Florida Trend | Florida's Business Authority

Who Said That?

"You can't make this stuff up in a book."

-- Bradford Sheriff Gordon Smith

The tiny Florida town of Hampton -- population 500 -- doesn't do much beyond pumping water, writing speeding tickets and allegedly practicing "cash register justice."

And on Monday, lawmakers demanded the town be dissolved, investigated by a criminal grand jury, and blocked from state funds over a scathing audit that found 31 violations of state law, city charter and federal tax requirements.

The Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee heard the report which found the city in Bradford County about 130 miles north of Orlando had for years kept shoddy records of expenses, left 46 percent of its water unaccounted for, employed 17 police officers to catch speeders then failing to keep track of where those revenues went, entered into contracts without records -- and even lost public records "in a swamp."

Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.