Craig Pittman, Florida Phoenix

In 1960, the TV show “The Twilight Zone” aired an irony-soaked episode called “Eye of the Beholder” that played around with the axiom about where beauty truly lies. In it, a bunch of grotesque doctors try to make a gorgeous woman (played by Donna Douglas from “The Beverly Hillbillies”) look like them, because conformity matters more than anything to their grotesque leader.

I was reminded of this episode last week while reading up on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress has been debating.

In case you haven’t heard about OBBBA and how controversial it is, consider this: Despite being strongly endorsed by our own grotesque leader, the bill squeaked through the House of Representatives by a single vote. Now it goes over to the Senate, where it’s liable to face even more opposition. I sure hope it does, anyway.

This “beautiful” bill contains a lot of ugliness. It will add trillions to the federal deficit, news that led to none other than Elon Musk calling it an abomination. It slashes food stamps for seniors to give billionaires a tax cut. And it makes such drastic changes to Medicaid that it’s led to a dispute in Iowa over how many people will die.

But what grabbed my attention is the really big favor it includes for Florida’s Big Sugar.

The feds already prop up our sugar industry with expensive government subsidies. This bill boosts that subsidy even higher, from 19.75 cents per pound to 24 cents per pound.

Bear in mind that the sugar industry produces about 8 trillion tons of sugar every year. A hike of a nickel on a pound of sugar equals an awful lot of dough.

Eve Samples via Friends of the Everglades

“It’s egregious that this polluting industry — which Florida taxpayers have paid well over $2 billion to clean up after — is poised to reap even more profits if this budget bill passes the U.S. Senate,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades.

Samples questioned how boosting the profits of the sugar industry fits in with the goals of an administration that says it’s going to “Make America Healthy Again.”

Maybe in this case the slogan should be altered to “Make Big Sugar’s Profits Healthy.”

Protected at every level

The sugar industry may be headquartered in South Florida, but it’s long been king in both Tallahassee and Washington.

“This industry is protected at every level,” Samples said.

For instance, take its horrible air pollution.

From October to May every year, Florida’s sugar companies burn their 400,000 acres of fields to prepare for harvest, thus getting rid of the outer leaves of the cane stalks.

It’s an old-fashioned practice that other countries have banned. So much burning sends billows of thick smoke floating across the little towns by Lake Okeechobee, showering down what residents refer to as “black snow” that coats their houses and cars and the lungs of the unlucky.

Four years ago, the Florida Legislature passed a bill — with support from both parties — that makes it much harder for anyone harmed by all this soot to sue the sugar industry.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, when he was a congressman, repeatedly voted against federal price supports for the sugar industry. When he moved into the governor’s mansion in 2019, he called for all the members of the South Florida Water Management District board to resign for being too pro-sugar.

But when the Legislature handed DeSantis its bill to protect the sugar industry against suits over its burning practices, he signed it into law without a word of protest.

Or take water pollution. Twenty years ago, the industry deployed 40 lobbyists — picture an army marching in bespoke suits and 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 “Punctuation Marks Are Cool!” Bush — a self-described Everglades advocate — signed it behind closed doors.

The industry controls these politicians so utterly that if sugar executives demanded they line up and start dancing to the old Archies hit “Sugar Sugar,” they’d say, “Sweet!”

Money makes the world go ’round

The main reason Big Sugar always gets what it wants is that it’s ready to spend Big Bucks to get it. As the song from “Cabaret” put it so well, “Money makes the world go around!”

According to the Dirty Money Project database created by the folks at the Vote Water environmental group, between 2018 and 2024 Florida’s sugar industry spent $36 million on Florida political contributions.

In the past year alone, Big Sugar gave more than $5.2 million to Florida politicians, including $3.1 million donated by U.S. Sugar, $2.1 million donated by Florida Crystals, and just over $43,000 by the Sugar Co-op.

Acting like an always-available ATM has its advantages. Access, for example.

On Presidents’ Day in 1996, Bill Clinton was busy breaking up with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office when the phone rang. The caller: Sugar magnate Alfonso Fanjul Jr., of Florida Crystals.

Clinton spent 20 minutes on the phone with him, listening to Fanjul complaining. The sugar baron was upset about Vice President Al Gore’s proposal of a penny-a-pound tax on Florida sugar growers to pay for cleaning up the Everglades. After that phone call, Clinton shelved the plan.

Incidentally, the Dirty Money website shows that the company Fanjul runs with his brother Pepe, Florida Crystals, donated $1 million last year to the super-PAC known as Make America Great Again Inc. You can probably guess which grotesque presidential candidate it supported.

The industry has already seen a benefit, Patrick Ferguson of the Sierra Club told me. Three years ago, former President Joe Biden banned imports from a sugar company based in the Dominican Republic named Central Romana over evidence the company used forced labor, i.e. slaves.

Central Romana is run by the Fanjuls, and in March the current administration quietly removed the Biden ban. Maybe they count “being concerned about slavery” as being in favor of DEI. Can’t have that!

It’s not just politicians who reap the benefits of sugar’s bucks. In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid Harvard scientists to produce research that played down the connection between sugar and heart disease. Instead, they shifted the blame to saturated fat.

One of the scientists paid by the sugar industry went on to become head of nutrition at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines.

That’s why environmental advocates weren’t at all surprised to see Big Sugar included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Big Sugar is once again getting gifts they really don’t deserve,” Ferguson said.

Up goes the price

Sugar has been getting special treatment from the federal government since the days when Alexander Hamilton was a real guy and not a smash Broadway show.

In 1789, Congress imposed a tariff on imported sugar to raise revenue for the struggling young nation. It was the first substantive legislation passed by the young nation, and it was signed into law by the first president, George Washington.

Despite that connection to our Founding Fathers, you know who’s been the most critical of federal policy on propping up Big Sugar? Right-wing think tanks like the Cato Institute. Eight years ago, Cato published a paper titled, “Candy-Coasted Cartel: Time to Kill the U.S. Sugar Program.”

When I talked to him this week, the author of that Cato paper, Colin Grabow, pointed out something about the OBBBA’s nickel-per-pound boost for Big Sugar that hadn’t occurred to me:

“This is basically raising the cost of sugar in the United States,” he said. “We just had an election where people were complaining about the cost of things.”

Yeah, I told him, I recall a lot of people fussing over the price of eggs before going to the polls in November.

“Now, instead of reforming the system,” Grabow said, “we’re just going to hand them more money and make sugar more expensive.”

I heard similar points from Vincent Smith of the equally right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The boost called for by the bill is “a pretty dramatic increase,” he said.

That will make all the goods that contain sugar — soft drinks, cookies, cake, applesauce, cereal, you name it — cost more as well. As an avid consumer of Publix sweet tea, hearing this made me do a classic spit-take.

Smith joked that making sugar and its related products so much more expensive may be good news for dentists but not for family pocketbooks.

Colin Grabow via the Cato Institute

Grabow pointed out, “You can bet that the language related to sugar in the bill is directly due to lobbyists.’

What do the senators say?

I tried contacting officials from the sugar companies about all this, but I just couldn’t sweet-talk them into speaking with me.

The closest I got to a quote was this statement from Ryan Duffy, senior director of corporate communications for U.S. Sugar, who told me via email, “We typically don’t comment on pending legislation.”

Of course, the more important folks to talk to would be our two senators. Everyone wants to find out where they stand on the Big Bad Wolf — er, I mean, One Big Beautiful Bill. But they didn’t respond to my requests for comment either.

Our senior senator, Rick Scott, has a long history of being tucked in Big Sugar’s hip pocket. Last year, when he was running for re-election, the sugar companies made big donations to his campaign’s super-PAC.

