Grand jury to investigate Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom (R)

[Tab]

Source: Herald Times

TALLAHASSEE -- A grand jury decided Monday to look into allegations that House Speaker Ray Sansom abused his position by taking a six-figure job at his hometown college.

''From this point on, we'll be calling witnesses,'' State Attorney Willie Meggs said at the Leon County Courthouse. ``I don't know what we're going to find until we look. We will get the people who have this information and present it to the grand jury.''

Sansom, R-Destin, took the unadvertised $110,000 a year job at Northwest Florida State College on the same day he became speaker of the House two months ago.

The Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times Tallahassee Bureau then reported that over the past two years, the college got about $35 million in extra or accelerated construction funding, including $6 million for an airport building once sought by a prominent developer and Republican donor, Jay Odom.

Sansom and the college deny any relation between the money he secured and the job.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/florida/story/873100.html

[Lochloosa]

1. Pay for play. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

[Stevepol]

2. Let 'em investigate Yang Enterprises if they want some real scandal.

Watch the DVD "Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies." Yang was involved in spying for China, as well as assuring that their legal rep (& FL congressman Tim Feeney) was able to rig his election using voting machine programming supplied by Clint Curtis. And now a guy is dead, probably off-ed because he was investigating Yang.

Top Flight Documentary

[ngant17]

3. needs to be examined more closely

such as the ratio of state financing and student body population, whether it is at variance with other colleges in Florida.

NW Florida is not a highly populated area, so we have to assume that the student body there is relatively small.

My first guess is that the money is substantially out of proportion to the size of the school, so I smell something rotten in Denmark.