Bill Cotterell: Firing Whistleblower Compounds Dumb Plans

Maybe it was just an overreaction by the most strident, deep-green environmentalists in Tallahassee — probably the most tree-obsessed capital in the country — but it seemed that Gov. Jeb Bush and other GOP leaders shifted state government’s concept of natural resources. Instead of “How can we save it,” the operating principle seemed more like “How can we use it?”

In the wreckage of DEP’s plan to put golf courses, pickleball courts and a big hotel or two in state parks, the lack of protection applies not only to the tranquil beauty of Florida’s natural resources, but to tens of thousands of state employees who keep things going.

When Gov. Ron DeSantis and his top appointees decide to do something profitable to attract visitors, by destroying what people come here for, the smart career move for agency staffers is to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

If, that is, they want to keep their jobs.

Fortunately for Florida, James Gaddis valued his duty more than his job. He’s the fired DEP cartographer who last month leaked the agency’s hurried plans for putting golf courses, pickleball courts and lodges in state parks.

Public reaction was so swift and ferocious, DeSantis ordered the whole thing back to the ol’ drawing board and insisted he knew nothing about it.

DeSantis even alluded to some secretive liberal cabal that must have torpedoed the parks idea before DEP could fairly present it. One of the unwritten rules of state government, at the highest level, is that DeSantis gets to go around the state taking credit for all the good stuff and is protected from any taint by bad news.

Golfers are not exactly suffering from a dearth of places to play, so the idea of swapping trees for fairways turned a lot of normally apathetic Floridians into ardent environmentalists, at least for a while.

We’ve seen it before on a grander scale. In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the Cross Florida Barge Canal as a works project, and it turned into a national defense requirement, a channel from the St. Johns River to Yankeetown on the Gulf of Mexico. President Richard Nixon finally ended the environmental disaster in 1971.

By then, there were plans for an Everglades Jetport. Remember the Super Sonic Transport? It was going to plunk rich Europeans down in the middle of Florida’s river of grass, which was just a smelly swamp anyway and who cared if a few alligators and wading birds had to move? Fortunately, the SST and the Jetport wound up in the Pantheon of Bad Ideas That Sounded Neat at the Time.

Back to Mr. Gaddis. The Tampa Bay Times reported that he was fired for “conduct unbecoming a public employee.” As a legal basis for his termination, DEP said employees must “maintain high standards of honesty, integrity and impartiality” and shall “place the interest of the public ahead of personal interests.”

In other words, he was fired for doing precisely what a good public worker should do. Oh, he might have gone up the chain of command, kept things in channels, but he knew how useless that would have been. After all, this is an administration that fired two high-level Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials who made waves — one who refused to improperly arrest protesters, the other thinking public documents laws should be obeyed.

Gaddis acted in the spirit of Mark Felt and Daniel Ellsberg. Felt was the deputy FBI director who secretly leaked Watergate details to the The Washington Post 50 years ago and Ellsberg was a former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Felt got away with it, keeping his identity secret for 30 years, while Ellsberg was put on trial but the case was dismissed.

If DeSantis was capable of admitting mistakes — or, in this case, a titanic blunder — he would snatch the golf-in-parks plan off the drawing board and publicly rip it to shreds. Then he’d rehire James Gaddis (and those FDLE folks) and reassure Florida taxpayers that the people hired to serve our state won’t be punished for doing their jobs in good faith.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com