In his story on those donations, my colleague Mitch Perry pointed out the hypocrisy of Scott’s pro-sugar stance. When he first ran for governor 15 years ago, he blasted his GOP primary opponent, Bill McCollum, for accepting contributions from Big Sugar.

“He’s owned by U.S. Sugar,” the Orlando Sentinel quoted Scott saying of McCollum. “They’ve given him nearly a million dollars for his campaign. And it’s disgusting.”

Scott apparently thought it was a lot less disgusting when Big Sugar’s big payouts were going into his coffers, not McCollum’s. He hasn’t turned down a dime from them since.

In fact, as governor, Scott was one of quite a few Republican officials who accepted hunting trips to Texas from a sugar company, then declined to answer reporters’ questions about it.

Yet Scott says he has serious qualms about the One Big Beautiful Etc. He doesn’t believe it cuts enough federal fat, so he says he’s inclined to reject it.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (photo via the Scott campaign)

“I think there’s plenty of us would not vote for it in the Senate,” he said, according to CBS News.

Then we come to Florida’s newest senator, the recently appointed Ashley Moody. When she was Florida’s elected attorney general, the former Plant City Strawberry Festival queen was no friend to the environment. She also fought several absurd legal battles on the behalf of Mr. Grotesque. So far, she hasn’t indicated whether she’s in the same position as Scott or not.

If you’re inclined to bang your head against the wall, I’d encourage you to call or email these two and demand they stop this giveaway to a polluting industry. But bear in mind, they may not listen to you.

After all, the more money the sugar companies rake in, the more they can give away to our elected officials. That’s right — by boosting their profits, we’re enabling the sugar companies to continue to spend so freely on buying the favors of our politicians.

But I do have suggestion. If Scott and Moody say, “The heck with my constituents!” and vote to pass this bill for Big Sugar, I think every single one of us should send them our grocery bills, demanding a refund.

A tsunami of grocery store receipts inundating the senators’ offices would be, I think, a beautiful thing to behold.

Dear Gov. DeSantis,

Congratulations! You’ve achieved something rare in our deeply divided country. You’ve once again united a lot of people from disparate backgrounds and beliefs.

Of course, you’ve united them against you and one of your agencies — but that’s a price you’re apparently willing to pay, over and over, and I salute you for it.

Last year, you brought people together to stop your plan to put golf courses, 300-room hotels, and pickleball courts in state parks.

Then they united to protest your proposal to swap some state forest land with a golf course developer.

Because of the public outcry, the golf course developer withdrew its request for the state forest land. Meanwhile, the Legislature unanimously passed a bill to prevent you or any other governor from ever again trying to ruin state parks with golf courses, a bill you’ve promised to sign into law.

With these two crises mostly resolved, this would be the point at which public enthusiasm for protecting our state lands would begin to wane. People would stop protesting and go back to more mundane pursuits, such as binging episodes of “Poker Face.” (I hear there’s one set in Florida!)

Fortunately, Gov. D, that didn’t happen — thanks to your new scheme to keep people engaged. Good job!

Last week, word got out that the state was considering a land swap with a mysterious private company that wanted 600 acres of the Guana River Wildlife Management Area. In exchange, the company, identified only as The Uplands LLC, offered to hand over 3,000 acres of less desirable land scattered around St. Johns, Lafayette, Osceola, and Volusia counties.

Eric Draper. when he was Florida State Parks director, via Eric Draper

“It’s just a way to swap jewels for junk,” former Florida State Parks director Eric Draper told me.

Suddenly, boom! People were out protesting again, waving signs that said things like “We’re not Guana take this!” which I thought was a nice shout-out to Twisted Sister.

Your land swap was so unifying, it was roundly condemned by everyone from 1000 Friends of Florida to the White House. Even legislators from your own party began clamoring for answers.

It was a brilliant move, sir, like something you’d see in 3-D chess.

But then Uplands LLC chickened out.

In the face of such widespread public outrage, the company’s attorney announced Monday that his client would withdraw its proposal. The vote on the land swap, scheduled for Wednesday, was canceled.

It’s a shame, really. Everyone sure was spoiling for another big showdown.

It’s also too bad that one of Florida’s best state employees lost her job over your scheme.

Wile E. Coyote goes boom

For seven years, you’ve made it clear that you’re no fan of Florida’s outstanding Government in the Sunshine Law. But in this case, Mr. D, you apparently used the Sunshine Law the way you’d use your favorite putter to drill one straight into the hole.

Nobody knew about this Guana land swap until it suddenly popped up on the agenda of a somewhat obscure government group last week. That means the owners of that Guana River property, namely the Florida taxpayers, had no more than seven days’ advance notice about what you were up to.

Oh, sir, I applaud the way you played that one! It made people even MORE suspicious that this was some sleazy payback for a campaign contributor.

The legal requirement that this little-known group review the land swap in an open meeting appeared to be the only thing that flushed this secret deal out into the open. The best comment about this happening is one I heard from Albert Gregory, former chief of Florida’s park planning division.

“It’s like Wile E. Coyote is getting the public comment tool out of the Acme box,” he told me, “and it blows up in his face.”

Here’s how it worked out: On May 14, your Florida Department of Environmental Pro — er, what are we calling it now, sir, Providing Cover for Developers? Professing One Thing While Pursuing Another? Proving They Put Politics First?

Anyway, your DEP posted a notice that there would be a meeting of the Acquisition and Restoration Council, or ARC for short, in exactly one week. As I’m sure you recall, that’s a group of 10 people you appointed. Some ARC members are from state agencies, some from scientific institutions such as Tall Timbers Research Station, and some are from private concerns such as ranches and timber operations.

Julie Wraithmell via Audubon Florida

According to Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida, that ARC meeting notice waved a big red flag. ARC doesn’t meet that often, and this meeting was not one of their regularly scheduled ones. Why hold a special session?

The Audubon folks requested DEP send them the agenda, she said, but no one did. Finally, a link to the agenda showed up on the DEP website sometime after 6 p.m. the day the notice was posted, she said. That’s when Audubon learned about the land swap proposal and sounded an alarm for all the state’s environmental groups.

But that’s about all they learned. The agenda item was “really light on details,” Wraithmell told me. “It’s not clear who the applicant is.”

Also unclear: What the applicant intended to do with the state’s property. All the other items on the ARC agenda concerned adding to state lands. This was the only one that would take some away.

Finding the land mines

Once everyone began studying this bare-bones agenda item, they discovered other fatal flaws. Oh, sir, you were so clever the way you planted all those land mines!

For starters, the report for the ARC said the Guana River property had no historically significant sites. But Wraithmell pointed out that Guana River’s official state management plan names more than seven historic sites covered by the property.

The land is managed by a different state agency, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The DEP report on the proposed land swap says the FWC concurred with the agency’s recommendation to approve handing over the taxpayers’ property to a private entity.

But that’s not the way the FWC report reads to me. It simply says it “acknowledges the authority” of ARC and the governor and Cabinet to do what they want with the land. That sure sounds like that agency is far from sold on the idea.

Perhaps the biggest land mine of all is what the law says about how the state can’t get rid of any preserve property until it does one thing.

Clay Henderson, provided by subject

For finding this one, I have to credit Clay Henderson, a longtime environmental activist who’s literally written the book on Florida land preservation programs (“Forces of Nature” — you should read it, sir). The law, he pointed out, says the state must first establish that the land is no longer needed for conservation purposes.

