Former ethics commissioners defend Sink, blind trusts

After our story about Alex Sink's blind trust was posted today, the chief financial officer's office sent us a letter from two former members of the Florida Commission on Ethics - former chairman Tom Scarritt, a Tampa attorney, and former vice chairman Charlie Lydecker, an insurance executive from Ormond Beach. Both are contributors to Sink's gubernatorial campaign. Here's the letter:

In 2006, the Florida Commission on Ethics endorsed the principle that blind trusts are an effective means of assuring public officials are making decisions that are in the best interests of the state. As former members of the Commission, we continue to strongly support that position.

Under a blind trust, public officials give up the right to control how their investments are managed, and they are not entitled to information about the specific holdings in the trust.  As a result of the use of blind trusts, Floridians can have greater assurance that their elected officials are making decisions that are in the public interest as opposed to their own personal financial interests.

Gambling talks start and stop again with no resolution

Lawyers for Gov. Charlie Crist and the Seminole Tribe met on Wednesday for the second full day of talks since they began negotiations in early July and many of the same issues that divide them remain, said George LeMieux, who is representing the governor.

But Rep. Bill Galvano, the Bradenton Republican who led the House negotiations on the compact legislation, suggested that the tribe is operating under flawed thinking if it assumes it is entitled to all the games it was awarded in the first compact. And, he adds, it is now operating those games illegally.

The sticking points continue to be: giving the tribe the exclusive right to operate slot machines and card games; the scope of the games they will be allowed to offer; the money they will agree to pay in exchange for their exclusivity; and the amount of state regulation they will accept.

The tribe has balked at the take-it-or-leave it deal lawmakers offered that urges the governor to give the tribe black jack and other banked card games at no more than three of its seven casinos, and pay the state no less than $150 million a year, LeMieux told the Herald/Times.

FAMU law, $40-mil state investment, scores a victory

Seven years after lawmakers reopened Florida A&M University’s law school with $40-million in taxpayer dollars, the school has received full accreditation -- overcoming a tumultuous track record of leadership turnover, faculty rancor and academic concerns.

The American Bar Association this afternoon granted full accreditation — a national stamp of approval that is vital to the school’s reputation and long-term survival. The decision by the ABA’s Council on Legal Education Opportunity is a major victory for the historically black College of Law, which reopened in 2002, more than three decades after legislators shut it down amid court-ordered desegregation.

"It's probably the best news we've had in 2009," said FAMU graduate Sen. Al Lawson, who spent 12 years working to get the law school reopened. "It's been a long haul, and I think it's a real credit to the administration."

Lawmakers reestablished the law school with high expectations about training a more diverse pool of attorneys for the increasingly diverse Sunshine State. FAMU officials and law school alumni said Friday’s ABA decision is proof the law school has moved beyond the earlier struggles that garnered so many negative headlines.

Fasano wants other agencies to halt salary hikes

Sen. Mike Fasano, the head of the budget committee that oversees transportation, said Friday that he wants other state agencies to do what DOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos' has done: stop giving automatic pay raises to contractors.

Kopelousos ordered the change afater legislators required all agencies to look at their contracts in the January special session, said Dick Kane, her spokesman. In a letter to Sen. Dave Aronberg on Wednesday, Kopelousos included a chart that shows the state saving at least $10 million this year from the salary hikes alone.

"If DOT can do it, that means that every other state agency should go back to their vendor and say we are not going to kick into the pay raise that was agreed to bec the dollars are not there,'' Fasano told the Herald/Times.

When the issue was raised during the legislative session, Fasano said Senate staff said that if the legislature ordered agencies to halt the so-called "escalation clauses" that allowed for automatic pay hikes, "that agency could be hit by a lawsuit by the vendor.''

But DOT ordered its staff to review 1,967 contracts and has begun renegotiating them to eliminate the automatic salary hikes and will not include the clause in future contracts. "I'm sure DOT looked into the ramifications,'' said Fasano, R-New Port Richey. "If DOT can do it, I beleive it can be done at every other agency,'' he said.

Charlie Crist chooses cash over Jim King memorial

Much of the Capitol political establishment will be in Jacksonville tomorrow for the first of two memorial services planned for the late Sen. Jim King, but not Gov. Charlie Crist.

Crist, who already has raised $4.3 million for his U.S. Senate campaign, will be in Aspen, Colorado raising more money -- this time at the home of Debbie and Brent Sembler. The host committee includes a lineup of prominent developers and a casino backer.

