Elect Ed Slavin to Anastasia Mosquito Control Board of St. Johns County, Seat 1

To St. Johns County voters: May I please have the honor of your vote -- either early, or on November 5, 2024 -- for a seat as Commissioner of the Anastasia Mosquito District of St. Johns County, Seat 1?

Here's my Q&A with the League of Women Voters:

What motivated you to run for office?

It's our money. I've been a watchdog on mosquito control since 2006. Mosquitoes could bring us the next global pandemic. We will be prepared with data, research, education, and environmentally-friendly, non-toxic natural pesticides. My dad was an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, infected with malaria in Sicily. Dad recovered in Army hospitals, but we saw dad suffer lifetime effects. LWV's Ms. Robin Nadeau asked me to help her investigate Anastasia Mosquito Control of St. Johns County, buying a $1.8 million no-bid, luxury Bell Jet Long Ranger helicopter incapable of killing a single skeeter, not unlike buying a Porsche to use with a snowplow. We persuaded AMCD to cancel illegal, no-bid helicopter contract, saving $1.8 million in 2007.  

What do you see as the most pressing issues for this office and how do you propose to address them?
Advancing research and education while protecting scientific integrity and employee whistleblower rights; safeguarding the independence of AMCD, an independent scientific and technical organization; protecting public health, the environment and public funds. Let's assure that "whistleblower" ethical employees are heard and heeded whenever they raise concerns. Let's resist any further effort by the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners to take over independent AMCD, as attempted by former SJC County Administrator Michael Wanchick and County Commission Chairmen. I oppose allowing arbitration clauses in AMCD contracts, Yes, I've been a watchdog of mosquito control environmental protection and spending since December 2006.

What training, experience, and characteristics qualify you for this position?
Helped persuade our independent mosquito district to cancel unwise, no-bid luxury $1.8 million helicopter contract. Won declassification of our frail planet's largest-ever mercury pollution event (Oak Ridge, Tenn. Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant),triggering nationwide cleanups; recommended for Pulitzer Prize by DA. Clerked for USDOL Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt and Judge Charles Rippey. Staffer for Senators Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart & Jim Sasser. B.S.F.S., Georgetown U.; J.D., Memphis State U. Your watchdog, termed an "environmental hero" by FOLIO WEEKLY (after reporting City's illegal dumping of landfill in lake and illegal sewage effluent pollution of our saltwater marsh). Shall we ask questions, demand answers & expect democracy?

How important are environmental concerns when making decisions for the Anastasia Mosquito Control District?
Very important

Explain your answer.
Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" informs good science and use of non-toxic natural pesticides as much as possible. Amid global climate change, the next pandemic could be a mosquito-borne disease. Let's protect AMCD independence, education and applied research to protect public health and our environment. I support AMCD's leadership on natural pesticides. I once reported FEMA and AMCD to federal environmental law officials when bald eagles were exposed to organophosphate pesticides. Support AMCD working with other mosquito control districts and officials to share scientific knowledge to protect all of us "non-target species": mosquito control workers, residents, tourists, pets, horses, livestock, bees and other pollinators, flora and fauna. 

St. Johns County is growing rapidly. How does this impact the management of mosquito control?
Overdevelopment increases the expense of mosquito control and increases exposure of families to mosquitoes from wetlands. St. Johns County Commissioners, developers and their big money clout decide way too many unwise development decisions. This requires our nimble small mosquito control special taxing district to innovate, with sensitive adaptation of mosquito control techniques to protect entire new neighborhoods, which seem to spring up overnight, adjoining wetlands. Public education, applied research, sound science-based policies and non-toxic mosquito control methods, are all essential to protecting public health from mosquito-borne diseases. AMCD exists to prevent any outbreaks of deadly mosquito-borne diseases. We must do it right!

ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: Editorial: DeSantis hides abuse of power behind ‘executive privilege’. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, November 1, 2022)

Our former Congressman from St. Johns County, RONALD DION DeSANTIS, now Governor, is wrong to assert "executive privilege" never before sought or recognized in Florida. Another very good editorial from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Editorial: DeSantis hides abuse of power behind ‘executive privilege’

Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, South Florida Sun Sentinel

November 1, 2022·5 min read

188

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — Lord Acton, British historian, parliamentarian and philosopher, 1887.