Henderson, in a letter to the ARC members, pointed out that Guana River contains everything from coastal strands to maritime hammocks to pine flatwoods to estuarine wetlands. There are rookeries for wood storks and ancient shell middens.

All of that is important to preserve in our fast-growing state.

Henderson remarked that one of the state’s top land managers called the Guana River property one of the “crown jewels of American conservation.” In other words, not one you’d want to give away to somebody.

So Gov. D, if you were looking for one park parcel to dangle over a dangerous chasm to make a point, I think it’s clear you picked the perfect one.

This Gate is closed

The other big mystery was who wanted the Guana River land so badly.

Good job keeping everyone guessing, governor! The lack of any information made it even more infuriating. It also ensured people would get mad at you and the DEP, not some private entity that might in fact be one of your campaign contributors.

When some nosy Tampa Bay Times reporter asked you point blank to identify your co-conspirator in this effort, you pretended you didn’t understand the question, then dodged any follow-up. You sidestepped as deftly as Charles Durning in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Pretty fancy footwork for a guy who sometimes wears white go-go boots.

The newspaper noted that “the Upland LLC’s business filings with the state don’t list anyone other than a general business services firm as its leader, making the true identity of the entity unclear.” Maybe a better name for the company would have been “Obfuscation Inc.”

There was some speculation that Upland LLC was somehow connected with Gate Petroleum, the company that owns the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. I contacted Gate and received the quickest “no!” I’ve heard since my long-ago dating days.

Horses riding on trails in Guana River WMA via FWC

A spokeswoman told me the company’s founder and chairman, Herbert Hill Peyton, is the person who first sold the land to the state in 1984. She said he opposes any effort to undo that preservation effort.

The Guana River “is the finest land in Northeast Florida and no portion should be sold, swapped or developed,” Peyton said in a written statement. “This land belongs to the people of Florida and should be preserved forever.” So I guess this Gate is closed.

Herbert Hill Payton via GATE Petroleum Gary Hunter via Holtzman Vogel Law Firm

The only clue we have to the identity of company is the attorney who called off the vote. His name is Gary Hunter, and he’s also a Tallahassee lobbyist whose clients include major developers such as Neal Communities and Alico, not to mention the powerful Association of Florida Community Developers.

Hunter, in his letter, claimed his client had no plans to “develop the acquired land for commercial or community development purposes” and blamed “misinformation” for stirring up all the public anger. He didn’t explain what he meant by “misinformation,” nor did he exclude such development amenities as golf courses.

I tried contacting Hunter to ask about that, but he didn’t respond.

I’m assuming that including Hutner was all part of your plan to keep people conscious of how fragile our state parks, forests, and wildlife management areas are.

Callie DeHaven knew that fact already.

Principles over politics

Callie DeHaven worked her way up to become the director of the DEP’s Division of State Lands in 2017. The division has done some wonderful things, such as adding to the size of the award-winning state park system. That’s why lots of people liked her and liked the job she did.

“Callie was one of the few people left at the agency who had scruples,” Gregory told me.

Dana Bryan via IFAS Callie DeHaven via Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability

“I’ve known Callie for many years and she’s one of the good guys,” said Dana Bryan, who spent 30 years in the Florida Park Service, most of it as chief biologist.

On May 6, though, DeHaven submitted a single-page, handwritten letter to her bosses. “To whom it may concern,” it said. “I hereby resign my position.”

The letter doesn’t explain what happened. Draper, who has fond memories of working with DeHaven, told me she’s not the kind of person to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. She must have been pushed pretty hard to quit so abruptly.

“There is no doubt she objected to the Guana land swap and resigned rather than give in to developers,” Draper said.

So Gov. DeSantis, if you were trying to find which DEP employees would put principles over politics, I guess your plan worked a little TOO well.

You need to find Ms. DeHaven and bring her back into the DEP. Maybe even promote her to a position of even greater authority.

Callie DeHaven Resignation Letter

Calls to Mom

To show you how well your scheme worked, Gov. D, let me tell you about a woman I met this past weekend in St. Cloud.

Rep. Paula Stark via Florida House

I gave a talk about Florida, and afterward several people came up to me and told me THEIR Florida stories. One of them was state Rep. Paula Stark, who represents the St. Cloud area. She became interested in politics long before she was first elected in 2022. Not her kids, though.

“They are not political at all,” she told me.

What her two adult sons care about is Florida’s environment. They have backyard cameras and love watching wildlife cross from one fenceline to the other, she told me.

But then they found out about the Guana River land swap. Suddenly they were keenly interested in talking to her about politics. They were calling her up and asking, “Mom, why are they doing this?”

And they were ready to do whatever they could to stop it.

The point of this story, Gov. D, is to show you how passionate people are about our wonderful state lands. Even people who don’t care about politics care about saving our dwindling natural resources.

An estimated 50,000 folks signed petitions to oppose the land swap before Uplands gave up. Meanwhile, state Rep. Kim Kendall has vowed to sponsor a bill to make sure this never happens again.

Anyway, congrats on pulling off such an elaborate and clever scheme to make sure Floridians remain vigilant about threats to our state lands.

You better hurry up and find another one, though. Otherwise, they’re liable to start talking about your Hope Florida scandal again.

TALLAHASSSEE — If you’re one of the 900 new people who move to Florida every day, you may not know this crucial secret of Florida government. I’m a Florida native, so let me clue you in. Lean in close and I’ll whisper it in your ear. Are you ready?

The Florida Legislature contains more cuckoos than a Swiss clock factory.

Now that you’re aware of this fact, how are you holding up? How’s your blood pressure? Can you handle the truth?

You want some evidence? Just last year, a legislator claimed his new anti-bear bill was necessary because there were bears on crack invading people’s houses. This was, of course, a complete fantasy. Yet his colleagues didn’t question his sanity or call the paramedics. They just passed the bill. It’s the law now!

This year there’s one that’s even kookier. I am referring to the so-called “chemtrails” bill.

In case you’re unfamiliar with that debunked conspiracy theory, the folks who believe in “chemtrails” are convinced the government (or maybe it’s the Illuminati) is dispatching planes to fly over us unsuspecting Americans and spray chemicals on us.

Why? The chemtrails can change the weather, say the diehards. Or maybe they can control people’s minds. Or maybe they’re just going to poison everybody they don’t like. Who knows? After all, it’s a secret, like the 1947 UFO crash landing in New Mexico.

Anyway, there’s a bill in the Legislature to track and attack chemtrails. Instead of being laughed out of the Capitol building, as it deserves, the bill was just passed by the full Senate, because that’s what our state’s elected leaders are like right now. I wish I could tell you the “Looney Tunes” theme song played while they voted.

Sen. Ileana Garcia, via Florida Senate

“The measure (SB 56), sponsored by Miami Republican Ileana Garcia, would prohibit the injection, release, or dispersion of any means of a chemical, chemical compound, substance, or apparatus into the atmosphere for the purpose of affecting the climate,” my colleague Mitch Perry reported in the Phoenix last week. “Any person or corporation who conducts such geoengineering or weather modification activity would be subject to a third-degree felony charge, with fines up to $100,000.”

The bill would require the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to set up a hotline so anyone concerned about streaks in the sky can call and report them. I’m sure the DEP will jump right on those reports, just the way the agency has jumped on reports of rampant water pollution that fuels toxic algae blooms, kills seagrass, and leaves manatees to starve.

I tried calling Sen. Garcia to ask her some questions about her bill. While I waited to talk to her, I was struck by a subversive thought:

What if the chemtrails bill becomes law and we folks who still live in the real world use it to flip the script? What if we employ its provisions to go after the people who really ARE changing the weather — with their greenhouse gas emissions?

