Playing by the rules isn’t what Jennifer Carroll is known for. Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Elect is still trying to answer questions about her income, which shifted dramatically between the time she filled out her tax returns and the time she applied for minority and small business set-asides.
She’s also explaining her way out of charges of fraudulently presenting falsified documents. Carroll claims she rented an office already occupied by a private detective agency before the landlord the papers show she rented from had bought the building (but within the time frame she would have needed to prove her business was located in the county in which she was applying for…yes, minority and small business set-asides).
And she’s never addressed how her speeding tickets disappeared without her paying the fines once she became a state legislator.
So it’s a little ironic that the Miami Dolphins player who was tripped by New York Jets Coach Sal Alosi on Sunday was Jennifer Carroll’s son, Nolan.
Carroll, covered by two Jets players, was running along the sideline toward the Jets’ punt returner when the incident happened at the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. Video shows Carroll was out of bounds and trying to run back in the field of play when Alosi — standing with his hands in his pockets — leaned his left knee forward. The knee caught Carroll, who tumbled to the ground…
“If I could go back and do it again, I sure as heck would take a step back. It was just a situation where I wasn’t thinking,” Alosi said during a news conference Monday afternoon at the Jets’ facility in Florham Park, New Jersey.
“I let everybody down yesterday with my actions. My actions were inexcusable and irresponsible. I’m extremely thankful that my actions yesterday didn’t result in any significant injury to Nolan or any other player,” he said.
What Alosi did was wrong but owning up to that without equivocation is a step in the right direction. We wish we could say the same for Carroll, and for the Governor-Elect, Rick Scott. Both are practiced at evading admissions of obvious wrong-doing.
At a post-election press conference the new governor defended Carroll from…well whatever you got.
“Jennifer is a wonderful person,” the former health-care executive said. “I’m sure she wanted to do the right thing. I don’t know what you’re talking about, though.”
Carroll was even less forthcoming.
When asked about specifics of the altered documents and her company’s residency, she said she could not answer in-depth questions until she saw documents related to the case. After documents were e-mailed to her on Friday afternoon, she issued a statement that did not address the letter.
Maybe Scott, who was forced to resign as CEO of Columbia HCA rather than face criminal charges for Medicare/Medicaid fraud and is currently in depositions about management of his Solantic Clinics, and Carroll, who can’t seem to resist an opportunity to get breaks to which she is not entitled, could take a lesson from Coach Alosi. Own up to your transgressions so you can learn from them — instead of repeating them.
