Senators lash out at Everglades deal
Calling the proposed transaction an "outrage" and a "cesspool," leading senators on the Finance Committee lashed out Wednesday at a Bush administration plan to acquire oil and gas rights in a vast Everglades wildlife refuge for $120 million. The deal with a private company fell apart after the Interior Department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, opened an investigation in late 2003.
At a hearing, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said a report prepared by Devaney's staff showed that Interior officials planned to overpay as much as $80 million for the 400,000 acres of mineral rights. Baucus said Interior also agreed to allow Collier Resources Co., a politically connected company in Naples, Fla., to seek a potentially lucrative tax write-off. He referred to the overall arrangement as a "fleecing" of taxpayers.
Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the committee chairman, called the deal an "outrage." He said he would write Interior Secretary Gale Norton demanding "a complete statement of what actions are going to be taken to hold individuals accountable" for pushing the arrangement. Norton was a big supporter of the deal, as were President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. In May 2002, at a White House ceremony, the president and the governor announced the plan to acquire the mineral rights in the Big Cypress National Preserve and two nearby wildlife areas.
U.S. News disclosed Devaney's critical report in its most recent issue [A real swampy deal]. Devaney reported that Interior officials ignored legal requirements and the strong objections of career employees, provided "incomplete" information to Congress on the deal, and agreed to pay a bloated price for the mineral rights controlled by Collier. His report also said that his investigators "found nothing to indicate" that the mineral resources have "any significant value," and even suggested that Interior paid for those rights in an earlier deal with Collier. Congress needed to sign off on the deal, but declined to do so after Devaney began an investigation in September 2003. The deal expired that same year.
In testimony Wednesday, Devaney said that federal law required an appraisal to be done before the mineral rights could be acquired, but he said Interior never got one before agreeing to buy the rights three years ago. "While the Colliers made known that they viewed the value of their subsurface mineral interests in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Devaney testified, "the negotiators for the department knew a traditional appraisal would not get them to a dollar amount that would be agreeable" to Collier Resources. Interior officials, he said, ignored career appraisers within the agency and went, instead, with less precise evaluations.
Collier Resources is a family-owned company. Collier companies have contributed thousands of dollars to Florida Republicans; Jeb Bush has been among the recipients. The company, in a statement last week, said it had "worked openly, patiently, and in good faith with the federal government" in an effort to strike a deal. Interior, meanwhile, has said that its efforts were aimed at preventing exploration in the Everglades.