A healthy skepticism

The most shocking thing about this chemtrails bill is not that it was filed — filed, I should add, by a senator who won her seat by just 32 votes, thanks to an illegal ghost candidate scheme backed by Florida Power & Light.

Nor is the most shocking thing that it passed one house of our Legislature by a vote of 28-9 and now is headed for the other.

No, what’s shocking is that it was endorsed by Senate President Ben Albritton and Gov. Ron DeSantis, two allegedly well-educated people. At this rate, they’ll next endorse a taxpayer-funded expedition to explore how we ended up living inside a Hollow Earth.

Actually, DeSantis’ endorsement isn’t that much of a surprise. He’s happy to appease the Tinfoil Hat Brigade if it gets him a mention on Fox News or its imitators.

Remember, DeSantis is the guy who appointed as his surgeon general the world’s biggest vaccine skeptic and now lets him run around the state trying to convince everyone to stop preventing children’s tooth decay. I sometimes wonder if he and RFK Jr. share a brain worm.

Senate President Ben Albritton via his campaign website

But Albritton’s comments threw me. He’s a longtime citrus man who’s familiar with the need for accurate weather forecasts. Yet he actually called this lunacy “a great piece of legislation” that would address “real concerns from our constituents.”

If some of those constituents also think their elected politicians are all lizard people, presumably he’d be fine with legislation requiring a reptilian DNA test before administering the oath of office.

“I have heard the conspiracy theories out there,” Albritton said about Garcia’s bill, “but the fact is we should not be shutting down legitimate concerns. Healthy skepticism is important. There’s a lot we don’t know in this field of science and people are rightfully concerned.”

Because I grew up in Florida, I have a healthy skepticism toward anything Florida politicians say. Albritton’s statement suggests that I’m right to be skeptical because there’s a lot that’s wrong with his comments.

We actually know quite a lot about the weather modification attempts. We know they don’t work and have mostly been discontinued.

Florida law currently requires anyone who wants to modify the weather to get a permit first. A Senate bill analysis of SB 56 points out, “There have been no applications for weather modification licenses in the past 10 years.”

Four years ago, eight Western states tried cloud seeding to produce rains to end a lengthy drought. However, Scientific American reported, “there is little evidence to show that the process is increasing precipitation.”

Yet “weather modification” is what our Legislature chooses to tackle instead of lowering property insurance rates, boosting educational test scores, or any one of a dozen more important issues. Maybe they’re under some bizarre mind control method that requires them to be ineffective at good governing.

Legitimate concerns

Albritton’s statement about people being “rightfully concerned” about chemtrails sounds like he’s endorsing the bogus claims that spread last year that the government steered two hurricanes to clobber specific communities ahead of the election.

Those rumors were, of course, lies spread by the unscrupulous to fool the gullible. They became so pervasive that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to put out a press release denying it.

“NOAA does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities,” it said.

Given how Elon Musk is rapidly dismantling the agency now, I doubt they can control the thermostat in their office buildings, much less the weather.

I wish Albritton were as supportive of the “legitimate concerns” many of us Floridians feel about climate change.

We’re on the front lines of it, with our rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes, higher storm surges, and increased temperatures even at night. It’s hurting everything from our seafood industry to our sea turtle nesting. Heck, it’s even hurting Albritton’s own industry, agriculture.

Hard-headed property insurance companies recognize the dangers and disruptions of climate change. Why can’t our state officials?

Susan Glickman (Photo via X)

“If lawmakers want to protect Floridians by addressing substances affecting the temperature, weather, and climate, they should hold power companies and the oil and gas industry accountable,” said longtime Florida climate activist Susan Glickman of the CLEO Institute, a non-profit dedicated to climate education and advocacy. “The pollution they release is warming the climate in increasingly extreme and deadly ways.”

But last year the Legislature voted to delete most references to climate change from state law under the well-known scientific theory of “If We Don’t Talk About It, Surely It Will Go Away.” Given how we were all beaten up by intense hurricanes and big storm surges last year, I don’t think it went away.

Fortunately, I see a way to take this “chemtrails” bill and turn it into a “let’s fight climate change” bill. Let me explain.

Contrail confusion

I have a confession to make: Every time I read someone’s rants about chemtrails, I always crack up. That’s because I always picture Cary Grant fleeing the evil crop-duster in the movie “North by Northwest,” which is the silliest and most inefficient murder method ever attempted.

Was the pilot supposed to crash into Cary and kill himself too? Cut Cary’s head off with the propeller, which would make the plane stop flying? Or maybe force him to cough up a lung because of all the pesticide he was inhaling? None of these options seem practical.

Similarly, the whole chemtrails theory falls apart on practical questions. How often and how much do you need to spray those chemicals in the sky to affect everyone? There are 23 million people in Florida alone. That’s a lot of folks to spritz with your mind-control concoction.

Seems to me you’d need WAAAAAY more chemical spraying than what we’re seeing if you plan to coat every single one of us with the goop. You’d need to dump it out in quantities like the helicopter pilots dropping the contents of an entire pond on a wildfire.

Nope, what we’re seeing up in the sky are simple contrails — droplets of water vapor clinging to particles of soot that were emitted by an airplane’s engine.

So imagine my surprise when Rafe Pomerance of Rethink Energy Florida told me, “Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.”

Rafe Pomerance via the Woodrell Climate Research Center

“Say what now?” I replied, displaying my usual incisive intellect.

“You warm up the earth, and one of the effects is an increase of water vapor in the atmosphere,” he explained. Then the vapor traps heat in our atmosphere just like carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do. The heat that created the vapor gets amplified by the vapor.

When I expressed that old healthy skepticism, he referred me to a scientist named Adam Boies of Stanford University. He’s an expert on contrails. He confirmed that chemtrails are bogus and also confirmed what Pomerance told me.

Adam Boies via Stanford University

Some of the contrails disappear in minutes after the plane that created them leaves the area, Boies said. But some, say about 20%, linger longer. Those are the dangerous ones that can trap heat in the atmosphere.

Airplane engine manufacturers are worried about this so they are working on engine designs that will stop producing contrails, he said.

“The airlines are so concerned about this that they’re willing to try new fuels or rerouting flight patterns to try to avoid them,” Boies told me.

Thus, for once, the Legislature might do the right thing for the wrong reason — asking people to report something that actually is a cause of climate change. That’s why I think we should embrace this silly chemtrails bill and join DeSantis and Albritton in pushing it forward.

Then, once the bill passes, I say we all start contacting that DEP hotline to report, say, Florida Power & Light and its fellow utilities for burning fossil fuels to produce electricity. They’re building a lot of solar farms now, but they ought to replace their older plants too.

The same goes for all the municipal incinerators across the state, too, and the Big Sugar companies burning their fields and sending billows of thick smoke into the communities south of Lake Okeechobee. I say we report every one of these folks messing up our state.

“Hello, DEP,” we can say, “there’s a chemical plant in Pensacola that’s altering the weather with its nitrous oxide emissions. The clouds of pollutants are going up in the atmosphere and trapping heat here! You should do something about that, pronto.”

Or how about, “Hello, is this the DEP? I want to report someone for altering the weather. It’s the Florida DOT. They’re building a lot of roads for heavily polluting cars and trucks and doing nothing for mass transit. No electric vehicle charging stations, either. Can you get after them for that?”

By the way, I never did reach the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Garcia. It’s too bad. I was ready to congratulate her for doing more to combat climate change than either DeSantis or his predecessor, Rick Scott. Of course, to hear me speak, she’d first have to unwrap all that tinfoil from around her head.

