Broward County official slapped with ethics complaint for falsifying source of income

A Broward County elected official is under fire after an ethics complaint filed last week revealed that an entity she claims as a major source of income doesn’t actually exist. Alissa Jean Schafer serves on the county’s Soil and Water Commission as an elected board member. Under state law, she is required to file an annual financial disclosure that includes a listing of all income and its sources.

According to the ethics complaint, the group she’s getting money from doesn’t currently exist anywhere. Nor has it ever existed. The revelation raises serious questions about the actual source of payments she collected while serving as an elected official in Florida.

Schafer is listed as a “research and communications specialist” on a website purporting to represent the “Energy and Policy Institute,” which is allegedly based in San Francisco, California. The organization is also listed on her financial disclosure statement as a major source of income paid into her consulting company.

But according to the ethics complaint, which was filed by an Alabama-based group called the Jobkeeper Alliance, two independent searches, one by a private sector attorney, and a second by the Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill’s office, both failed to locate a single record in any state in the nation that could confirm that the Energy and Policy Institute is a legitimate organization.  Merrill has demanded that the group reveal its legal status.

Continue reading at The Capitolist.