Carl Hiaasen: Florida Gov. Rick Scott picks the public’s pockets

[seafan]

For the thousandth time today, I wonder what some Florida voters were thinking last November, when it could have made a difference for all of us.



Hiaasen:

Is Rick Scott the worst governor in the history of Florida?

It’s a question lots of people ask, and the verdict’s still out. The state has had many lousy governors since 1845, when the job first opened.

Scott is certainly a prime contender for worst ever, and each new screwing of Floridians pushes him closer to the title. The latest outrage reveals the fair-weather fiscal conservative reaching deep into public pockets to bail himself out of legal trouble.

During the last few months, taxpayers have been soaked for more than $1 million to settle lawsuits in which Scott and his dim-bulb Cabinet flagrantly violated Florida’s open-records and open-meetings laws.

No other sitting governor has used tax money to end public-records cases that were caused by his own secretive misbehavior. Scott couldn’t care less.

He paid off in one case to avoid producing thousands of emails from private Google accounts on which he and staff members conducted public business, against the law. Scott said such accounts didn’t exist, which was a flat-out lie.

.....

Scott paid to end the case, with $700,000 in taxpayer money. Among the pots of state taxpayer money he raided to pay it off, he looted $445,000 out of the Department of Environmental Protection.

This is the sort of ripoff that vaults Scott to the top of the list when people talk about truly terrible governors. Who else would raid the budget of the agency in charge of safeguarding the environment to pay for a lawsuit that has no environmental angle?

It’s another kick in the teeth for the 4 million Floridians who voted for Amendment 1, believing DEP would use newly designated revenues for the purchase and protection of conservation lands. Nobody dreamed that the governor — even this governor — would loot DEP to pay his own legal bills.

Another case that cost taxpayers a bundle was the firing last December of Gerald Bailey, the widely respected head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Bailey’s dismissal was orchestrated by Scott and retroactively supported by the Cabinet.

St. Petersburg lawyer Matthew Weidner and several media organizations, including this newspaper, filed a lawsuit charging that Scott and Cabinet members violated Florida’s open-meeting law by terminating Bailey without any open discussion or vote.

Afterward Bailey went public with complaints that the governor and his staff had tried to improperly influence an FDLE criminal investigation and described other incidents of alleged interference.

And Florida is supposed to be the state that pioneered "government in the sunshine".

As Hiaasen notes, 'Scott wants to be remembered for creating jobs, and he will be. Lots of jobs for lawyers.'


Florida continues to slide down the deep, dark hole of institutionalized GOP corruption.



Winner and loser of the week in Florida politics, August 16, 2015

Winner of the week - Steve Andrews.

The Tallahassee lawyer brought Gov. Rick Scott to his knees over a public records dispute alleging the governor and staff violated state law by creating private email accounts to shield communications from the public. On Friday, Andrews collected a $700,000 settlement for legal fees.

Loser of the week - Jeb Bush.

Credit the GOP presidential candidate for a foreign policy speech Tuesday. But talking about the Iraq War and rise of the Islamic State, and placing blame on President Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with no mention of his brother, former president George W. Bush? "There's no reason to go back and try to relitigate this," said rival Chris Christie.

I would add Floridians to the "losers of the week". Every week.

We are on that list every day that this corruption is allowed to go on.