I’ve spent some time this month cruising through Florida’s remaining rural oases, places where there’s still some green space amid all the asphalt. I’ve seen citrus groves and stands of timber, canopy roads and cattle pastures.

When the madding crowd is driving you, well, mad, such places are a balm to the soul. And the folks I’ve talked to who live there would prefer them to stay that way.

Yet if some development-mad Florida legislators have their way, these will all go on the endangered list.

During our version of March Madness, the annual legislative session, there are two virulently anti-rural bills up for consideration, Senate Bill 1118 and House Bill 1209.

The formal name of the bills is “Land Use and Development Regulations.” I think a more accurate one would be “Get Those Dang Farmers Out of Here So We Can Cram in More Cookie Cutter Houses!”

These two bills would yank local control of development away from cities and counties across the state. The goal: Open up hundreds of thousands of agricultural acres to developers, with no chance for a review from those local governments and no way for the neighbors to object.

The two bills are also about as anti-voter as Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. They would overturn the decisions of an overwhelming majority in Orange and Seminole counties to impose a rural boundary on the development in their counties. The Orange County boundary was just upheld by an appeals court, by the way.

Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine via Seminole County

“This is urban sprawl at its worst,” Lee Constantine, a former state legislator who’s now a Seminole County commissioner, told me. “You will not see a more egregious, one-sided bill.”

Constantine is far from the only person who calls these bills awful. The president of the smart-growth group 1000 Friends of Florida, Paul Owens, wrote in an Orlando Sentinel op-ed that the bills “read like a developer’s Christmas list” because they’d “wipe out limits against development on huge swaths of high-priority natural and agricultural land across Florida, doing irreversible damage to our environment, quality of life and economy.”

I haven’t seen so many environmental groups clamoring to defeat something since last year when Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to build golf courses in the state parks. When the Senate version came up in a committee this week, several senators said they were feeling the heat from all the people objecting. One joked that her phone was blowing up and her email was smoking.

Yet when the meeting concluded, the committee approved the most hated bill of the session on a 5-3 party-line vote. One Republican senator explained that he was supporting it because he trusted the sponsor to fix whatever’s wrong with the bill.

Constantine scoffed at that. “There is no fixing this nonsense,” he told me.

The bitter taste of sprawl

Ironically, this is the year Senate President Ben Albritton says he wants to lead a “rural renaissance.” These bills seem to be aiming for something different — a rural version of the Dark Ages.

That’s no surprise. The past six or seven years have been tough ones for Florida’s rural residents, and not just because of all the hurricane damage. Big-money developers, aided by politicians from the governor on down, have painted a target on every green spot that’s left, from the Panhandle to the Keys.

Rural residents had to fight back when the governor and Legislature approved that trio of awful toll roads known as M-CORES. They’ve had to fight again when the one survivor of the M-CORES repeal, the Northern Turnpike Extension, took aim at the rural areas again.

The people trying to wipe out the farms and ranches never seem to think about how important they are to the economy. There are 44,000 commercial farms in the state, and Florida agricultural products in 2022 rang up $8.88 billion in sales.

Those open spaces provide benefits for the environment, too, such as allowing for recharge of the underground aquifer and habitat for important species such as panthers. Plus, of course, we humans need the food they produce — the corn, the beef, the milk, the strawberries, the melons, the tomatoes, and the oranges, to name but a few.

Speaking as someone who often starts his day with some Florida OJ, I have to tell you that nothing produced by urban sprawl tastes nearly as good. Doesn’t contain as much Vitamin C, either.

Don’t tear down these walls

That’s why smart cities and counties have set up boundaries to protect these remaining rural spots from being wiped out by the fast-buck artists.

Developers hate such boundaries. They’d like to play Ronald Reagan in Berlin and demand someone tear down those walls. But we need those walls.

Cragin Mosteller of the Florida Association of Counties, via Linkedin David Cruz of the Florida League of Cities, via Linkedin

“All of the South Florida counties have established an urban-rural boundary,” said Cragin Mosteller of the Florida Association of Counties, noting that the rural part usually includes the Everglades.

When I asked for the worst parts of the bills, David Cruz of the Florida League of Cities pointed out the provision whereby a 7,000-acre “agricultural enclave” can bypass all local zoning rules to be approved for development with a decision by an administrator — no public hearings or elected official votes needed.

That leaves neighbors with no say in what happens next door to their property, he pointed out. Why don’t their property rights count the same as everyone else’s?

These considerations are not hypothetical. Mosteller told me about the town of West Park, in Broward County. Some years ago, the town obtained an exemption from Broward’s rural boundary. Suddenly, the door was open to building all over.

“Now it’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the state,” she said. “If this bill passes, that’s what would happen in all the other rural boundaries, and the public would have no opportunity to have any input.”

But shutting up the public is just what the bill sponsor wants.

‘A lot of ickiness’

SB 1118 is sponsored by Sen. Stan McClain, who also happens to be — SURPRISE! — a homebuilder in Marion County. A 2004 story in the Ocala Star Banner reported that he builds 15 houses a year.

Sen. Stan McClain via Florida House

McClain has 11 children and 18 grandchildren, which I think means he could stay busy just building homes for his own family. If his name rings a bell, it may be because a couple of years ago he sponsored a bill to stop anyone from talking about girls’ menstrual cycles in elementary schools, even if the girls need to hear about it. Yes, the “Don’t Say Period” bill passed.

But what McClain is really committed to is the homebuilding business. In fact, the Florida Home Builders Association website lists him as executive officer of the Marion County Building Industry Association.

In all the stories on his much-hated anti-rural bill, McClain has dodged reporters seeking a comment. WKMG-TV, for instance, reported that it had “reached out to McClain several times to speak to him about the bill, and he has not responded to our requests.”

I was curious to hear his reason for sponsoring this bill, especially since his campaign website says he believes government should “not pick winners and losers with heavy-handed policies that favor one industry over another.”

Yet here he is sponsoring a bill that would clearly favor his own industry over an agriculture industry that’s so important to Marion County that they have a Farmland Preservation Area, created in 2005. That’s why even his fellow Marion County Republicans oppose his bill.

So, I tuned in this week to see what he’d say in the Senate Community Affairs Committee. Just out of curiosity, I first looked up who the chairman of that committee was and discovered it to be a fellow named — SURPRISE! — Stan McClain.

Here’s a funny thing about being chairman. While McClain was required to yield the chair while he talked about his bill, he could delay consideration to the last of the committee’s agenda, after all the other bills had been discussed at length.

That meant the committee didn’t get to McClain’s bill until near the meeting’s scheduled end. As a result, any opponents who wanted to talk about what was wrong with it had only 30 seconds each instead of the usual, which is several minutes.

As sponsor, though, McClain got much more time to lay out the reasoning behind his bill.

“The challenge of growth management is that people haven’t stopped moving to Florida and it doesn’t appear they’re going to stop anytime soon,” he told his fellow committee members. “How do we supply enough homes for people moving in?”

Then he started rambling about “inconsistent” regulations that “merit discussion,” and insisted that this bill was all about “trying to find a happy medium between growing and not.”

Somehow McClain never got around to explaining why he thinks it’s okay for the state to run roughshod over what a lot of local voters wanted. Nor did he explain why the Legislature should get more say in local planning decisions than the local elected officials.

As one of the Democratic committee members, Sen. Jason Pizzo, told him, “There’s a lot of ickiness here.”

Deseret Ranches

One other thing Pizzo said really caught my attention.

“How are we not supposed to think this is not for one specific developer in Central Florida to expand into environmentally sensitive land?” he said. But he named no names.