King, who died Sunday of pancreatic cancer, dedicated his final session of a 23-year career to pushing Crist's renewable energy goals. It ultimately died amid House stalling and a last-minute House attempt to tack on offshore oil drilling.

But King received compliments for taking on the complicated and politically divisive issue and crafting a proposal that went as far as it could to please many factions.

Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp will attend the service tomorrow in Jacksonville. Crist's official governor calendar says "no scheduled events."

Marco Rubio crushes Charlie Crist in another straw poll

If Republican Executive Committees decided statewide primary elections, Charlie Crist's senate campaign would be in big trouble. The Pasco and Lee county RECs have held informal straw polls lately, where Marco Rubio blew away Crist among the party faithful. Last night, the Highlands GOP held their own vote that produced 75 votes for Rubio and one for Crist.

"People were very conservative and they don't like what's going on. They're just upset with the way things are going with Crist. They think he's abandoned us,'' said state committeeman Chuck Oakes.

Sens. Nelson, Martinez won't duck Floridians on health care, will they?

Had a call from a reader, Carolyn Cormey of Clearwater Beach, frustrated that despite repeated calls to the offices of Sens. Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez, she could not get an answer on whether they will hold town hall meetings to talk about health care reform. She's willing to drive a ways.

"I'm not a member of any group, I'm just an old lady that lives on the beach and I would just like to find out more about it and see them face and hear what they have to say,'' said Cormey, a Republican who said she voted for both Nelson and Martinez. "For them not to hold one or two town halls would be so arrrogant...I've been calling them every day."

Reasonable enough. We told her we'd try to get an answer too:

House Dems launch a caucus web site

Florida House Democratic Leader Franklin Sands unveiled a new web site today, featuring the caucus and highlighting floor speeches of several individual members, thanks to YouTube.

Sand's introduces the site with a video message (in which is obviously reading a prepared script) and says they'll be using the site to keep people informed about their positions and will "communicate in a timely manner to keep Floridians up to date."

Alex Sink: Trust me on my blind trust

When Alex Sink became Florida's top financial watchdog almost three years ago, she put her assets in a blind trust, which she said would help her avoid conflicts of interest.

Yet Sink's effort to avoid potential conflicts and hold herself to a self-proclaimed higher standard has an unintended consequence: There is less public disclosure about her finances than other officials and greater uncertainty as to whether she is deciding matters in which she may have a financial interest.

Why? Because blind trusts are not regulated in Florida and there are no rules guaranteeing that officeholders' financial dealings are being handled independent of their public duties.

In fact, the Florida Commission on Ethics once ruled that one of Sink's predecessors could not avoid conflicts of interest by creating a blind trust and parking his financial holdings in it. Now a candidate for governor, Sink dismisses the reasoning, saying her blind trust is still the best way to go above and beyond the state's ethics laws.

"It's blind because I don't know what's in there. "

(STORY HERE)

No mystery here: 'User' of Ray Sansom's airport building was Jay Odom

A Northwest Florida State College spokeswoman, Sylvia Bryan, has repeatedly refused to answer a simple but critical question: Who is the "user" of a  planned airport building at Destin Airport. (click image to enlarge)

We've also gotten silence from the architect who wrote the e-mail saying he had it "confirmed" that the user of the "staging area" would store multiple aircraft in the building. The e-mail is important not only for what it confirms, but also because it came three days after Rep. Ray Sansom first insisted to the Times/Herald that there was never a plan for his friend Jay Odom to use the building.

Now a college official sheds light on what was already obvious. "Do you know who the identity is of the user of the staging area is," state investigator Jim Anderson asked vice president Gary Yancey in an interview July 21. (The interview, taken under oath, and others were made public today. An FBI agent was present for at least one interview, with Okaloosa County Commissioner Don Amunds.)

"No," Yancey replied. Do you have an idea of who that would have been? "My assumption is that when I got that that he was referring to Destin Jet," which is Odom's corporate jet business.

Yancey said it was his intention all along to make the building a hangar, so "we could possibly park airplanes in there. It didn't matter who was doing it." Anderson asked if there were discussions about anyone other than Destin Jet using the space. "Only theoretically. I mean, we never mentioned anybody by name."

Did you mention Destin Jet by name? "Oh, yes."