Conservatives used to fondly quote Acton’s timeless warning. Not so much lately. With power shifting their way in a majority of states, they are too busy proving his point.

In Florida, at least four current controversies radiate gross abuses of power by Gov. Ron DeSantis. During an trade of insults last Monday in their one televised debate, challenger Charlie Crist put it succinctly: “He thinks he knows better than anybody.”

DeSantis has abused his power by suspending Hillsborough County’s twice-elected Democratic state attorney, Andrew Warren, who broke no laws; flying migrants at public expense from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard; bullying the Legislature into erasing two Democratic congressional districts, one of which had more than 116,000 Black residents in Leon and Gadsden counties; and staging police raids to arrest nearly 20 people on charges of illegal voting in a media event clearly aimed at Black voter suppression.

The last example concerns 17 people, nearly all Black, simultaneously arrested and handcuffed in early morning raids — mostly in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties — with the Office of Statewide Prosecution (OSP) charging them with registering and voting illegally. Police bodycam video obtained by the Tampa Bay Times showed utterly confused people who were told they could vote despite felony records. In some episodes, police appeared sympathetic.

Their treatment contrasted sharply with the respectful handling of residents of The Villages, a nearly all-white, heavily Republican constituency in Central Florida, who were charged on a tipster’s information with knowingly voting twice in 2020. The local prosecutor granted deferred prosecution agreements involving community service and a civics class, after which charges were to be dropped.

DeSantis sent the recent cases to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and to the office of Statewide Prosecutor Nick Cox, an employee of Attorney General Ashley Moody, who is also running for re-election. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch ruled that Cox had no authority to charge Robert Lee Wood of Opa Locka, who had been issued a voter information card but had not had his voting rights restored.

The OSP jurisdiction is constitutionally limited to crimes occurring in two or more judicial circuits in a “related transaction.” Wood registered only in Miami-Dade. Cox claimed multi-circuit jurisdiction because Wood’s registration had been sent to Tallahassee to be checked out.

Hirsch rightly saw that as a stretch, and cited a passage from Shakespeare: “His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings.” It was a timely and much-needed rebuke to the abuse of power in Tallahassee.

Wood’s pro bono attorney, Larry Davis of Hollywood, won the first of what ought to be similar rulings in the cases before other judges. Davis said Wood was arrested at 6 a.m., “pulled out in his underwear.”

The dragon of abusive power is not easily tamed. The state should have simply referred the Wood case to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. Instead, it is appealing Hirsch’s dismissal order.

Meanwhile, DeSantis’ lawyers want to persuade a federal judge to exempt him from being questioned under oath as to why he suspended Warren. DeSantis alleged Warren would not enforce Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban or rules prohibiting gender dysphoria treatment for minors, but Warren had not actually taken either step. Trial is set for Nov. 29.

No Florida governor had ever suspended anyone for what they might do.

DeSantis’ lawyers are invoking legal nonsense called the “apex rule,” designed to shield corporate and government executives from answering subpoenas to explain what underlings could. But it’s a travesty in the Warren case because the governor was the only person in government who could suspend Warren. Only DeSantis can explain — or refuse under oath to do so — what political calculations went into it.

Similarly, he’s claiming “executive privilege” against having to submit documents in a state court lawsuit against the congressional districting plan that he forced the Legislature to enact by vetoing one that respected Florida’s Fair Districts constitutional amendments. There again, the governor is the only person who could have done that. No one else can sign a veto message or reveal what influenced him to do it.

“Executive privilege,” the last resort of presidents who fancy themselves unaccountable, has no foundation in the Florida Constitution.

Neither does the apex doctrine, an unprompted gift from the Florida Supreme Court to large corporations. DeSantis successfully invoked that rule to keep his chief of staff and another key aide from testifying about the migrant flights, which a Texas sheriff is investigating as a possible trafficking crime. But the case has yielded a partial victory: Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh ordered DeSantis to produce documents sought by the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability pertaining to the costly stunt.

DeSantis’ office has been notoriously slow or unwilling to comply with the public records law, so much of Marsh’s ruling is for the good. But the apex doctrine lends itself too easily to a corrupting abuse of power.

____

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

___

ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: Florida lawyer sues Gov. DeSantis, says he's abusing his power opposing abortion amendment. (Doug Soule, GANNETT/Tallahassee Democrat)

Good action.   