The Orlando Sentinel spelled out who he meant.

“The proposed state legislation is a priority for the Florida Home Builders Association as well as Deseret Ranches, the real estate arm of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, which has lobbyists working on the bill,” the paper reported. “Deseret Ranches owns hundreds of thousands of acres of ranch and swamp land spanning the eastern edge of Orange County, dipping into Osceola and Brevard.”

Deseret is one of the largest calf-cow operations in the nation, but the company doesn’t want it to stay a ranch. They’ve got development plans the likes of which Florida hasn’t seen since 20 years ago, when the St. Joe Co. started converting its millions of acres of Panhandle pine plantations into vacation homes.

“Long-term blueprints outline development across an area spanning nearly 250 square miles,” Florida Trend reports. “Those plans envision 220,000 homes, 100 million square feet of commercial and institutional space and close to 25,000 hotel rooms — almost as many as Walt Disney World has.”

To aid its plans, Deseret tried to get Orlando to annex more than 50,000 acres of its land before Orange County voters could decide the fate of its rural boundary in a referendum, investigative reporter Jason Garcia noted in his “Seeking Rents” substack. “City leaders ultimately abandoned the annexation attempt, in part due to backlash from locals.”

Lobbyist Gary Hunter via Holtzman Vogel website

I put in a call to Deseret’s influential Tallahassee lobbyist, Gary Hunter, to ask why his clients want to wreck the entire state just to get their revenge on the people of Orange County. For some reason he didn’t get back to me. Perhaps he was busy herding legislators the way Deseret’s cowboys herd cattle.

Absolute madness

In recent years, Florida’s cities and counties have turned into the Legislature’s favorite whipping boys, usually to benefit some major campaign contributor.

In 2019, for instance, they blocked local government from passing tree protection ordinances. In 2021, when Key West’s voters passed a referendum limiting cruise ships because of their pollution, the Legislature stepped in and blocked the referendum. In 2023, they passed a bill that prohibits local government voter referendums or ballot initiatives on land development regulation.

Because of top-down dictates from the sneaky Legislature, local governments can’t ditch fossil fuels to pick a less polluting form of energy, ban single-use plastic bags, forbid the sale of sunscreens that damage coral reefs, or promote the “rights of nature” movement.

But this bill that McClain is pushing — and that his fellow Republicans have been helping him push, despite such strong public opposition — is far worse than anything they’ve done before. It’s absolute madness and deserves to be tossed out with the trash.

But I bet if they do pass it, these flaming hypocrites will then go out on the speech-making circuit and claim they’re “small-government conservatives.” They’ll say it with a straight face, too!

This weekend I was driving through Central Florida on U.S. 301, so I just HAD to stop at the Orange Shop in Citra. It was as if my car was pulled into their parking lot by one of those giant magnets that Wile E. Coyote always used for his harebrained schemes.

The Orange Shop has been selling citrus in Citra since 1936, aided by a series of pun-filled billboards that say things like “Make Us Your Main Squeeze.” It used to have a lot more competition for us drive-by customers but most of those other citrus stands have disappeared, along with the groves that supplied them.

While the clerk was ringing up my bag of fruit, I told her I sympathized with her over the latest bit of bad news. President Convicted Felon had announced he was proceeding with his latest harebrained scheme of imposing stiff tariffs on our allies, Canada and Mexico. Canada was talking about hitting back with its own tariffs on, among other things, Florida orange juice.

The clerk didn’t miss a beat. “Means more for us!” she chirped, still upbeat about making a sale.

The Orange Shop in Citra. (Photo by Craig Pittman)

Then she told me that my bag of tangerines was a BOGO so I could get another bag. In other words, they were literally giving them away.

These are tough times for Florida’s citrus industry. They’ve been battered by hurricanes, disease and developers eager to convert their grove land to sprawl. Where we used to savor the sweet scent of orange blossoms, we now can smell only the raw stink of bulldozers at work.

“Of the 950,000 acres zoned for citrus in 2012, Florida lost more than half by 2023,” the Tampa Bay Times reported last month. “Last year, a major labor group representing growers shut down due to financial constraints.”

Now they’re facing a new foe: that Florida club owner in the White House. You’d think he’d be more sympathetic to the citrus industry, given how his facial coloration resembles their main product.

Yet Trump has launched a ridiculous trade war with our politest ally, which is sure to hurt the demand for Florida citrus in the Great White North. He’s also started one with Mexico that will hurt citrus processors (more on that in a minute).

Meanwhile, his immigration roundup is sure to hinder the industry’s labor supply.

Is it any wonder one of the remaining giants of Florida citrus, Fort Myers-based Alico Inc., announced last month that it’s getting out of the business?

“We determined that it’s not economically viable for us,” the CEO, John Kiernan, told Gulfshore Business. Instead, look for the company, like so many others before it, to turn to a different, less savory crop: houses.

“It’s a rather dismal time for the industry,” said Fritz Roka, director of the Center for Agribusiness at Florida Gulf Coast University. “It’s sad, because they have been such a big part of our culture.”

The most functional sentence

Citrus has been so important to Florida that there are counties named “Citrus” and “Orange.” There are oranges on Florida license plates. Oranges are our official state fruit, orange juice our official state beverage, and the orange blossom our official state flower.

Oranges can pop up in the strangest places. The University of Florida’s stadium is known as “The Swamp,” but it’s named for citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin Jr. Perhaps UF should call it “The Grove.”

Yet the orange is not a native of Florida. Like two-thirds of the state’s residents (including a certain Palm Beach club owner), oranges came from someplace else — specifically, Spain.

Spanish explorers carried the fruit aboard their ships so their crews could eat them to ward off scurvy. They would plant the seeds in pots on the ship and transplant the saplings wherever they landed, according to Erin Thursby, author of “Florida Oranges: A Colorful History.”

Florida’s earliest groves date to 1565, when Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine. The groves the Spanish planted around the city were intended strictly for local consumption.

But by the late 1700s, a slippery St. Augustine businessman named Jesse Fish — described by one historian as a “land dealer, slaver, smuggler, usurer, and cunning crook” — found a way to send Florida oranges elsewhere. He became the first to export oranges out of state and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude (and maybe a pardon).

Harriet Beecher Stowe via Florida State Archives

Harriet Beecher Stowe, who helped start the Civil War with her novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” moved to a cabin in a Florida town called Mandarin after the war. You could trace the origin of both our citrus and tourism industry to her.

She wrote letters to Northern newspapers in which she extolled the state as a paradise, encouraging her readers to visit. She also claimed anyone who moved here could live off the earnings from growing citrus, even without royalties from a bestselling novel.

During World War II, the government launched a fruit-based Manhattan Project here to figure out how to ship orange juice to the troops overseas to combat scurvy. The result of that concentrated science project: frozen concentrated orange juice, which became a hit in the ’50s with families — thanks, in part, to the newfangled freezers sold as part of kitchen refrigerators.

“The most functional sentence in the English language is: Mix with three cans of water and stir,” said historian Gary Mormino, author of “Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida.”

How popular was the new product? “Citrus production in Florida increased from 43 million boxes in 1945 to 72 million in 1952,” the Florida State Archives note. “About half of all fruit became [frozen concentrate] in the 1950s.”

During the glory years of the citrus industry — the 1990s — growers harvested 240 million boxes of fruit a year. By contrast, the 2022 harvest, 41 million boxes, was the lowest since World War II. The USDA’s latest crop forecast — you know, the one so crucial to the plot of the movie “Trading Places” — predicts this season’s orange crop will be a mere 12 million boxes.

That’s a faster decline and fall than the Roman Empire’s.

