Miami, FL – U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio today issued the following statement regarding Governor Charlie Crist’s so-called Everglades plan, about which weekend news reports raised troubling new questions:
“This deal is nothing more than a massive taxpayer-funded bailout for a top Charlie Crist campaign donor and a profitable bonanza for Crist’s inner circle.
“Once again, Charlie Crist has put his political ambition ahead of the people of Florida, and once again the results are disastrous for taxpayers. In fact, this bailout plan is the second most expensive photo op Charlie Crist has ever staged.
“Charlie Crist’s bailout plan will require higher taxes and increased debt, and it does nothing for the Everglades. In fact, it actually halts real restoration projects started by Jeb Bush, which were already underway.
“Charlie Crist simply can’t be trusted to go to Washington to fight massive government spending because, more often than not, he’s the one proposing it.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOMBSHELL: CHARLIE CRIST’S TAXPAYER-FUNDED BAILOUT
Excerpts from:
The New York Times
A Deal to Save the Everglades Could Rescue U.S. Sugar Instead
3/7/2010
Read the Full Article
“Nearly two years later, the governor’s ambitious plan to reclaim the river of grass, as the famed wetlands are known, is instead on track to rescue the fortunes of United States Sugar.”
…
“United States Sugar dictated many of the terms of the deal as state officials repeatedly made decisions against the immediate needs of the Everglades and the interests of taxpayers, an examination of thousands of state e-mail messages and records and more than 60 interviews showed…documents and interviews suggest that the price tag and terms of the deal could set back Everglades restoration for years, or even decades.
…
Negotiations favored United States Sugar from the start, when the state accepted two outside firms’ appraisals of the company’s land that used figures from the height of the real estate market, according to documents.
When a “fairness opinion” commissioned by the state found that those appraisals had overvalued the land by $400 million, Florida officials orchestrated a public relations campaign to discredit the findings, internal e-mail showed. Appraisers from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which was required to sign off on the deal, were also cut out of the process after raising concerns, e-mail messages showed.
When it came time to decide which land to buy, state officials acknowledged that United States Sugar was, as one official put it during an interview, “pretty much in the driver’s seat.”
…
Supporters of the plan said the land would enable the state and federal government to build reservoirs and water treatment systems. But doing so would require deep financial reserves from the South Florida Water Management District, which oversees restoration and is financed by taxpayers in 16 counties. Internal district documents put the price tag at up to $12 billion and projected that the district would have nowhere near that amount.
In the meantime, more than a dozen projects under way as part of a 10-year-old federal and district restoration effort have been suspended or canceled in anticipation of the cost of the United States Sugar deal. Among them is a massive reservoir in western Palm Beach County that was seen as a major step toward restoration of the Everglades. In total, $1.3 billion had already been spent on the projects, according to an internal water district document.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who initiated most of that work, said in an interview that he was “deeply disappointed” with the decision by Mr. Crist, his successor and a fellow Republican, calling the move to halt the projects a setback for restoration.
“To replace projects that were under way for a possibility of a project decades from now is not a good trade,” Mr. Bush said. “On a net basis, this appears to me there has been a replacement of science-based environmental policy for photo-op environmental policy.”
…
In its current form, the deal’s only clear, immediate beneficiaries would be United States Sugar, a privately held company based in Clewiston, Fla., and its law firm, Gunster, which is expected to collect tens of millions of dollars in fees for its work on the sale, according to current and former United States Sugar executives.
The sale, scheduled to close March 31, amounts to a lifeline for the company, which entered negotiations at a time of profound weakness; it was facing a costly shareholder lawsuit, sinking profit margins and increased foreign competition. The deal would enable it to wipe nearly all the debt from its books.
United States Sugar had an unusually powerful advocate in Gunster, a West Palm Beach law firm that had represented it since 1990. Gunster’s chairman, George LeMieux, was Governor Crist’s chief of staff when the deal was first conceived. Mr. LeMieux, who began working at the law firm in 1994, returned to it in January 2008 as the deal was being renegotiated.
He and Mr. Crist are confidants, and the governor referred to Mr. LeMieux as the “maestro” of his 2006 election victory. When a United States Senate seat was vacated in 2009, Mr. Crist appointed Mr. LeMieux to fill it. The governor is now campaigning for that post and has often described the United States Sugar purchase as a crowning achievement of his administration.
…
For United States Sugar, “it’s a fantastic deal,” said a former senior executive of the company, who described his colleagues as “elated.”
“I won’t lie to you — it’s a damn good price for that land,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement. “But it’s not as good a deal for the Everglades. If the district doesn’t have any money after this purchase, then they won’t be able to do any restoration projects. It could be a disaster in the making.”
…
On June 24, 2008, with Florida already experiencing a recession and property values sinking, Ms. Estenoz stood beside the governor at the edge of the Everglades as he unveiled the $1.75 billion deal. Local cheers and sweeping national headlines followed.
Politically, the timing was perfect. Mr. Crist was on the short list of potential running mates for Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Ellen Simms, a former United States Sugar comptroller who views the deal skeptically, said that despite the high cost to taxpayers, it was difficult in those early days to question it. “Who can be against it?” she said. “This was going to save the Everglades. It’s like being against motherhood and apple pie.”
…
The growing financial crisis in the summer of 2008 was rapidly changing the scope of the deal. On Nov. 11, 2008, Mr. Crist announced a smaller, $1.34 billion purchase of just over 180,000 acres of United States Sugar’s land, but this time not including its other assets.
At a press conference, Mr. Crist called the new deal “miraculous.”
For United States Sugar, at least, it looked that way. David Guest, an environmental lawyer and vocal supporter of the full buyout plan, said that the state’s lead negotiator, Michael W. Sole, secretary of Florida’s Environmental Protection Department, had given away far too much to United States Sugar.
“He got scammed,” Mr. Guest said. “Everyone gasped in disbelief when he came back with what he did.”
…
Paying for the land was only the beginning. A slide show prepared by the district on restoration projects and construction detailed one estimate that put the effort at $8.6 billion and another at $12.3 billion, according to records obtained by The New York Times.
Even at the lower estimate and with the federal government paying its share, the district would struggle to bear the costs. The details of the deal were now raising concerns among some district board members and environmentalists.
An unlikely cheerleader emerged. George LeMieux, despite having insisted that he had nothing to do with the deal, appeared at a legal conference in Deerfield Beach and offered “an insider’s account” of Everglades restoration.
In a keynote address that went uncovered by the local media, Mr. LeMieux described the United States Sugar deal as “an unprecedented opportunity, really a game changer.”
“We really stand at the intersection of opportunity and possibility,” he said. “We have a historic opportunity to change the face of the Everglades and our environment with this acquisition of the U.S. Sugar lands.”
…
In April 2009, Governor Crist announced a second downsizing of the deal, necessitated again, he said, by the state’s shrinking economy. The district would now buy 72,800 acres for $536 million. Critics said that as the deal got smaller, it got better for U.S. Sugar.
Under the terms of the new deal, United States Sugar will be able to keep farming some of the land for at least seven years. As a result, some environmental experts believe, the Everglades will be worse off in the short term.
“What you have is just another step in the category of kicking the ball down the road and chasing it,” said Alan Farago, the conservation chairman of Friends of the Everglades.
