For immediate release
March 3, 2018
Contact: Stacey Selleck, U.S. Term Limits
Palm Beach Gardens to Receive “Most Corrupt Council” Award for Term Limit Scam
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL — U.S. Term Limits (USTL), America’s oldest and largest pro-term limits organization, will present the “Most Corrupt City Council” award to the Palm Beach Gardens City Council on Monday, in recognition of the Council’s Machiavellian scheme to demolish voter-approved term limits. This ceremony and TROPHY PRESENTATION will take place at 1:30 PM on Monday, March 5, 2018 at Palm Beach Gardens City Hall. The event is open to all media.
“We’ve been in the term limits movement for decades and have never seen a Council refer such a deceitful scam to the ballot,” said U.S. Term Limits Executive Director Nick Tomboulides. “The Gardens’ Council is in a league of their own in terms of deception, voter suppression and lust for power.”
Tomboulides references four questions the Council placed on the March 13th municipal ballot. The questions, which deliberately mislead voters into gutting term limits, reached the ballot in an unethical manner. The Palm Beach Circuit Court judged that Question 2, which would have increased term limits substantially, is “so misleading that it must be invalidated.”
Among the actions of the Palm Beach Gardens City Council, U.S. Term Limits objects to the council:
- Hand-picking and financing, with taxpayer money, a Charter Review Committee with no purpose but to give the Council cover for its power grab
- Jamming through anti-term limit measures, while disregarding voters’ wishes from the 2014 citizen’s referendum where nearly 80 percent said “two terms is enough”
- Disenfranchising thousands of voters by selecting a low-turnout March ballot for the referendum, while supplying false justifications from the Supervisor of Elections
- Using mafioso tactics by visiting homes to intimidate voters who dared to question their power grab
- Directing city attorneys to draft unlawful ballot language which misleads voters, by intentionally omitting the fact that PBG has existing term limits
- Wasting $60,000 in taxpayer funds on political consultants, robocalls, emails and mailers to influence voters in what should be an objective, democratic process and forcing the citizens to file a lawsuit that exposes the chicanery
“I am disenchanted by the hypocrisy of the councilors, who ran on term limits but are now using their power against the voters,” states Gardens resident Paola Magnusen, who will be in attendance Monday. “This award should serve as a wake-up call to never pull an anti-term limit scam again!”
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U.S. Term Limits is the largest grassroots term limits advocacy group that exists to promote and defend term limits on elected officials at all levels of government. Find out more at termlimits.com.