State Rep. Al Jacquet says his home is in Riviera Beach, but the post office returned some mail marked vacant, return to sender.

Where is state Rep. Al Jacquet?

The state can’t always find him. They’re slapping fines on him and routinely seeking corrections in his campaign filings. One recent notice was returned unopened, marked "vacant — unable to forward" at his Riviera Beach address.

A friend said Jacquet told him last year that he resorted to living in his car for a time while in Tallahassee for the 2019 session.

For about six months, Jacquet had no district office. And he has lost his stipend from the state to help pay for it.

The Florida Elections Commission fined Jacquet $2,000 in September for waiting a year to correct other campaign finance violations. He still hasn’t paid the fine, which could lead to the state filing suit against him.

A $50 fine went to a collection agency in December 2018 and state records indicate it remains unpaid.

Jacquet, who represents a mostly low-income slice of Palm Beach County from Delray Beach to Lake Park, is hard to pin down. He won’t return phone calls and his phone goes directly to voicemail, which hasn’t been set up.

When confronted by a reporter after a House session Wednesday he walked away rather than answer questions about his living arrangements and failure to meet state deadlines.

He has maintained a presence in Tallahassee this session, attending committee meetings and floor votes, although he has had 13 excused absences since October.

After winning a second term unopposed in 2018, the Democrat who first emerged in Delray Beach but now lists a Riviera Beach home address, faces several challengers, including Lake Worth Beach City Commissioner Omari Hardy, who has matched him in financial contributions.

"There has always been a question as to whether he lives where he says he lives," Hardy said. "This is just one more reason to think that the representative has an integrity problem."

‘Not a permanent address’

Jacquet has listed four different addresses in three years since 2016 on traffic tickets.

In 2016, he listed the home of his parents at 236 SE 3rd Ave. in Delray Beach but that address is not in House District 88, which he began representing in 2017.

In May 2017, he listed a Delray Beach Post Office Box.

Three months later, it was 7150 Hyatt Ave. in Lantana.

Finally, in August, he listed a Riviera Beach townhome at 964 Tortuga Lane.

That’s where the state sent an election violation notice in September and the post office sent it back, marked return to sender.

That’s also where a Post reporter, visiting the home in December, saw Jacquet’s black 2011 Volkswagen Jetta in the driveway. But no one answered the door.

In Tallahassee during the 2019 session, Jacquet found himself living in his car temporarily, he told Richard Ryles, a West Palm Beach city commissioner and longtime supporter.

"I believe he was living in his car because he told me he was at one point," Ryles said. "The way he presented it to me it was over a weekend and not a permanent address."

Now, when asked about Jacquet, Ryles answers with one word: "Waldo?"

Another longtime supporter, County Commissioner Mack Bernard, said he has no idea where Jacquet is living. "We worked together and we were friends but we’ve gone our separate ways," Bernard said.

Through most of his time in office, Jacquet has owned a home in Delray Beach. But he never reported it as his home address.

He bought the 1,600-square-foot house at 214 SE 3rd St. for $92,000 in 2015 when he served on the Delray Beach City Commission.

He sold the nearly 50-year-old home, less than a block from his parent’s house, for $228,000 in April, when he served in the Florida House. The buyer was a property management company. He never homesteaded it and the house, like his parents’ home, is not in his legislative district.

No district office

At least a year ago, Jacquet gave up his North Dixie Highway office a block from Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach. It is now the law office of Ryles, who said he is still getting mail there addressed to Jacquet.

His landlord said he left about a year ago.

But it’s hard to piece together from state records exactly when Jacquet left.

He stopped providing quarterly accounting reports of his office spending to the state late in 2018. But it took the state five months before it halted his $2,482 monthly stipend. Since then, he has gone 10 months without the state allowance.

He recently submitted his accounting for the last three months of 2018. It says he last made a rent payment in early December 2018.

It also showed the last time he cited the North Dixie office address on mileage reports, in mid-November 2018.

He recently submitted reports for the first two months of 2019. But they were rejected by the state and not available for review.

His lack of an office raises issues in the community, said Richard Giorgio, campaign consultant for Hardy.

"I kept having people call me to complain, saying, ‘there’s no way to reach him,’" Giorgio said. "His district is one of the needier districts. They need someone who’s showing up every day and doing their job."

There’s no excuse for failing to provide office space when the state gives you the money to pay for it, former state Rep. Priscilla Taylor said. "Everyone I knew had an office," she said.

Constituents need a place to go when they have problems, she said, adding "They’re not going to come to Tallahassee."