The view from the tower

Gary Mormino. (Photo by Craig Pittman)

Near Orlando, in the town of Clermont, a couple of tourism promoters built a 226-foot spire known as the Citrus Tower. When it opened in 1956, the view it offered of the orange-filled countryside was breathtaking.

“From the top of that tower you could once see 12 to 16 billion citrus trees,” Mormino told me. “Today it’s all gone, unless you spot one growing in someone’s backyard.”

Where did the trees go? Freezes killed a lot of them. Hurricanes knocked them down or drowned them in floods. Then there were the diseases — citrus canker, then citrus greening.

Greening has been particularly destructive over the past 20 years, leaving the fruit nearly inedible and trees weaker, more likely to be toppled by high winds. I had a backyard tangerine tree that was a victim of greening, so I know this firsthand.

Now, on top of all that destruction, we’ve got the red-hatted chief MAGA of ’Merica threatening to slap 25% tariffs on Canada, with little thought to the consequences.

That has prompted Canada to threaten to slap its own tariffs on American imports. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau specifically mentioned Florida orange juice. Turns out Canada consumes a LOT of Florida OJ.

“Florida exports tens of millions of dollars’ worth of orange juice to Canada,” WLRN-FM reported this week. “About 60% of American orange juice sent to Canada comes from Florida.”

Fritz Roka via FGCU

The Canada tariffs are now on hold for 30 days, but that’s not much breathing room. Meanwhile, the Mexican tariffs are more bad news for Florida’s citrus industry, Roka said. Now that Florida’s orange groves have faltered, our remaining juice processors — Tropicana, Minute Maid and Florida’s Natural — are buying much of the fruit they need from Mexico, he explained. Because tariffs are routinely passed along to the customers, guess who has to pay those higher fees?

Fortunately, that’s on hold for 30 days, too, or until Co-President Elon Musk decides it’s a bad investment.

But what’s not on hold are the widespread raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents looking for illegal immigrants to deport.

Florida’s citrus growers have made good use of the H-2A program, which allows people from other countries to come to the U.S. to legally work jobs in the agriculture industry, Roka told me. That means that all their immigrant labor is legal immigrant labor.

But the ICE agents have been scooping people up left and right and shipping them out so quickly, they’ve had little time to check everyone’s paperwork. I’m sure they’ll eventually get it all sorted out at the detention camp at Guantanamo.

So far, it’s been worse than when the Florida Legislature passed an anti-immigration bill in 2023. So many immigrants fled the fields then that three Republican lawmakers, in a secret meeting that leaked out, protested that their bill was just meant to scare people, not actually shut down farm operations.

Free cups of olive oil

I tried repeatedly to reach some folks in the citrus industry who would talk to me about all this. Although a spokesperson for the trade association known as Florida Citrus Mutual insisted there were signs of hope for the future, she couldn’t give details and nobody else wanted to explain.

Some citrus growers are trying to hang on by switching to different crops, such as olives, pomegranates, peaches, avocados, or even hops. Before you rush out and start printing up a bunch of “I Hop for Beer from Florida Hops” bumper stickers, I should tell you that those alternatives have so far not proven to be as successful as OJ.

In other words, don’t hold your breath for the Florida Welcome Center to switch from offering free cups of orange juice to cups of olive oil (and a little piece of bread to dip in it).

The thing of it is, every time a citrus grower even thinks about giving up the fight, a developer’s right there with a big check, ready to take over that high and dry, well-drained property. The next step: Pave it over and send the stormwater cascading onto its rural neighbors.

I called up the folks from the smart growth organization 1000 Friends of Florida to ask what they think we should do about our disappearing citrus industry.

Kim Dinkins via 1000 Friends of Florida)

“It’s sad to watch the shift in Florida’s identity,” said Kim Dinkins, the organization’s policy and planning director. “But it’s an opportunity for us to do better.”

Local governments that have citrus groves classified as rural and agricultural areas should stick to those zoning designations, she said. Unless and until the infrastructure — water lines, sewer lines, roads etc. — are put in place to handle any development, there should be no change.

If and when development is allowed to replace another orange grove, she said, it should not be the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all kind we’ve seen all over the place (and probably called “The Citrus Stand” or “The Fruit Trees”).

Instead, she called for development that’s clustered instead of sprawling, with large conservation areas that are preserved by a permanent easement and low water-use lawns and landscaping required.

I’m sure a lot of developers will object to such common-sense constraints, but here’s hoping that local elected officials heed that sound advice, because it’s important for our quality of life here.

Speaking as someone who routinely enjoys a cup of OJ with my breakfast, I, too, will be sorry to see oranges, orange blossoms, and orange juice fade away into the sepia tones of ancient Florida history.

But hey, it’s not like we can afford to pay for juice AND our super-expensive eggs.

There’s a tradition among Florida developers of naming their projects after any natural attributes obliterated by the development. That’s why you see subdivisions with such monikers as “Cypress Woods,” “Panther Trace,” and “The Canopy.” My personal favorite, found in Naples, is “Wilderness Country Club.”

That’s why I’ve been trying to figure out what the Canadian developers from Cabot should call the Hernando County golf course development they plan to build on what’s currently a thriving part of the Withlacoochee State Forest.

The Burrows, for all the imperiled gopher tortoises to be destroyed? Maybe The Rookery, in honor of the sandhill cranes? Or how about The Habitat, for the black bears?

No, wait, I’ve got it. They should call it “Good Sense.”

That’s what was tossed out by Gov. Ron “None of My Administration’s Foul-ups is Ever My Fault” DeSantis and the Cabinet when they approved deeding this well-wooded acreage over to the Canadians in exchange for some less worthy land in Levy County.

“This deal was added to the Cabinet’s agenda the day before the meeting through an unusual, last-minute process typically reserved for natural disasters and other extenuating circumstances,” the Tampa Bay Times reported last week. “Emails show DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, drafted agenda language with environmental agency officials a day before the rest of the Cabinet was officially notified of the new item.”

But surely, our top elected state officials were cautious about making such a drastic decision, right? Nooooope.

“The Cabinet’s June 12 discussion, which lasted less than 30 seconds, did not mention golf courses nor the state forest where more could be built. There was no debate, no public comment. No mention of endangered wildlife,” says the Times.

Oh, wait, I’ve got it. How about we call the new development “Transparency”? Because that definitely went out the window with this land swap.

Fortunately, when the huge scandal erupted over DeSantis’ attempt to build golf courses, hotels, and sports facilities in nine state parks, it flushed out news of this sneaky swap, too. Otherwise, it would have remained hidden from the public until it was too late to stop it.

Now, while the skids are well greased, there’s still one more stop where it could be derailed.

“If they get away with this, they can get away with anything,” former Florida Park Service director Eric Draper told me. “Any piece of land becomes available for a trade to a developer.”

Mitigating for the mitigation

Last month, when a reporter asked DeSantis about the land swap, he claimed it was perfectly justified.

“We were getting better conservation land … and we gave them less desirable land,” DeSantis said, talking as if it were a done deal.

Those comments are about as believable as saying DeSantis only gave up his pursuit of the presidency because he likes being governor so much.

Let’s examine the facts, shall we?

The Withlacoochee State Forest property has a history that’s … oh, let’s call it “interesting.”

The 164,073-acre forest was originally acquired by the federal government from private landowners between 1936 and 1939, then transferred to the state in 1958. But this particular 324-acre parcel that Cabot wants wasn’t part of it yet.

The Florida Department of Transportation’s Turnpike Enterprise section handed that land over to the state forest folks in 2016 to make up for the environmental destruction caused by the needless Suncoast Parkway toll road.