Florida lawyer sues Gov. DeSantis, says he's abusing his power opposing abortion amendment

A Lake Worth attorney is asking for action by the state's highest court, complaining of what he calls the DeSantis administration's "unlawful electioneering."

Douglas Soule

USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida

 

A Lake Worth attorney is accusing Florida officials of abusing their offices in opposing the state's abortion rights ballot measure – and is asking the Florida Supreme Court to intervene.

The state's "actions aim to interfere with the people’s right to decide whether or not to approve a citizen-initiated proposal to amend their Constitution, free from undue government interference," wrote attorney Adam Richardson in a Tuesday filing. "Every day (that) Respondents can act unlawfully is another day they abuse state resources and sully the election for Amendment 4. The matter cannot wait."

The officials named in the filing are Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody and Jason Weida, secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration. Their spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The action comes after a week of controversies related to their actions in opposition to Amendment 4, which would ensure abortion access in Florida if it gets at least 60% of the statewide vote.

Richardson mentions a new webpage published by the Agency for Health Care Administration that bashes the amendment, accusing it of "threatening women's safety." The agency paid for a television advertisement that directs Floridians to that webpage.

DeSantis defended the move on Monday, saying AHCA resources were being used to "basically provide people with accurate information, and I think that’s something that’s really important, because quite frankly, a lot of people don’t usually get that in the normal blood stream."

Also mentioned in Richardson's filing is how, as first reported by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida, the Governor’s Faith and Community Initiative reached out to religious groups last week to advertise a call with state Attorney General Ashley Moody titled, "Your Legal Rights & Amendment 4’s Ramifications."

t comes as DeSantis' team has begun turning to religious groups to help rouse opposition against the amendment.

Joining Moody on that Thursday morning call will be Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Christian ministry that has also fought against gay marriage. Moody herself has been an opponent of the amendment since before the Florida Supreme Court OK'd it to appear on the 2024 general election ballot.

"Since the Court approved ballot placement, (state officials) have waged a campaign to interfere with the election," wrote Richardson, who has publicly criticized DeSantis.

Another controversy, but one not mentioned in the filing: State election officials sent police to the homes of some citizens who signed the petition to put the measure on the ballot to make sure their signatures were legitimate. The Florida Department of State defended that, saying it "uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions."

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This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com.

ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: Ron DeSantis and the arrogance of power | Editorial (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 9, 2024)

Good editorial with catch title, albeit not original.  Kudos to the late Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) for his book, The Arrogance of Power, about U.S. foreign policy.  From South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Ron DeSantis and the arrogance of power | Editorial

Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking on the second day of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By SUN SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARD | Sun Sentinel

UPDATED: September 9, 2024 at 5:45 p.m.

It’s premature to say whether Ron DeSantis will be remembered as Florida’s worst governor, although that does seem his intention.

It’s not too soon, however, to acknowledge that he has abused his power more than any of his predecessors. People are wise to him, too.

No other governor ever weaponized a state agency to fight a ballot initiative. That’s what DeSantis has done with the Agency for Health Care Administration, whose website features a blow-by-blow attack on Amendment 4, the abortion rights amendment.

Not only that, it isn’t true. It falsely claims that current Florida law protects women, and that the initiative “threatens women’s safety.” The use of a taxpayer-funded agency in a political campaign is illegal.

Harassing voters at home

No other governor ever sent his election police to interrogate registered voters as to whether they signed petitions for a cause he opposes — an outrageous act of intimidation. Several voters in Lee County answered a knock on their door and it was an armed, uniformed police officer. The issue again was Amendment 4.

As reported by the Tampa Bay Times, the agents said they were looking into possible election fraud. There was no explanation for why those voters — who verified that they had signed the petitions — were singled out.

The Lee County elections office said it had received only one request from Tallahassee for only one voter’s signed petition.

No other governor ever launched an eleventh-hour campaign to disparage a ballot question, as DeSantis is doing in reviewing petitions collected by specified paid solicitors. Election supervisors in Palm Beach, Hillsborough and Orange counties confirmed the order from DeSantis’ Department of State.