In July, Jacquet moved into a $400-a-month space in Mangonia Park Town Hall.

Absentee vote carried him

Jacquet raised $114,000 to win his first term in the state House in 2016. He secured his seat on the back of absentee votes, defeating two opponents. He, Bernard and their supporters went into voters’ homes to help them fill out ballots, a Palm Beach Post investigation showed.

In one Boynton Beach precinct during the 2016 primary, seven of every 10 ballots cast were absentee, with Jacquet receiving 88 percent of them. Overall, 43 percent of his votes came from vote-by-mail, the third most in the election and double the number garnered by his nearest opponent.

In 2017, Jacquet was fined $300 and reprimanded by the Palm Beach County Ethics Commission for trying to get a $35 parking ticket tossed. The commission found Jacquet guilty of misuse of public office or employment and corrupt misuse of official position, but called the violations "unintentional."

In 2018, Jacquet raised $27,000 as he won a second term without opposition. He drew attention that year when he showed up wearing jeans and a T-shirt at the elections office in Tallahassee to file his paperwork just two minutes before the deadline.

Since declaring for a third term in February, Jacquet has raised $9,000 and drawn three Democratic opponents and a Republican, only one of whom has raised any money. That Democratic challenger, Hardy, has raised $8,600 since announcing in October.

‘This will not happen again’

A year ago, Jacquet pledged he would never again dismiss a violation notice from the state elections office.

But the violations kept coming. First notice. Second notice. Final notice.

And, more often than not, the state got no response from Jacquet, who served as his own campaign treasurer, a job often turned over to professionals.

In February 2019, Jacquet told the state the best address to reach him was the rented townhome on Tortuga Lane.

He provided the address to an investigator for the Florida Elections Commission, which is charged with investigating and enforcing election law.

The investigator wanted to know why Jacquet waited more than a year to correct three relatively minor mistakes on 2017 campaign finance disclosure forms. But he had trouble finding the state House member, despite calling him every day for a week.

When Jacquet finally called back after the investigator had left the office on a Friday, he left a message assuring the investigator that he would "try and answer his phone whenever he sees an 850 area code."

The investigator returned the call the following Monday morning. He got no answer and a voice mailbox too full to take messages.

When they finally spoke, Jacquet assured the investigator he would correct the mistakes.

In two of the mistakes, Jaccquet marked his own donations to his campaign as if they came from a donor. In the third, he didn’t cite the occupation of a donor who gave more than $100, as required. It took the state nearly a year to point out the mistakes but then its insistence on corrections came with deadlines.

The state sent Jacquet three notices in January and February 2018 and gave him an additional seven days to make the corrections. Anything after that would be a violation of election rules.

From that point, Jacquet took a year — to fix just two of the mistakes.

One day after he made the corrections, in February 2019, he filed a handwritten affidavit explaining how it dragged out so long:

"Absolute miscommunication on my part. I received a letter in Feb. 2018, after briefly believing the letter indicated an "Error" in my report. ... I reviewed the reports and noticed no errors showing. I erroneously dismissed the letters that followed (on the same subject) as not accurate. I finally see what the letters were pointing (to) and have resolved it."

He added: "This will not happen again, as I will call immediately upon receiving ANY communication from our Div. of Elections."

But it did happen again. And again. And again.

Five days after submitting the affidavit, Jacquet filed to run for a third term in 2020.

The first violation notice came three months later, for failing to file an April campaign contribution report. He didn’t raise or spend any money that month, meaning he would face no fine for missing the state’s deadline, but the state is a stickler for detail and it wanted "notification that no reportable activity occurred."

Nine days later, the state issued a second notice.

On June 3, the state sent Jacquet its final notice.

Ten days later, he submitted the report.

It’s a pattern that would be repeated: Three days late in May, seven days late in June, 20 days late in August, even as the division’s complaint over Jacquet’s 2017 mistakes wound its way through the Florida Elections Commission.

In September 2019, with Jacquet not attending, the commission fined him $500 for the two errors he had corrected one year late and $1,000 for the mistake that went unfixed.

Jacquet cannot use campaign contributions from his 2020 campaign to pay the fines and they remain unpaid today. The state has the option to file suit against him to collect.

That same month the state sent Jacquet a violation notice for missing his August filing deadline. That’s the one that bounced back from his Riviera Beach address marked "vacant unable to forward."

He filed the report three weeks later.

Palm Beach Post staff researcher Melanie Mena and USA Today Network capital reporter John Kennedy contributed to this story.

jengelhardt@pbpost.com

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