So, if the state okays this boneheaded swap with Cabot, it would be getting land in distant Levy County to make up for destroying some Hernando County land that had been preserved to make up for earlier destruction there — destruction that was nowhere near Levy County.

In other words, they’d be mitigating for the mitigation. You know how Bugs Bunny used to hold up signs that called Elmer Fudd a screwball and a crackpot? I think that would apply here, too.

But wait, it gets worse: DOT paid $6 million for what became state forest property. The Department of Environmental Piffle — er, excuse me, “Protection” — seems to be claiming the value somehow dropped to $85,000, but there’s been no land appraisal to explain why.

Perhaps it’s the only way the DEP could justify swapping it for the less valuable parcel in Levy County.

“I’m guessing that they are trying to game the public interest requirement,” Draper told me.

Retired Southwest Florida Water Management District executive director Emilio “Sonny” Vergara, who lives in Brooksville, pointed out to me that instead of dropping lower, the value of that forest property has likely escalated quite a bit. That’s because of all the nearby development — including, of course, Cabot’s.

“I’d like to hear [the DEP’s] explanation for this,” Vergara told me. “That it was done this way doesn’t speak well for the governor’s office.”

I’d like to hear that too, but DEP officials didn’t want to answer my questions about it for some reason. Neither did DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill.

So far the best comment about the land swap by any state official involved in this mess came from an email exchange uncovered by the Times. The assistant bureau chief of the forest management bureau summed it up perfectly: “It still sucks.”

Island versus Main Street

The person who did the most to educate me about this crazy situation is Eugene Kelly, president of the Florida Native Plant Society (and as far as I can tell, no relation to the star of “Singing in the Rain”).

Kelly, who lives 20 minutes away from the state forest parcel, holds a master’s degree in plant ecology. He spent 16 years working for the Southwest Florida Water Management District in the Save Our Rivers and Florida Forever land protection program.

In other words, he knows his onions, as well as all the other plants. And if Cabot had asked him to hand over this forest parcel, I think he would have not just said no but he would’ve quoted Tom Petty and told the company, “Don’t come around here no more.”

“It is easy to understand why Cabot … covets the parcel for development, but difficult to understand why [Florida] would even consider relinquishing ownership,” he wrote in a letter to the Florida Forest Service director last week.

Kelly told me he and everyone else interested in land preservation were clueless about this secret land swap until the Times broke the story last month. He went to see the state forest property himself, hiking a portion of it from south to north. He counted more than a dozen gopher tortoise burrows.

The property is full of 25-year-old pines and sandhill habitat of the kind fast disappearing from Florida. One of the best things about the property is that it’s close to other preserved lands, such as the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area.

Plus, it’s a crucial part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Turn it into a golf course development and wild animals will find it much more difficult to get through.

The Levy County property, on the other hand, is a pine plantation with spotty growth that’s nowhere near any other conservation land, he said. In fact, it’s 17 miles west of the nearest land managed by the Florida Forest Service: Goethe State Forest.

That’s like the difference between owning a business on Main Street versus owning one on an island. You can probably guess which one’s likely to see more visitors, not to mention which would be easier to manage.

“No land manager in the Florida Forest Service would want to be responsible for a place that’s so isolated,” he told me.

How they did it up North

Cabot is considered hot stuff in the golf world, with picturesque courses in the Caribbean, the Scottish Highlands, and British Columbia. This property in Brooksville is their first in the U.S.

You can tell Cabot is from somewhere outside Florida because the company labeled its property “Citrus Farms” instead of “Citrus Grove.”

But that property was not a citrus grove when they bought it. It was a failed Japanese golf course development called World Woods. The company knew when they bought it that there was a state forest next door. In fact, Cabot uses that as a selling point:

“Tucked between state forests and nature reserves in the central-west region of Florida, aptly known as the Nature Coast, Cabot Citrus Farms is perfectly situated to enjoy laid-back southern living, while in convenient proximity to major urban centers,” Cabot says on social media about its property in Brooksville, where the real estate starts at $1.8 million.

I was curious about why Cabot had proposed this unusual land swap, but the Cabot folks did not return my calls. Perhaps they were worried about being tarred and feathered by people who remain upset over the state park debacle.

I even tried contacting Cabot’s Florida lobbyists, Sydney Ridley and Rachel Cone, both of the powerhouse Southern Group.

I was particularly keen on talking to Cone. Her bio shows she used to work for the DEP and served a couple of years as deputy chief of staff for former Gov. Rick “I Love Toll Roads” Scott before he appointed her interim secretary of the Florida DOT. She was with DOT when it first bought the Withlacoochee property to make up for the toll road.

Alas, neither lobbyist was brave enough to defend their client. Fortunately, Cabot’s founder and CEO, Ben Cowan-Dewar, did an interview with a golf publication in which he discussed it.

“What we proposed is something we have done in Cape Breton (in Nova Scotia), a property swap to be able to build more golf which will create more economic development, more jobs, and a more attractive destination,” Cowan-Dewar told Golf Week. “And in return, we give something to the state that I think they feel is of real value to them. That process is one we had done in Nova Scotia with great success.”

This is the point at which Florida residents will rise to their feet, shake a fist toward the Canadian border, and shout, “WE DON’T CARE HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH!”

Apparently, Cowan-Dewar doesn’t realize that preserved environmental treasures like a state forest are of “real value” to folks in rapidly developing Florida. We’re losing land like this so quickly, we want to hang onto what we’ve got, not hand it over to a developer.

In fact, Kelly told me, Cabot’s Hernando holdings include a parcel the state has had on its acquisition list since 1995: Annutteliga Hammock. State documents call it “some of the last large tracts of longleaf pine sandhills in Florida, unique forests of northern hardwood trees, and many archaeological sites.”

If I ran Florida, I’d strongly suggest Cabot withdraw its request for the state forest land. Then I’d enter into negotiations with them for the Annutteliga Hammock property.

In real life, there’s one more step where this backroom business maneuver could be halted.

Something to investigate

When the Cabinet approved this stooped swap, they did it backwards.

The Cabinet — operating under the title “Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund” — said the swap would still have to go before the state’s Acquisition and Restoration Council.

“A board with the word ‘trust’ in its name delegates its decisions to an agency that is directed by the governor’s staff to get it done,” Draper said.

The 10-member council usually sees these proposals before the Cabinet, not after. It “has responsibility for the evaluation, selection, and ranking of state land acquisition projects … and land uses for all state-owned conservation lands,” says the DEP website.

“The delegation of authority allows DEP to consider the approval of the proposed exchange if several prerequisites are met, none of which have been met by the applicant at this time,” DEP communications director Alexandra Kuchta said in the terse statement she emailed me.

As has been the case throughout DeSantis’ tenure, there are some empty seats, so it’s just seven people to vote. Of those, three work for DeSantis, one works for Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, and three hail from private industry or science.

To declare the Withlacoochee State Forest land eligible for handing over Cabot, state law says the council has to determine “whether the lands are no longer needed for conservation purposes.” A number of Florida’s environmental groups have now written to one or more members of the ARC to point out that the state forest land is most definitely still needed.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has attempted to move on. He was busy this week trying to snag a little publicity by declaring that he doesn’t trust the feds to investigate the guy with a rifle near a certain West Palm Beach golf course. Instead, he vowed, the state would investigate.

Governor D, if you want to investigate something shady, send investigators into your OWN office to find out how Cabot nearly stole 300-plus acres of state property.

If this dirty deal still goes through, I have the perfect name for the development to show what lost: the Public Interest.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.