By Marlene Sokol, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
TAMPA — Newly filed court documents raise additional questions about Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman's role in the purchase of a house in Arkansas with the help of a wealthy political donor.
Questions about the $435,000 house in Cherokee Village, Ark., have dogged Norman for months.
Norman, the Republican nominee for state Senate District 12, has contended that the house was purchased by his wife, with the help of investors. One of his attorneys confirmed last week that the late Ralph Hughes, a business leader and Norman supporter, was an investor in the property.
The Arkansas deal also prompted a lawsuit by state Rep. Kevin Ambler, whom Norman beat in the Aug. 24 Republican primary election. Norman should be thrown off the November ballot because he didn't list the house on financial disclosure forms, the lawsuit maintains.
Money for the house came from a checking account shared by Jim and Mearline Norman, and the couple used shared funds for the house's upkeep, according to an amended lawsuit filed this week by Ambler.
But after reviewing discovery documents in his lawsuit against Norman, Ambler now alleges that an "earnest money deposit was wire transferred from the joint marital checking account of Jim and Mearline Norman to the Arkansas realtor who was handling the sale of the Arkansas property." Both husband and wife traveled to Arkansas several times to see the house, the lawsuit alleges, and both were present at the closing.
The Arkansas deal is at the heart of a lawsuit in Tallahassee that Ambler filed Aug. 31, a week after losing the Republican primary to Norman. In the suit, Ambler alleges that Norman failed to disclose a loan from Hughes on his qualifying forms, and therefore should not be allowed to continue on to the general election. There is no Democrat in the race. A trial is scheduled for Tuesday.
Besides tracing the money that came from the joint checking account, the lawsuit gave these details about the purchase:
• On Feb. 14, 2006, after Mearline Norman signed a contract to buy the house but before the closing, a lobbyist and longtime friend of Norman's wrote a personal check made payable to a newly created bank account believed to have been opened by Mearline Norman. The lobbyist's name was blacked out from the filing because of a confidentiality agreement, but based on statements from Norman's Tampa attorney, this is presumably Hughes. According to the lawsuit, the name on the account was not registered as a legal business.
• No documents were available to describe any investment agreement between the lobbyist and the Normans. The warranty deed, which is in Mearline Norman's name, does not mention the lobbyist's investment. The difference between an investment, as Norman's team describes the transaction, and a loan is significant because election law requires candidates to list their liabilities in the qualifying papers.
• Although the house is in Mearline Norman's name, money from the joint checking account has been used for maintenance, remodeling, and tax and insurance bills.
Ambler describes the arrangement as an "at-will partnership" between the Normans and their investor. "Due to the use of Jim Norman's joint funds to advance the purpose of the joint partnership venture," Ambler writes in his suit, "and his participation in the activities of the joint partnership venture, that partnership should have been reported by Jim Norman as an asset in order to make a full and public disclosure of his financial interests."
The amended suit was filed shortly after Norman's team filed a motion for summary judgment. In it, Norman's lawyers alleged that, despite an exhaustive discovery, Ambler had found no evidence that the Arkansas deal represented assets or liabilities that Norman would have been required to report.
Also in dispute is the value of the two boats the Normans acquired with the house. While Ambler's team says they were worth more than $1,000 each and therefore should have been listed as assets, Norman's lawyers say that the two boats were more than 19 years old and were not even worth $1,000 combined.
