Story Archive

Paragon

Hampton, Fla., was out of control. The one-square-mile city of just 477 people had 19 cops, but they rarely patrolled in town. Instead, they worked speed radar on a highway a mile from the city, and the notorious “speed trap” brought plenty of revenue from tickets. As much as a million dollars of that revenue is missing, state officials say. “They make Boss Hogg look like a Sunday school teacher,” said the county sheriff, Gordon Smith, invoking the corrupt official from the 1979 TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard. Late night comedians called Hampton “too Florida, even for Florida,” and the state legislature seemed to agree: a senator and a representative joined forces to dissolve the city’s charter, and the state audited the city’s books. State officials summarized the audit results with words like “crazy” and “outrageous” — or “wholesale corruption” and “abuse of the public.” A committee vote was unanimous to dissolve the city, but the state gave Hampton four weeks to clean things up. All the city officials resigned, and new officials have been sworn in. They’ve dissolved the police department and “de-annexed” the highway. And that was enough, the legislature says, to allow the city to keep its charter. (RC/CNN) ...So now it’s officially “just Florida enough for Florida.”