By Peter Franceschina
Staff Writer
State prosecutors have cleared North Broward Hospital District Commissioner Joseph Cobo of any criminal wrongdoing after a 19-month investigation, but prosecutors have referred two issues to the Florida Commission on Ethics for review.
Cobo was accused in the spring of 2009 of potentially violating ethics and criminal law in an investigation by an outside attorney hired by the hospital district board, involving instances where he may have used his position as commissioner to benefit himself or clients of his health-care consulting business.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office undertook the investigation after the district board voted in May 2009 to send the outside investigator’s report to the governor’s office, rather than the Ethics Commission, which has the power to level civil penalties against public officials.
Cobo has always maintained that he did nothing wrong, and he said Monday he was pleased that prosecutors found insufficient evidence to file charges.
“I’m very happy and very delighted about the state attorney’s finding, and I hope the state Ethics Commission finds the same thing,” Cobo said. “Some of the things were a stretch of the imagination, and some were an outright fabrication.”
Assistant State Attorney David Schulson headed the investigation, and he found two issues that should be reviewed by the Ethics Commission, according to a Jan. 13 close-out memo released Monday.
Cobo
“We did not feel he crossed from that gray area where it would warrant a criminal prosecution,” Schulson said Monday.
The outside investigation and prosecutors found that Cobo intervened with hospital administrators who were working on a potential lease agreement with two of his clients.
“I do not find that that Commissioner Cobo’s conduct rose to the level of a violation of any criminal law,” Schulson wrote in the close-out memo, but “the details of this incident should be more appropriately reviewed by the Florida Commission on Ethics for possible ethics violations.”
The other accusation that Schulson referred to the Ethics Commission involved Cobo’s interactions with a young doctor who contacted him through his medical consulting firm for help setting up a solo practice, according to his memo.
Cobo called hospital administrators and staff on behalf of the doctor, who sought a financial agreement with the hospital district, and then Cobo solicited the doctor to hire him to set up his practice, according to the outside investigation and Schulson’s report.
When the doctor rebuffed Cobo, the commissioner replied, “That’s not the way things are done. This is very unprofessional,” according to Schulson’s memo.
Cobo said Monday he was just trying to help out the doctor and had no expectation that the doctor would hire his consulting firm.
“The guy got his agreement. I did not try to stop it,” Cobo said. “All I did was try to help the guy. Look at what it got me. Did I do anything wrong? No, I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
The former federal prosecutor who performed the outside investigation recommended at the time that the hospital district take steps to provide better ethics training for its seven commissioners. Since then, commissioners have had an ethics retreat and established a conflict-of-interest policy, a hospital spokeswoman said, and will be taking up ethics issues in the near future.
Cobo, who was appointed to the hospital board in 2007 by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, said he does not plan to seek reappointment when his term ends in July. He said he will find other avenues for serving the community.
