Tuesday, September 03, 2024

Florida State Parks Whistleblower Fired

The employee's dismissal letter, shared with the Tampa Bay Times, said he released unauthorized' information to the public.

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"The former two-year Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee told the Tampa Bay Times he was the one who leaked information about the state's plans to build golf courses, 350-room hotels, pickleball courts and more at nine state parks, including two in the Tampa Bay area."

Gaddis, 41, who was hired by the agency as a cartographer, said his actions weren't political, and that there were two main reasons he chose to speak out: The rushed secrecy that was behind the park plans, and the vast environmental destruction that would be caused if they were to be completed.

"It was the absolute flagrant disregard for the critical, globally imperiled habitat in these parks," Gaddis said in an interview Tuesday morning. Gaddis said he was tasked with making the proposed conceptual land use maps that depicted the golf courses and other developments.

Two proposals were especially egregious in his eyes: The Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf course, and the 350-room hotel at Anastasia State Park.

"This was going to be a complete bulldozing of all of that habitat," Gaddis said. He recalls his hand, hovering over a computer mouse, shaking with anger and frustration as he was told to rush his maps from senior leadership.

"The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this."

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2024-09-03 12:26 PM

Guv Bootsie is like a cockroach when it comes to shining a light on his activities.

#2 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2024-09-03 02:07 PM

Giving cockroaches a bad name, he is.

#3 | Posted by Corky at 2024-09-03 03:42 PM

Sounds just like a Parks and Recreation episode featuring Nick Offerman.

To be continued I am sure.

#4 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-03 04:38 PM

Gaddis showed real Courage and integrity. He a true Man in every sense of the word. He's willing to take the consequences of exposing a horrible plan to destroy imperiled habitats protected In the Florida State Parks system.

He has an 11 year old daughter he is raising alone. He had to know he would be fired for exposing these secretive and corrupt plans to the light of public scrutiny.

He's a Brave Man and deserves to be recognized as such.

He has a Go Fund Me open,it has raised $26,000 In A few days.

---- DeSantis. Lol.

#5 | Posted by Effeteposer at 2024-09-03 06:36 PM

#5 | Posted by Effeteposer

But you can't be bothered to vote against that party because of one issue.

Screw natural habitats. They can all be destroyed to make your point about gaza.

#6 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2024-09-03 09:23 PM

Oh, wait. On the way out the door remember to pick up that check for millions of dollars ...
-Mr. Gaddis' attorney

#7 | Posted by catdog at 2024-09-03 09:56 PM

Reason #14 I left Floriduh and would never go back: the pervasive corruption.
...
Of course I moved to Texas, so reason #14 transferred easily to here.

#8 | Posted by e1g1 at 2024-09-03 10:59 PM

Floeidians do owe Mr. Gaddis our sincere thanks for exposing this abominayion of a plan to let afe "good old boys: make millions by destroyinf irreplaceable habitat to create accommodations Floeida already has in plentiful supply because the secretive nature of this project was quite obviously crucial to devekping these natural parks before the people of the state realized what they were intending to do; if he had not ezposed this when he did the damage would have been so far along that there would be no turning back and all those parks would just fond memories. I am very glad to hear aboutFloridians who care his go-fund me account and I thi.nk that most Floeidians who care about the natural environment will get to feel like they are giving Desantis and his cronies the middle finger with every dobation we make. I feel certain that Desantis and his cronies will feel something poking rhem quite a bit this fall. I just hope they don't start enjoying it too much because that would just be gross!

#9 | Posted by danni at 2024-09-04 12:47 AM

Destroying a state park for condos and a golf course is not conservative.

It's bald face corruption which is the new SOP for the GQP.

I hope he sues and gets a bundle.

#10 | Posted by Nixon at 2024-09-04 08:09 AM

"I hope he sues and gets a bundle."

I hope he does on top of his Gofundme donations.

The local news did a very short reoirt about this on our ABC affiliate and then vut away to a shot of Desantis speaking about it 9I think); he looked positively unhinged. Desantis does not take criticism well but mant Floridiabs are sick of him and not just Deocrats. The proprty insurance crisis is out of control and everyone I've spoken to of either party; it's not really a party issue. It is an issue pushing people out of their homes. Insurance rates are ridiculous in this state. Understabdably on the Gulf Coast for lots of reasons but on the east coast we haven't had a hurricane cause major damage since 1992 but our rates hae increased tremendously this year and Desantis is doinf exactly nothing besides opening up the property insurance market up to fly by night companies who will fold up and leave homeowners to deal with a magor disaster on their own. Previous governors stood up to the insurance indusrey by telling then that if they stopped selling wind coverage here then they wouldn't be able to sell auyo policies here either and it worked to convince majot insurance companies to keep selling the policies homeowners need here but Desantis takes so much campaign money from the insurance industry he isn't doing that and Floridians are pissed...at him!

#11 | Posted by danni at 2024-09-04 08:50 AM

DeSantis was going to secretly ram it through by holding all the public hearings about the development at the same time on the same day to avoid public scrutiny and comments. Next, they'd proceed to rubber stamp approval and hand out contracts to a secret list of their favored developers to eliminate a public bidding process.

The whole thing stinks. As swampy as it gets ...

#12 | Posted by AMERICANUNITY at 2024-09-04 06:07 PM

@#12 ... DeSantis was going to secretly ram it through ...

It certainly looks that way.

#13 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-09-04 06:22 PM

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