Suspicious timing

Regardless of whether some solicitors may have faked some names they signed, which is always possible and should be prosecuted, the timing is suspicious. Election supervisors are required to compare voters’ signatures with those on file. They verified more than enough signatures — 997,035 to be precise. The deadline to challenge the signatures passed months ago.

The Department of State said it has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.” That doesn’t answer the question: Why now? Amendment 4 made the ballot a year ago.

No other governor has ever tried to dictate to other elected officials that they should help him defeat a ballot question. DeSantis did, with a jaw-dropping speech to a Republican fundraising dinner at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood on Saturday.

Bullying his fellow Republicans, he called out six by name who spoke out against Amendment 4 but haven’t contributed money to his campaign against it.

That old dog whistle

Once again, DeSantis invoked a familiar Republican antisemitic dog whistle, the name of financier and liberal Jewish donor George Soros.

It’s “untenable,” he said, “to just sit here and let George Soros run amendments in our state and not be willing to stand up and say no, not on our watch. That’s the least you can do as Republicans.”

No Soros contributions are among the $51.4 million from thousands of donors reported by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization behind Amendment 4. If DeSantis has any evidence that Soros contributed indirectly, he hasn’t shown it, and if Soros did — so what?

DeSantis is entitled like any other citizen to voice his opinions on ballot propositions like Amendment 4. So are Republicans who support it, despite his attempts to intimidate them.

But it’s scandalously wrong to use state resources and taxpayers’ money for such purposes.

Slap him down

Decades ago, Democratic Gov. Reubin Askew had plenty to say and do about amendments he supported for a corporate income tax and ethics reform and against an initiative to legalize casino gambling, but he never co-opted agencies or badmouthed other officials who disagreed with him.

In a practical sense, there are Republican voters whom DeSantis offends. Recent news coverage focused on a group of mostly Republican women who met at Bradenton to support Amendment 4. They recognize that the right of women to control their own bodies ought not to be a partisan issue.

These latest examples of DeSantis’ arrogance closely follow his attempt to fast-track the bulldozing of nine state parks for golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts, the dismissal of a state employee who blew the whistle on the scheme, and the deliberate leaking of the whistleblower’s personnel file — without any request for it.

DeSantis has two more years left to abuse his power. But on Nov. 5, voters can decisively slap down his heavy hand.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Originally Published: September 9, 2024 at 5:15 p.m.

ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: Curiouser and curiouser’: Florida’s state-parks debacle grows stranger by the day (Bill Kearney, South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Whistleblower retaliation. Secrecy.  As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "Secrecy is for losers -- for people who don't understand the value of the information." Our former St. Johns County Congressman, RONALD DION DeSANTIS, caught re-handed?  Is he a loser, or what? You tell me.  From South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Curiouser and curiouser’: Florida’s state-parks debacle grows stranger by the day

A threatened Florida scrub-jay surveys it territory amid scrub oak habitat in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. (Courtesy Benji Studt, Conservation Biologist)

By BILL KEARNEY | South Florida Sun Sentinel

UPDATED: September 8, 2024 at 12:24 p.m.

It’s been an eventful two weeks in the ongoing saga of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration versus Floridians who love state parks.

DeSantis on Aug. 28 aimed to distance himself from controversial park plans and announced that the state Department of Environmental Protection was putting the effort, known as the “Great Outdoors Initiative,” on hold (for now).

Those plans included installing golf courses, 350-room hotels and pickleball courts in some state parks.

Since then, the state DEP whistleblower who leaked the plans has been fired by the department, and a lawyer representing golf legend Jack Nicklaus revealed that both Nicklaus and golfer Tiger Woods were included in the idea to put three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County. The attorney made sure to say that the nonprofit Folds of Honor was driving the plan — the golf deities were merely course designers.

Though the South Florida Sun Sentinel and numerous other news organizations have made public-records requests to the DEP for meetings and emails relating to the plan, neither the DEP nor the DeSantis administration have divulged any information on how this all started, or who might benefit financially or politically.

The initiative enraged so many Floridians that politicians, too, including fellow Republicans, want to know more.

GOP Congressman Brian Mast, whose district contains Jonathan Dickinson State Park, has requested records, and on Thursday a contingent of Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, demanded a formal investigation into how those plans were devised.

