The Trade Show, Vol. 4
'It's good to be king of your own little town.'
This is 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, written by Jason Garcia.
When the Florida Legislature gaveled open its 2022 legislative session last month, Florida Power & Light seemed to be reeling.
The electric utility giant has long been one of the most politically powerful companies in Florida. But a series of newspaper reports in Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami revealed the roles of FPL consultants in the 2020 ghost candidate scandal, a suspicious job offer to a Jacksonville City Council member, and many more controversies, and the role FPL lobbyists in writing legislation that would make it more expensive for homeowners to install rooftop solar.
Six weeks later, how are things going for FPL in Tallahassee? Well, here’s what happened just this past week:
The Senate passed a budget bill (SB 2508) that would let FPL and other utilities finance a fast-track permitting process for themselves inside the state Department of Environmental Protection for when they need a permit to destroy some wetlands. (FPL had a similar arrangement with the federal government before the Trump administration handed control of wetlands permitting to the state.)
The House unveiled a sweeping package of tax breaks that includes a provision that would save FPL an estimated $2.275 million as it builds a $65 million “green hydrogen” plant in Okeechobee County.
A House committee approved a favorable-to-FPL rewrite of a bill (HB 737) that’s meant to help gas stations and other companies compete against the utility companies in the race to build charging stations for electric cars. And the Senate sponsor of the bill, which utilities still oppose, acknowledged that the legislation is in danger of failing altogether.
The House scheduled another hearing for FPL’s rooftop-solar legislation (HB 741), keeping the controversial bill moving as the clock starts to wind down on session.
The late, great Tom Petty – born and raised in Gainesville – once wrote a song about this.
On to the rest of this week’s Trade Show:
The man behind the curtain
We’ve learned a lot over the last few months about how political consultants set up synthetic grassroots groups and prop up think tanks that support their clients’ agendas.
Well, another seemingly grassroots group has surfaced in the state Capitol this year, advocating for bills that would let private contractors pay lower wages to their workers. It turns out this group has extensive ties to a big contractor in St. Petersburg with a “mottled history” on employee wages – and a generous history on campaign contributions.
From Romy Ellenbogen of the Tampa Bay Times:
A St. Petersburg company that paid millions to settle a wage theft case is pushing a controversial bill that would prohibit local governments from setting a minimum wage higher than the state’s current $10 an hour for employees and contractors.
The company, Power Design, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the political committees of key legislators, including the bill’s sponsors. And the company is tied to a mysterious group lobbying on behalf of the bill.
...
In the month before lawmakers returned to Tallahassee for the annual two-month period where they consider bills, Power Design, a construction and engineering company that has worked on various high-rise buildings in and outside of Florida, donated $5,000 to the political committees of the bill’s House and Senate sponsors — Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, and Rep. Joe Harding, R-Williston.
The company also donated $5,000 to Republican Sen. Ed Hooper of Palm Harbor, who chairs an important committee for the bill to pass through; gave $25,000 to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s political committee; and $15,000 each to Senate President Wilton Simpson’s and House Speaker Chris Sprowls’ political committees.
Read: St. Petersburg company pushing for bill that would prohibit higher local wages
Graybeards
Then there’s a group called “Seniors Across America,” which was created in June by a Republican elections attorney in Tallahassee and quickly became a passionate supporter of FPL’s efforts to end net metering.
The public face of Seniors Across America is a former state legislator from Tampa. The Orlando Sentinel’s Annie Martin finds that he also lobbied the Legislature three years ago – on behalf of yet another apparent seniors group that was supporting yet another bill sought by FPL:
A new group called “Seniors Across America” is also supporting the net metering legislation.
The nonprofit organization, formed in June by prominent Republican attorney Bucky Mitchell, is led by John Grant, a former state lawmaker who has previously lobbied for bills backed by FPL and for a group called 60 Plus Association that was backed by the Koch brothers, the wealthy mega-donors to conservative causes.
Grant has testified in favor of the proposals during recent committee meetings, saying that the growing number of solar customers would disproportionately hurt senior citizens, “most of whom, for various reasons, can’t or won’t have solar.”
Seniors Across America also has sent out several text messages in recent weeks, promising the legislation would make utility bills “lower and fairer.”
Still simmering
Here’s your periodic reminder that the ghost-candidate scandal – and all its spinoff controversies – appear to be far from over.
The Sentinel’s Annie Martin again:
Two members of Congress are calling on the U.S. Postmaster General to crack down on “deceptive mail practices” that allowed operatives to deliberately conceal their identities and send more than 500,000 mailers promoting “ghost” candidates in three Florida Senate districts in 2020.
U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL, and Gerald Connolly, D-VA, are asking U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to consider increasing identification requirements for people purchasing political mail and establishing a public database that would list people who design and market mail pieces as well as the beneficiaries of the ads.
In calling for the changes, Wasserman Schultz and Connolly cited the “ghost” candidate scheme in three competitive Florida Senate races, where GOP operatives promoted independent candidates as progressives in an apparent attempt to siphon votes from the Democrats in those races.
