Craig Pittman, Florida Phoenix
October 17, 2024
Like most journalists, I keep in my head a list of the best journalism movies — “Spotlight,” for instance, and “His Girl Friday.”
The one I like the most is “Deadline USA,” which stars Humphrey Bogart as a tough editor trying to land one last scoop before his paper folds. It ends with him holding a phone up so the bad guy can hear the story being printed in the final edition.
“That’s the press, baby, the press,” he tells the bad guy, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Probably the most famous line from any journalism movie is the one from “All the President’s Men,” in which two reporters who are more handsome than any real reporter has ever been bring down Richard Nixon. They’re helped by an informant dubbed “Deep Throat.” He tells them, “Follow the money.”
I mention this because that’s exactly what a former reporter has done for everyone in Florida. I find the results fascinating.
I’m talking about Gil Smart, who used to be a newspaper columnist and investigative reporter, but now serves as executive director of an environmental group called Vote Water. The group’s goals include “hold major polluters accountable” and “make human health a priority.”
To that end, Vote Water recently rolled out what it calls its “Dirty Money Project.”
It’s a searchable database to track donations to Florida politicians from polluting industries such as Big Sugar and the rest of the agricultural industry, the phosphate miners, the major utilities, the developers and even the sneaky “polluter PACs” — committees that function as cash machines and get significant funding from these industries.
“Dirty money to dirty politicians creates dirty water. And we’ve got the receipts,” their website says.
I asked the aptly named Smart why his group went to the trouble of setting up such a database. He explained that they had been tracking the money handed out by Big Sugar, but then the Piney Point disaster happened.
That’s when they realized the phosphate industry is just as influential a polluter as the sugar industry.
Then the scandals erupted involving the utilities and their “ghost candidates,” he told me. By promoting bogus candidates with names similar to the incumbents, the utilities were able to fool enough voters to siphon off votes, thus electing a less popular person who’d be more amenable to doing those companies’ bidding.
And no list of polluters is complete without what Smart called “the sprawl industry” — developers who want no controls on our runaway growth. Put them all together and you’ll see who our elected leaders listen to, instead of us voters.
“I covered the Pennsylvania Legislature, and it’s corrupt,” Smart told me. “Then I came down here and thought, ‘OH MY GOD!”
They worked for a year to pull the data together, using contribution information from the last six years, he told me. Vote Water worked with law students from the Stetson University College of Law. I picture them all sitting in a library, paging intently through campaign finance records while wearing ten-gallon hats. Regardless of their headgear, their purpose was a serious one.
“If you’ve ever wondered why Florida never really cracks down on water pollution or why every development proposed in your community seems to get the rubber stamp,” Smart said, “the answer is dirty money.”
When I asked him whether the database turned up anything surprising, he told me yes: “The amount surprised me. … The breadth of it just takes you aback.”
The 800-pound gorilla
Since the Dirty Money Project started with Big Sugar, let’s start our review of its findings there as well, shall we?
The sugar industry earns that size-related adjective by being the original 800-pound gorilla in Tallahassee.
Two decades ago, the industry deployed 40 lobbyists — picture an army marching in Italian loafers — to persuade lawmakers to extend the deadline for cleaning up Everglades pollution from 2006 to 2026.
The bill sailed through, and then-Gov. Jeb “Please Clap” Bush — a self-described Everglades advocate — signed it behind closed doors.
That was when one veteran lobbyist told me, “The sugar industry owns everybody in Tallahassee, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Sure enough, the Dirty Money database shows that, since 2018, Florida’s sugar industry has spent $36.7 million on political contributions.
Who was on the receiving end? Plenty of folks. More than $300,000 went to outgoing Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and her PAC. Incoming Florida Senate President Ben Albritton and his PACs got some $372,000.
What did Florida’s sugar barons get in return? Blind obedience from the people who make our laws. Sugar is just like Gwen Verdon’s temptress character Lola in “Damn Yankees.”
“Whatever sugar wants, sugar gets,” Smart told me.
Three years ago, for instance, our fine Legislature passed a bill that made it much harder for anyone harmed by the soot from burning of 400,000 acres of sugar cane fields to sue the sugar industry.
Why would they do such a thing? Because a pair of Palm Beach County landowners filed a proposed class action against a dozen sugar companies, contending their burning practices damage both property and human health.
The plaintiffs wanted both monetary damages and an end to the burning, which — from October to May every year — blankets the towns of Pahokee, South Bay, Clewiston, and Belle Glade with thick, choking smoke. But the Legislature yanked the rug out from under the suit so the smoky torture can continue.
See how throwing around several million dollars can change things?
More recently, the Sultans of Sweet have been working to keep their water supply needs the top priority in a new schedule for releasing water from Lake Okeechobee.
“The industry is protected at almost every level of government,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, the environmental organization co-founded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. “Until we have elected leaders who aren’t so compliant, nothing is going to change.”
Lab meat and radioactive roads
I was curious about who got the most contributions in the Dirty Money Project.
It was — surprise! — that pudding-fingered fellow in Tallahassee who recently ran a reeeeally bad campaign for president. It’s not cheap to visit all 99 counties in Iowa and still finish well behind a man who four months later would become a convicted felon.
Gov. Ron “These Freakishly Powerful Hurricanes Are Totally Normal” DeSantis received $5.7 million from polluters over the six-year period, according to the database. Some of those contributions were for his 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign, too.