DeSantis is widely considered one of most powerful Florida governors in recent history, yet this plan has been crippled, and his administration’s vision undermined by those in his own party, political observers say. It is one of the most dramatic stories in state history of the uproar that results from trying to alter state parks. The motives behind the initiative, motives that seem to have led to misjudgment and not learning from the past, are still a mystery.

Did state DEP act on its own?

DeSantis distanced himself from the plan, saying he hadn’t seen it, and that it was “half-baked” and “not ready for prime time.” But could the state Department of Environmental Protection really have gone about this on its own?

That’s unlikely, said Aubrey Jewett, political scientist at the University of Central Florida.

“The DeSantis administration has been a very top-down administration,” Jewett said. “So it’s hard to imagine that he really didn’t know that there was this major plan that his DEP was going to put out.”

“Gov. DeSantis has had more power than any governor I’ve seen in the last 40 years,” said Democratic Broward County commissioner Steve Geller, who served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1988 to 2008.

“He is used to being the absolute ruler in Tallahassee … because he’s had a Republican Legislature that by and large did whatever he asked, because they all thought there was a good chance he was going to be president, and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of a future president,” Geller said. “I’ve known governors since before Bob Martinez (1987-1991). I have never seen a governor as powerful as Ron DeSantis.”

Given DeSantis’ grip on power, the Republican backlash to the parks plan may have come as a surprise.

“Over my dead body will there be a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson State Park!” wrote Mast on Facebook.

State Sen. Kathleen Passidomo posted her distaste on X, and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott called the plan “absolutely ridiculous” in a joint letter. Scott’s protest indicates a change of heart. When he was governor, an initial plan to bulldoze parts of Jonathan Dickinson State Park emerged from the Legislature, but was quashed by public fury.

Geller suspects that if this had happened two years ago, DeSantis’ fellow Republicans might not have been so vocal. “He had just been reelected and was a favorite to become president,” Geller said.

“I think he may have been a little surprised that he’s reverting back to the norms of gubernatorial power, as opposed to the extraordinary (gubernatorial) power that he has exercised.”

The analysis of the DeSantis administration as top-down tracks with whistleblower James Gaddis’ claims. He told the Tampa Bay Times that DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff Cody Farrill was heavily involved in pushing the park plans on behalf of the governor’s office. “Farrill has not responded to text messages asking about his role,” said the Times.

James Gaddis, a cartographer for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection who leaked the DeSantis administration’s plan to build golf courses, pickleball courts, and hotels in some of Florida’s popular state parks, in Tallahassee, Fla., on Sept. 4, 2024. (Mark Wallheiser/The New York Times)

Jewett said the whole episode is a bad look for the governor.

“Either he really was in on this from the beginning, and that really was a mistake, given the public reaction, or if what he says is true, and he really wasn’t in on it, then it suggests that for one of the few times in his tenure, he’s not being an effective manager and leader.”

Dream vs. reality

DeSantis tried to distance himself from the state’s larger “Great Outdoors Initiative,” which would’ve affected various state parks across Florida. “It was not approved by me, I never saw that,” he said during a news conference on Aug. 28. But DeSantis also did list some of what he viewed as the positives about one of the most provocative parts of the parks plan — adding three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

DeSantis, a known avid golfer, talked about the philanthropic connection to the initiative, mentioning the Folds of Honor group.

“We had one charity, Folds of Honor, which uses golf to be able to raise money to be able to support the families of fallen service members and injured service members with scholarships,” he said. “And they also do that for first responders.”

“And so they had a proposal, it wasn’t approved yet,” he said. It would “take an abandoned military base” at Jonathan Dickinson State Park and convert “it into something that would be really nice, that would make the general public be able to afford doing it, because this stuff can be expensive,” he said. “And then take the proceeds and use that to fund the scholarships for the military families and for the first-responder families. But that is what they’re doing. It wasn’t like they were going to make a lot of money.”

This map of Jonathan Dickinson State Park shows the proposed golf development in pink, overlaid with current Florida scrub-jay habitat. (Maps courtesy of Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

During DeSantis’ news conference, the governor acknowledged the outcry over the Martin County plan. “Some people down there, a lot of them were upset about it,” he said. “Some of it was misrepresented as if they were going to try to take away all this unspoiled land. No, there was almost 1,000 buildings on that base back in the day, there’s still some of the remnants of it.”

