Economics alone would have slathered 2009 in gloom.

But South Florida's latest turn around the sun offered plenty more ignominy than record bank foreclosures, plummeting real estate values, soaring unemployment and desperate hoteliers.

The year brought South Florida national recognition for two nefarious pursuits. The feds caught up to a Miami Herald finding that Miami-Dade County leads the nation in Medicare fraud. Another Herald investigation revealed that Broward County, with 115 pain pill clinics, has become a prime source for the nation's oxy dealers and their addict clientele.

Adding to our infamy in 2009, we entertained a stream of foreign film crews here to document how, as a matter of public policy, Miami-Dade stashes sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

The Broward School Board's Beverly Gallagher provided the iconic photo op of 2009, as she ran helter-skelter from the rear exit of the federal courthouse as if she could outrun both the media and her bid-rigging charges. Broward Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion, Miramar City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman, Miami Commissioners Michelle Spence-Jones and Angel Gonzalez were also busted in a year nasty with public corruption.

MONEY MESS

The arrests left Miami City Commission without a quorum but diverted attention from the city's escalating budget crisis, including a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into allegations the city misled bondholders about hemorrhaging finances.

Undeterred by its own budget shortfall, Miami-Dade County approved a billion dollar obligation to finance the Marlins' new baseball stadium in a deal that the public, given a chance at the polls, would have crushed. That was the great revelation of 2009: In crucial government decisions, the public hardly matters.

What does matter to elected officials is money. Bev Gallagher, caught on an undercover agent's tape recording, illustrated how the game is played in Broward as she described how a school board member could insinuate herself into the bid selection process. Only in this case, according to the feds, Gallagher took an outright cash kickback instead of the usual bundle of campaign contributions from big-time lobbyists. According to the charges, she expanded Broward County's disgraceful but essentially legal bribery system into an outright kickback scheme.

MONEY TALKS

But it was the details around the arrests of two swaggering Broward wheeler-dealers that showed how big money trumps public interest in Florida politics. Alan Mendelsohn a Hollywood ophthalmologist running three powerful political action committees in Tallahassee, collected such prodigious amounts of influence money that, according to federal investigators, he was able to siphon off $600,000 without his clients noticing.

Then there was Scott Rothstein, an astoundingly ostentatious mastermind of what the feds describe as a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme that enabled him to shower pols from the governor down with pilfered money. Of course, they returned the love. This apparent sociopath, living so lavishly and spending so wildly that any ethical elected official should have cringed at his presence, could outbid the public interest.

We owe Rothstein for the enduring lesson of a very sorry year. You want to influence government? Start your own Ponzi scheme.