By Mary Thurwachter
A trio of anonymous letters signed by “Concerned Residents of Lantana” have enraged the town’s mayor, council, manager and attorney. The missives, dated June 30 and delivered by snail mail that town officials received in mid-July, were given top billing at a workshop meeting July 24.
The letters — addressed to the Florida Auditor General, the town’s auditors, Grau & Associates, and the Florida Board of Accountancy — allege financial mismanagement and misappropriations by the Town Council, manager, independent auditors, legal counsel and various contracted consultants.
The “concerned residents” want a forensic audit and, if appropriate, damages paid by outside consultants and criminal prosecution of officials “if financial misdeeds are as heinous as believed.”
Town Manager Brian Raducci said officials have no idea who wrote the complaints.
“The letters allege baseless claims that reference nothing specific,” Raducci said at the workshop. “They appear to be rambling. They’re all over the place. They talk about potential financial misappropriation or mismanagement and general failures to discharge constitutional duties imposed upon the town. Those are serious allegations. There’s no substantive evidence, merit or proof of any of this.”
The letters cite “acres and acres of vacant retail and former residential sites,” including the former Kmart property, while “drug rehab centers abound up and down Dixie Highway.” They call town parks “a disgrace,” the Building Department slow-moving and question the rising cost of legal fees.
The authors say the town budgets don’t spell out the true cost of the legal fees paid, fees that they say have been routinely amended and increased every year since 2018.
“The base legal fee budget, combined with the annual budget amendments exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the letters state.
Raducci defended Max Lohman, who has been town attorney for 22 years. “Yes, his fees have been up, and I’ll take responsibility for a lot of that as well because we’re doing a lot more work since I’ve been here.
“We’ve been doing a ton of infrastructure work. We get contracts and he has to review them. When we get a civil suit, that goes to him. Every ordinance change goes to him. He’s doing good work. Yeah, he has an hourly rate, and he raises his rate every year like everybody else does. But he doesn’t set his hours. We give him work to do.”
Lohman was livid, saying he has a “serious issue with the cowards” who wrote the letters and promised “a reckoning” if he finds out who they are.
“I will spend every penny I have to skin them in the courts,” Lohman said. “My professional reputation has been impugned and that is defamation and libel per se for which I can get punitive damages. I can’t wait.”
Lohman charges the town $250 per hour, less than many other municipal attorneys, he said. “When I started representing this town it was $125 an hour. When I left my old firm 12 years ago, I froze Lantana’s rates for five years. It was $1.1 million over five years. That’s a really good number for your legal fees over five years.”
Mayor Karen Lythgoe also weighed in: “While there may be circumstances that justify confidentiality, the anonymous publication of serious allegations raises legitimate questions about credibility, accountability and the willingness of the accuser to stand behind those claims.”
Public discourse is best when it is grounded in facts, transparency and accountability, and “those standards should apply equally to public officials and to those who choose to criticize them,” she said.
Derek Noonan, audit manager for the state’s Auditor General’s Office, said that although he hadn’t seen the letter, his office gets requests like this often.
“Because the auditor general is an audit agency, not an investigative agency, we have no authority to conduct an independent investigation of the situation outside of an audit,” Noonan wrote in an email to The Coastal Star. He suggested the letter writers contact the Palm Beach County Inspector General and the CPA firm Grau & Associates.
Raducci said he had spoken with the CPA firm, which had received the letter but did not have someone attend the July 24 meeting.
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