sits on the governor's Council of Economic Advisors, which adds one more Bush connection to the MOB debacle. And it was general counsel William Scherer who recommended Fishkind's hiring -- the same Scherer who has strong business and political ties to Forman and Bush.

Fishy.

The good news is that the final contract hasn't been signed, so the MOB can still be rubbed out. Although there's no mass movement to kill it yet, the November 6 column generated some heat at last week's board meeting. A businessman named Roger Viele came to urge the board to kill the deal. Political activist Margaret Hostetter has written a flurry of letters denouncing the MOB to everyone from the governor to the commissioners. And the column also led Jane Kreimer, a long-time NBHD gadfly, to attend the meeting after a seven-month absence. The 80-year-old Pompano resident called me and said, "This thing makes me ashamed to be a Republican."

"Welcome back," Rodriguez said from the dais when he saw Kreimer, who admonished the board for its ties to Forman, among other things. At the end of the meeting, Rodriguez defended himself against my contention that a lobbyist shouldn't be chairing the district. "I think I bring something unique to this board," he said.

"You don't have to explain anything to us," Commissioner Steven Berrard consoled him.

Then Commissioner Cora Braynon piped in: "I believe it was a rapper who said, 'You can't touch this.' Well, you can't touch the North Broward Hospital District. We are tops!" Rah.

After the meeting, I tried to talk with district CEO Trower, who never returns my calls, about the deal. The mustachioed Trower, normally a mild bureaucrat, pointedly refused to shake my hand. "I'm not going to discuss it with you," he said, walking away. "You've had plenty of access to information, and you've chosen not to use it."

Hey, he may not be much of an administrator, but he's a master of irony.

Rodriguez, who actually seems to try to be accountable, said he was going to reevaluate the project. "Perhaps I didn't give [the MOB deal] the in-depth study that I could have," he said.

I dare say that none of the board members did -- and they were being fed information by an embezzling Forman business partner (Mahaney), a political insider with ties to Forman (Scherer), and the aforementioned Trower.

Regrettably, I failed to track down Scherer, who also doesn't return my calls. When I tried to find him, I learned that he'd already adjourned to a small cafeteria, where several commissioners and staffers eat together after every board gathering.

I tried to get into the cafeteria, which is in the hospital's executive suite of offices. The door was locked.