Read: Lawmakers call for crackdown on ‘deceptive’ mailers following Florida ‘ghost’ candidate scandal
FPL vs. RaceTrac
We alluded to this at the top: Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald takes a deep dive into that battle over who will build commercial charging stations for electric cars, which pits FPL and the state’s other investor-owned utilities against gas station and convenience store chains such as RaceTrac. (Maybe RaceTrac should ask AT&T how that tends to go.)
From Klas:
During Sunday’s Super Bowl, the nation’s auto industry sent the message that the future is in electric vehicles. That future comes with a catch — if you’re on a long drive, you’ll need to recharge your car’s battery.
The issue gets to the heart of what is emerging as an electric vehicle charging war in the Florida Legislature: Should the state’s investor-owned utilities — FPL, Duke and Tampa Electric — own the charging stations or should gas stations and charging manufacturers be allowed to compete?
There are an estimated 58,000 electric vehicles in Florida and, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, Florida has the third largest electric-vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in the country, behind California and New York.
...
Under the bill, and a companion measure sponsored by Sen. Keith Perry, R-Alachua, the Florida Public Service Commission would be required to end the current practice of letting the electric utility companies make customers pay for the financing of charging station development in 2024 and write rules to encourage competition and private investment.
Read: Should gas stations or utilities control electric vehicle charging?
The evolution of a tax break
Halfway through the 2019 legislative session, state senator and Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters proposed a big new corporate tax break for companies that develop “intellectual property” software. His initial explanation of the idea was a bit of a word salad, but Gruters seemed to imply to his fellow senators that it would somehow support the state’s universities.
The proposal actually copied language from an older tax break that had been used by video-game giant Electronic Arts Inc., and Gruters later acknowledged that he got the idea from the Entertainment Software Association, a lobbying group for the video-game industry. There was no mention of movies or television shows in the original plan.
The bill didn’t pass in 2019 or 2020. Then Gruters filed it again in 2021 – but with a new definition of “intellectual property” that now included big-budget film, television and streaming-video productions. That same year, the issue became a top priority for Associated Industries of Florida, which added it to its annual session priorities list.
The bill didn’t pass last year, either, but Gruters has filed it yet again this session. And now it’s even more explicitly aimed at expensive television and streaming-video productions. It’s now a top priority for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, too.
Guess who’s lobbied up on it? From Skylar Swisher of the Orlando Sentinel:
The chairman of Florida’s Republican Party is moving a tax break through the state Senate that aims to make the Sunshine State a production hub of streaming content for the Walt Disney Co. or another entertainment giant.
State Sen. Joe Gruters is pushing a bill that would extend a state tax incentive program to television or streaming projects that involve an investment of more than $500 million over three years.
It’s unclear whether the tax break is intended to benefit a particular company or what could be in the works. A Disney lobbyist is one of two people signed up in support of the bill, according to legislative records.
Read: Tax break could help Disney, others move lucrative streaming productions to Florida
How a bill becomes law
Jeffrey Schweers of USA Today Network – Florida discovered an interesting backstory behind a bill to eliminate local soil-and-water boards (which...maybe we should?):
Several major northeast Florida developers — including one owned by the family of Palm Coast state Sen. Travis Hutson — invested tens of thousands of dollars to re-elect farmer John “Bucky” Sykes to the St. Johns County Soil and Water Conservation District two years ago.
The $43,000 war chest — which also included $15,000 from political action committees — was an unprecedented and extraordinary amount of money for a seat that pays no salary and has no regulatory authority.
It forced the challenger, outspoken environmentalist Nicole Crosby, to raise $3,000 of her own money to push back against Sykes’ professionally-run campaign with its glossy flyers and highway billboards.
And even though Sykes, the scion of a longtime St. Johns County farming family known for its annual corn maze, outspent Crosby by a 14-to-1 margin, she still went on to beat him 54%-46% — or by 11,000 votes.
A year later, Hutson filed legislation to eliminate all 56 soil and water conservation districts in Florida.
Read: Don't call it payback: Florida lawmaker defends bill on obscure soil and water boards
Public service announcement
Always beware when lawmakers announce a deal between “stakeholders.”
This reminder comes courtesy of Kirby Wilson and Hannah Critchfield of the Tampa Bay Times:
The bill was written by the nursing home industry, but that’s not the end of the story.
That was the assurance given by Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, the lawmaker backing Senate Bill 804 — which would make substantial changes to the way the state regulates nursing home staffing levels. Albritton pledged he would work to bring all parties with a vested interest to the table to compromise on the industry-backed legislation. Rep. Lauren Melo, R-Naples, who sponsored similar legislation, House Bill 1239, would do the same.
Now, two amended versions of the bills are making their way through the House and Senate. It appears the lawmakers have built some consensus. The nursing home industry and the trial lawyers who sue those facilities on behalf of residents and their families now both support the bill.
But groups that directly represent people who live and work inside nursing homes continue to vehemently oppose the legislation. The AARP in a news release called the House bill “irresponsible” and “unconscionable.” The group predicted the bills, if passed, would make people suffer from inadequate care.
Read: A bill would make it easier to sue Florida nursing homes. Elder advocates oppose it.
