He questioned Palmetto Bay mayor’s ethics. Now she wants him to pay her legal bills.
Palmetto Bay mayor Karyn Cunningham will continue her fight to make political adversary David Singer pay her attorney’s fees after the former village councilman filed an ethics complaint against her last year alleging that she used her official position to get her friend elected.
At a hearing in Tallahassee Friday, the Florida Commission on Ethics — a nine-member body responsible for investigating complaints regarding the conduct of public officers — decided unanimously that Cunningham’s petition for fees is valid, and that the matter will continue on to the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings.
There, an administrative law judge will make a recommendation for ethics commissioners to review and vote on. The process is supposed to take a few months, but often lasts about a year.
In his original complaint, Singer alleged Cunningham used her role as mayor to elevate the candidacy of her friend, Leanne Tellam, who won her election to the village council in November. While Cunningham didn’t use her official social media pages to endorse Tellam, Singer complained she should not have used the hashtag “#PalmettoBaysGotTalent” when posting about Tellam, because Cunningham had called it an “official hashtag” for the village.
The village manager, who is in charge of social media for Palmetto Bay, said in an interview with the commission that the hashtag was created by Cunningham, not the village.
Singer, who filed the complaint while still on the village council, also wrote that while Cunningham may endorse or promote Tellam on a personal level, members of the public still view her as the village’s mayor, not a private citizen. He referenced a League of Women Voters event where Cunningham appeared and spoke in favor of her friend.
Singer’s complaint was dismissed last July. Singer filed an identical complaint with the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which was dismissed in February 2020.
In September, Cunningham went before the ethics commission in hopes of collecting attorney’s fees from another similarly dismissed complaint against her, that time by former Palmetto Bay Mayor Eugene Flinn. The commission dismissed the petition.
In defending this most recent complaint, Cunningham’s lawyers estimated that she had accrued legal fees that exceeded $5,000.
Under Florida statute, a person can petition for costs and attorney’s fees if the ethics complaint they face was made with “a malicious intent to injure the public official’s reputation” or if the person made false statements on purpose. In her petition, Cunningham’s lawyer, Benedict Kuehne, wrote that Singer made false allegations and that the complaint was “part of a pattern” of Singer’s behavior to “harass, demean and injure the … reputation of Mayor Cunningham.”
Attorney Juan Carlos Planas, who represented Singer Friday, argued that the former councilman’s complaint was not made with the goal of harming Cunningham’s reputation, and that Singer just believed she was using her official position to campaign in violation of state ethics laws. Planas noted that Cunningham was not on the ballot during the time Singer filed the complaint, and that Singer didn’t leak the complaint to the press.
Singer ran an unsuccessful reelection campaign in 2020, but did not compete against Tellam, Cunningham’s friend.
Planas said that by awarding fees, the commission would discourage people from reporting elected officials who use their office for political purposes.
“I just think this is a bad precedent to set by the commission,” Planas said in an interview. “The issue of whether or not a municipal mayor is using the powers of their office to campaign is a legitimate gripe ... [and] in administrative hearings they will see there is no malice.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 2:51 PM.