Welcome to Seeking Rents

Rent-seeking (noun):

• the act or process of using one’s assets and resources to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth.

• The act or process of exploiting the political process or manipulating the economic environment to increase one’s revenue or profits. (Source: Dictionary.com)

Welcome to Seeking Rents, a newsletter devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the journalism of others — that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida, from city halls to the state Capitol.

Seeking Rents is produced by Jason Garcia, Florida’s leading corporate-accountability reporter. The winner of multiple state and national awards, Garcia is the author of “Big Profits, Tiny Taxes,” which explored how corporations dodge Florida taxes and how policymakers could stop it, and a series of stories in 2021 tracing the dark-money used in a statewide scheme to sway key Senate elections through the use of “ghost candidates.”