But some people familiar with the park disagree, saying the proposal was smack in the middle of two rigorous and ongoing conservation efforts: Restoration of rare scrub oak habitat, which the park staff had been working on for decades, and restoration of federally protected Florida scrub-jays to said habitat, which the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had been working on for years.

According to Cornell University’s John Fitzpatrick, who’s been restoring scrub-jays to the park since 2018, the DeSantis plan placed the golf courses directly on top of existing scrub-jay territories.

The DEP did not make park staff available for comment. But Harper Carroll, a fire ecologist who volunteers to help with prescribed burns at Jonathan Dickinson State Park since 2006, said the scrub oak rehabilitation program really took off in the early 2000s.

The burns have restored the scrub oak habitat, said Carroll, and the land where the proposed golf courses would go is home to what Carroll calls “Goldilock species” that love the mosaic of brush, sand and oak. “With that mosaic, you get these Goldilocks species — they need it just right. If you take that out, those species are out of there. They’re gone.”

A Florida scrub-jay amid scrub oak habitat in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. (Courtesy Benji Studt, Conservation Biologist)

Conservation experts said the destruction of the scrub-jay habitat, which they share with federally protected gopher tortoises, could have sparked opposition from conservation groups and possibly the Environmental Protection Agency.

As a political observer who is aware of DeSantis’ mostly positive records with environmental issues such as Everglades restoration, Jewett was perplexed. “It gets curiouser and curiouser, as the saying goes. … If you were going to propose something like this, certainly you should be aware of endangered species and habitat protection and what’s required by federal and state law,” Jewett said. “That’s your job.”

The same rationale — that 70 years ago Jonathan Dickinson State Park was a military base — was used in 2011, when a bill that proposed golf in the same park.

“I’ve been out there,” Carroll said. “The scrub has recovered. Mother Nature has kind of healed itself with our help,” he said. “You might find an old chimney, but Mother Nature has reclaimed it.”

Soon after the proposal drew an outcry, the Tuskegee Dunes Foundation, another entity tied to the Jonathan Dickinson State Park plan, wrote: “We have received clear feedback that Jonathan Dickinson State Park is not in the right location. We did not understand the local community landscape and appreciate the clarity. We will not pursue building in the beloved Jonathan Dickinson State Park.”

During the Aug. 28 news conference, DeSantis said, “They’ve withdrawn that proposal, that was the only thing we were interested in, just because it had the connection to the military stuff. So that’s done.”

Shade vs. Sunshine

Given the avalanche of public-records requests, why is there still so much mystery surrounding the genesis of the “Great Outdoor Initiative” and who would benefit from it, either politically or financially? DeSantis and the state DEP are being tight-lipped, but that’s not historically the norm.

“Historically in Florida, the public has a right to know these things,” said Jewett, adding that the state of Florida has been lauded since the 1990s because of strong laws requiring open government.

“But we have seen such an erosion of that over the last few decades,” he said. “Particularly in the last four or five years, where the Legislatures continually passed more exemptions to the open-record laws, and the governor and the administration have typically taken the view that this is not a requirement anymore, it’s more of a request.”

Geller agrees. “It is fair to say that Gov. DeSantis is less compliant with public-records requests than any governor since (past Florida Gov.) Reubin Askew passed the Sunshine Amendment,” Geller said. The 1976 Sunshine Amendmentrequired full public financial disclosure by all public officials and candidates.

Lessons from the past

In 2011, during the Rick Scott administration, a similar plan was hatched in the Florida House to put golf and even hotels in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. It was sponsored by former state Rep. Patrick Rooney, and included a clause that said every course “must be designed by Jack Nicklaus.”

A trail winding through rare scrub-oak habitat in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. (Courtesy Benji Studt, Conservation Biologist)

Like the new proposal this year, the bill sparked widespread outrage. And when golf god Arnold Palmer publicly expressed his distaste for it, the bill disappeared.

At the time, Rooney’s office was flooded with angry emails. In an interview with WPTV last week, Rooney called the debacle a learning experience. “I wish I had done more research on the parks and the fervor with which people that use the parks have,” he said. “It was a mistake to go forward with it. … I quickly grasped how important Jonathan Dickinson State Park is.”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6. 

Originally Published: September 7, 2024 at 4:02 p.m.