His largest single donor was motel magnate and UFO enthusiast Robert Bigelow. He also received some major bucks from such billionaires as Thomas Peterffy, who was set to benefit from one of those no-reason toll roads that DeSantis pushed.
But much of DeSantis’ money didn’t come straight from the polluters themselves, Smart told me. Instead, it came from the political action committees they support.
For instance, the Florida Cow PAC (not “patty”), which is run by the Florida Cattlemen’s Association, handed him $40,000 in 2022. Is it any wonder, then, that he leaped to defend the beef people from laboratory grown stuff, even though this Franken-meat doesn’t exist in any real supermarket?
“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish … to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said, passionately tackling this silly issue instead of something that’s important, like, say, property insurance rates.
The Florida Phosphate PAC gave DeSantis $200,000. That was on top of $75,000 from the world’s largest phosphate miner, Mosaic. Presumably, this is why the governor was fine with the sneaky measure postponing new fertilizer regulations for a year as well as the one that called for using radioactive phosphate waste to build roads.
I was particularly curious about who’d given him money from “the sprawl industry.” The answer was: Pretty much everyone, from homebuilders to contractors.
That’s not to mention specific developers such as the gopher tortoise killers from Pulte Homes. I’d be cautious about taking money from convicted animal abusers, but DeSantis must have had no qualms about it.
I think these contributions are why, in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, DeSantis told reporters that state government shouldn’t try to steer rebuilding efforts away from flood-prone areas.
“The reality is, is people work their whole lives and work hard to be able to live in environments that are really, really nice,” he said during a press conference this week. “It is not the role of government to forbid them or to force them to dispose or utilize their property in a way that they do not think is best for them.”
“That is absurd,” Samples told me. “Florida used to be a leader in responsible growth management.” Not anymore.
In fact, in recent years, DeSastrous — er, excuse me, DeSantis — has signed into law a pair of bills blocking local governments from imposing “burdensome” regulations to steer new development away from places damaged in hurricanes.
But he’s OK with the government paying over and over for private property being washed away.
Buying influence
Plenty of other famous Florida names show up in the Dirty Money Project. It’s like a Florida version of those old TV shows like “Love Boat,” where tons of celebrities would pop up: Tom Hanks! Doris Roberts!
The list includes Agriculture Commissioner (and likely gubernatorial candidate) Wilton Simpson, $5.6 million; incoming Florida Senate President Ben Albritton, $2.7 million; incoming Florida House Speaker Rep. Daniel Perez, $1.8 million; and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, $1.6 million.
Scott and Simpson’s presence on the list intrigued me. Both men are ridiculously wealthy — Scott from the millions he made with Columbia/HCA and Simpson as a Pasco County egg tycoon. They could self-fund their political campaigns if they chose, but instead they have their hands out to the polluters like everyone else.
I guess they’re like those successful rock bands who could pay for their own tours but instead let corporate sponsors pick up the tab. This is how we get things like the AARP becoming the official sponsor of the Rolling Stones’ 2024 North American tour.
When I was talking to Smart, I pointed out that the fact that so many politicians accepted money from polluters doesn’t necessarily prove that they all do the bidding of the polluters.
“What other reason do the polluters have for giving money?” he asked. “It’s obvious it’s to influence these people.”
Polluter pays
Smart reminded me of a joke that Robin Williams once made about how politicians “should be like NASCAR drivers. They should actually have to have jackets with the names of all the people who are sponsoring them.”
The Dirty Money database is the next best thing, Smart said.
I would encourage you to look up your own senator and representative in the Dirty Money database to see who owns them.
But I should warn you of something. The main problem I found is keeping track of how much of the money for these politicians was donated to other PACs before being handed over to a different PAC.
Thus, you have “Conservatives for Principled Leadership,” run by House Speaker Paul Renner, accepting $10,000 from the “Florida Prosperity Fund,” which is a PAC run by the evocatively named Brewster Bevis, CEO of the pro-pollution Associated Industries, and then they handed it over to someone else like it’s a hot potato.
But where did it come from in the first place?
This is how big polluters hide their identity. By shielding their political spending from public view, they’ve fueled the “dark money” trend in politics. The result is that it’s not always clear who gave what to whom. All we know is we’ve wound up with the most polluted lakes in America and the second-most polluted estuaries.
“Everything we do is a complete joke,” then-Rep. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, told the Miami Herald seven years ago. “All the reporting is a waste of time if we have no transparency.”
It’s not often I agree with Gruters, so mark this day in your calendars. He proposed changing the law to block these PAC-to-PAC donations, but you can probably guess what his fellow hands-out legislators did with that bill.
Listen, folks, here’s how thoroughly dirty our fine Legislature has been:
In 1996, nearly 70% of Florida’s voters approved a constitutional amendment that required polluters to be primarily responsible for cleaning up polluted wetlands. It was called “Polluter Pays,” and it was intended to clean up the pollution in the Everglades.
But in 2003, the Legislature passed an amendment that negated this provision. As a result, even though the sugar industry is responsible for 76% of Everglades contamination, it pays just 24% of the cost to deal with it. Did people rise up in anger? They did not.
So instead of “polluter pays,” we have “polluter pays for my mailers and billboards.”
If we don’t find a way to fix this, and soon, we might as well tell ourselves, “That’s the polluters, baby, the polluters — and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
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