Kruppenbacher violated state ethics law, Florida commission rules
Frank Kruppenbacher, a once-powerful public attorney, violated a state ethics law while serving as the top lawyer at the Florida Virtual School, according to an agreement the Florida Commission on Ethics unanimously approved Friday.
In the agreement, hashed out by attorneys for Kruppenbacher and the commission, Kruppenbacher admitted to one ethics violation — having a virtual school employee do work for his private business. The punishment is public censure, reprimand and a $5,000 fine, the agreement says.
Kruppenbacher has had a long legal career in Central Florida, serving as attorney for Orange County Public Schools, the virtual school, a half dozen government agencies and, most recently, the Osceola County school district. He left the Osceola position in September. He also served for seven years as the influential chairman of the board that oversees Orlando International Airport.
At one point, Orlando Magazine named him one of the city’s most powerful people seven years in a row.
In 2021, the ethics commission found probable cause that Kruppenbacher had committed six violations of state ethics laws.
The case was to go to an administrative hearing, but both sides agreed to mediation. During mediation, the state agreed to drop five other charges saying the “evidence does not warrant moving forward” while Kruppenbacher admitted to the single accusation, according to the agreement reached in December and voted on Friday by the commission.
Kruppenbacher did not appear before the commission during its brief discussion of his case. Neither he nor his attorney, Mark Herron, responded immediately to requests for comment Friday, nor did they respond earlier this month when the Orlando Sentinel first reported on the agreement.
Leslie McLaughlin, the virtual school para-legal and clerk who filed the ethics complaint, said she had no comment.
The ethics commission vote should be the final official response to the scandal that rocked the virtual school in 2018 when Kruppenbacher — an ally of then Gov. Rick Scott — resigned amid whistleblower accusations of “boorish” behavior and a school audit that questioned spending and contracts he approved.
The whistleblower complaints came from about a dozen other school employees.
The complaints were investigated in 2018 by a law firm and auditors hired by the virtual school and were also forwarded to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the ethics commission. FDLE closed its investigation in 2020 without filing any criminal charges against Kruppenbacher, but it provided its report to the ethics commission.
In April 2019, the Orlando Sentinel published an investigation of Kruppenbacher’s tenure at the school, and soon after Gov. Ron DeSantis and lawmakers ordered a state takeover of FLVS, considered a national pioneer in online education. The state ordered audits, disbanded the school’s board of trustees and appointed new administrators.
After a time under direct state control, the virtual school is now once again an independent public school, with a board of trustees appointed by the governor. It serves more than 240,000 students with both full and part-time online classes and is receiving more than $300 million in state money for this school year.
