Blogger and political watchdog, and now a member Deerfield Beach Housing Authority, Chaz Stevens, lined up his guns even before his appointment to the board on Tuesday in an interesting e-mail exchange with Housing Authority attorney William G. Crawford.

“ … [H]ere’s a list of inquires I will immediately put to you if I am nominated to the board,” Stevens wrote in an e-mail to Crawford.

Crawford’s e-mailed response was addressed to “Questionable Appointee/Chaz Stevens.”

“You, sir, are a jerk,” the e-mail said. “How the Mayor and city commission could possibly appoint a vile and despicable person like you with no resume … is beyond me.”

In a follow-up e-mail four hours later, Crawford added:

“Dear Emperor, You have not yet been appointed to anything including but not limited to Dog Catcher of the City of Deerfield Beach, Florida … ”

The exchange prompted this e-mail from Deerfield City Attorney Andrew Maurodis to Crawford:

“Every word uttered and action taken by you in your official capacity reflects on your client – a public body. The latitude afforded others is denied you. More perplexing is that in this instance I cannot even see the basis for the invective you have chosen to unleash. The emails I have sent just do not merit the response – indeed I could not see any circumstances where it is appropriate to call someone a 'jerk' while representing a public body.”

Stevens was appointed to the board of the Deerfield Beach Housing Authority on Tuesday, along with Century Village resident Caryl Berner and Alan Levitt, nominated by District 3 Commissioner Marty Popelsky.

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A day after an independent auditor produced a report covering it’s sweeping audit of city finances, Stephanie McMillian, who heads up the city’s community Development Block Grant program, and Debra Chatman, SHIP program coordinator, were escorted from their offices and put on indefinite leave Monday, according to a city official.

The night before, with city hall packed for the auditor's presentation of the report, finance director Sally Siegel resigned after 24 years with the city even before the city commission meeting got underway.

The auditor, Kessler International, arrived in March to examine the expenditure of thousands of federal dollars. Four hefty notebooks documented what Kessler described as “findings that are at the very least worrisome and others indicative of illegal activity,” which lead the commission to authorize expanding the audit of federal funds, the Westside Deerfield Businessmen Association and other organizations.

“The [Community Development Division]’s supervising personnel either did not have adequate understanding of red flags of fraud or simply turned a blind eye and approved expenditures that were fraudulent,” the report said.

Commissioners were set to meet with Kessler individually Wednesday to review the specifics of the report.

Among the findings in the Kessler report:

-- payments greater than what regulations allow;
-- false invoices for audits;
-- payments off the books;
-- paint jobs allegedly done by the Haitian American Consortium where no paint was bought;
-- some 245 gallons of paint collected from the city by District 2 Commissioner Sylvia Poitier.

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