Florida Senate President and UF lecturer Mike Haridopolos admitted Friday that he made some ethical lapses over financial disclosures related to his employment at UF.
On Friday, the Florida Commission on Ethics unanimously approved a settlement for the senator over the violations.
Haridopolos did not attend the Friday commission meeting but said he recognized that he violated the Florida Constitution by not fully disclosing his financial income for five years from 2004 to 2008.
The commission is legally restricted from penalizing legislators, and any punishment will be decided by the Senate Rules Committee, which is led by Sen. John Thrasher, chairman of the Florida Republican Party.
“This is an embarrassing thing for me,” Haridopolos said in an interview with Sunshine State News. “I’m not excited about it. I’m very disappointed in myself and my behavior, and that’s why we corrected these immediately as soon as we found out about them.”
The errors made include failure to fully disclose where he taught classes, his part-time earnings from the university from 2005 to 2006, real estate investments and information regarding the clientele for his business, MJH consulting.
Haridopolos has been teaching classes at UF on government and politics since 2008.
