After apparently mulling the decision for months, Gov. Rick Scott didn’t look far in naming a new chief of the state’s road-building agency, which lawmakers look to as a potential job creator in a punishing economy.

Ananth Prasad, an 18-year Florida Department of Transportation veteran, was named the agency’s new secretary Monday by Scott. Prasad rejoined FDOT last July after a two-year hiatus in which he was vice-president of a construction services firm.

The $7 billion agency oversees road-building,  land acquisition and highway maintenance, along with port dredging, an area close to Scott, who wants Florida ports better positioned to compete for trade. Prasad had been an assistant secretary for engineering and operations.

Prasad succeeds Stephanie Kopelousos, who left FDOT when former Gov. Charlie Crist’s term expired, and is now with the U.S. House Transportation Committee, under chairman Rep. John  Mica, R-Orlando.

 Prasad had been recommended to Scott by the Florida Transportation Commission, along with two other finalists, Thomas Conrecode, a vice president of Collier Enterprises; and former Santa Rosa County Commissioner Gordon Goodin.

“Florida is facing challenging times and FDOT plays a significant role in the kind of private-sector job creation that this state desperately needs,” said Bob Burleson, president of the Florida Transportation Builders Association.

Gov. Charlie Crist’s inspector general found Transportation Department Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos did no wrong by using breakfast words as subject lines in e-mails dealing with the controversial SunRail project.

And IG Melinda Miguel also cleared the department of any wrongdoing by not providing e-mails on the SunRail deal to Sen. Paula Dockery until after Crist’s open government office was brought in.

“No evidence was found to suggest that any Department official intentionally withheld documents in violation of the law,” Miguel wrote in her 45-page report. “To the contrary, evidence shows that an unintentional, human error occurred during the initial public records request.”

Kopelousos and her aides insisted that they used the words “Pancakes” and “waffles” in subject lines to draw attention to the messages about the rail deal out of the thousands that the secretary receives daily.

Gov. Charlie Crist ordered an investigation into “Wafflegate” but his concerns about transportation officials’ possible violations of the state’s Sunshine laws aren’t keeping him from signing the bill they were writing about into law tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Crist will hold ceremonial signings in Tampa and Orlando of the sweeping rail bill passed during a special session last week.

Today, Crist acceded to Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s request for the inspector general investigation.

But he rejected Sen. Paula Dockery’s suggestion that he delay signing the bill that paves the way for SunRail.

Dockery’s fought for three years the deal in which the state will pay CSX at least $430 million for 61 miles of track in Central Florida for a commuter rail project. The state will share the rails with CSX, which will continue to operate freight on the line for less than $4 million a year.

The Palm Beach Post reported on Sunday that CSX played a major role in the crafting of the bill.

“For three years, the agency has been stonewalling citizens trying to examine this back-room deal. Given the secretive code words used to hide its communications, the agency has violated the public trust. Until the investigation is completed, I would encourage the governor to delay signing – or better yet, veto – the legislation we’ve now learned was authored by CSX,” Dockery, R-Lakeland, said in a statement.

Orlando Ax the Tax chairman Doug Guetzloe also asked Crist to hold off on signing the bill into law. Guetzloe and the state Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal have asked Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to investigate the matter they coined “Wafflegate.” Guetzloe also said he will file an ethics complaint and ask Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office to look into it.
(more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist ordered his inspector general to investigate the state’s top transportation officials’ use of code words in e-mails.

Crist made the request after Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink asked Crist for an internal investigation to find out if Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos (whom Crist appointed in 2007) and her deputy Kevin Thibault tried to hide their e-mails from public records review by giving the subject line of “pancake,” “pancakes” and “French Toast.”

The e-mails sent in November contained information about a proposed rail bill later approved by lawmakers during the special session that ended last week.

“Given our state’s proud and comprehensive public records laws, I remain concerned that DOT employees may have deliberately used these code words in an attempt to disguise their actions from the people of Florida. We live in the Sunshine State, and this is not the way the people’s business should ever be done,” Sink, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor, wrote in a letter to Crist to Crist asking for the investigation.

