Nearly three months after Lakeland City Commissioner Guy LaLonde Jr. publicly called for an independent third-party investigation into complaints about the Lakeland Housing Authority, the dispute between him and LHA Executive Director Ben Stevenson shows no signs of cooling.
Instead, the conflict has widened — drawing in questions about transparency, Florida’s Sunshine Law and what kind of oversight the housing authority is receiving.
If the board declined an audit, when did that happen?
In an Oct. 15 letter to LaLonde, Stevenson said the LHA Board “declined to spend taxpayers’ dollars on the ‘independent third-party audit or investigation’ that you requested.”
But that raised a new question from LaLonde: How did board members discuss or reach a consensus outside of public meetings?…