Minutes after Sink’s office released her letter, Crist’s office sent out his response.

“I agree with the letter that was just received from Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. Accordingly, I have directed Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel to conduct an inquiry of the Department of Transportation,” Crist said in a statement.

Crist’s order for an investigation came after numerous demands for an inquiry from other sources.
(more…)

Tea Partiers have asked Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to convene a grand jury to investigate state transportation officials’ use of code words in e-mails.

Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal filed a request with Meggs yesterday asking for a grand jury to look into “deliberate evasion of Florida’s Public Records law” as well as “as an arrogant disregard” of the state constitution’s Sunshine Law guaranteeing access to public records and meetings.

Tea Party activists dubbed the messages “Wafflegate” after The Palm Beach Post reported that Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos and her deputy Kevin Thibault exchanged three messages last month with the subject lines “pancake,” “pancakes” and “french toast.”

Doug Guetzloe, chairman of “Ax the Tax,” said he plans to file complaints with the ethics commission and Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office and another to Meggs.

“This is a direct violation of public trust,” Guetzloe said. (more…)

Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos said that the word “pancake” in the subject line of an e-mail from her deputy Kevin Thibault was just a way for the message to stand out from the hundreds she receives daily.

The code words were not a way to circumvent public records laws, Kopelousos insisted.

“I get hundreds of e-mails in a day and Kevin was trying to get me to look at something,” Kopelousos said. “There was nothing more, nothing less than just that. He wanted to get my attention so I would read the email he was forwarding.”

Kopelousos said her department e-mail searches include not only the subject line but the attachments as well.

(more…)

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink is outraged over high-ranking transportation officials’ use of code words in e-mails, possibly to avoid being captured by public records requests.

The Palm Beach Post reported this weekend that Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos and Deputy Secretary Kevin Thibault exchanged messages in November with “pancakes” and “french toast” as the subject lines in e-mails crafting the sweeping rail bill lawmakers approved last week.

The messages had nothing to do with breakfast.

The officials should quit if the messages were intended to subvert the state’s broad public records laws, Sink said.

“We live in the Sunshine State, and this is not the way the people’s business should be done. Those who acted this way should be held accountable, which is why if anyone at the Department of Transportation was involved in this activity, including Secretary Kopelousos, they should immediately resign,” Sink, a Democrat who is running for governor, said in a statement this morning.

In another message, FDOT attorney Bruce Conroy advises FDOT general counsel Alexis Yarbrough not to reply to a chain of messages concerning whether the department needed to change state law to broaden its powers over high speed rail projects.

“Fyi below to discuss in lieu of emails,” Conroy wrote on Oct. 19.

Thousands of e-mails from state transportation officials revealed that CSX – the transportation giant that stands to get at least $432 million from taxpayers in a deal to build a Central Florida commuter rail line – played a major role in crafting the legislation.

A heated exchange took place in the Senate Democratic Caucus meeting this afternoon over the sweeping rail proposal that is the topic of the special session now underway.

Conspicuously absent from the meeting were representatives of the state Department of Transportation, responsible for a controversial $641 million deal with transportation giant CSX Inc.

A provision included in the bill that would allow state transportation officials to unlink union jobs from railroads has put the measure in jeopardy in the Senate.

A frustrated Sen. Tony Hill, a former longshoreman and union organizer, demanded that fellow Democrat Jeremy Ring, the bill’s Senate sponsor, fix the measure to ensure that union workers won’t lose their jobs.

“Get it right. Get it right. It’s your bill. Get it right,” Hill, D-Jacksonville, told Ring.

The bill is either all about jobs or has nothing to do with jobs, depending on who is talking and what day of the week it is.

About 138 Tri-Rail workers would get pink slips if the bill passes, union representatives say.

That’s not true, countered South Florida Regional Transportation Authority Chairman Jeff Koons, also a Palm Beach County Commissioner.

He claimed the only way Tri-Rail workers will be out of a job is if the controversial bill does not pass because the commuter rail system won’t get the extra $15 million a year included in the measure. Without that, he said, Tri-Rail won’t be able to run its full schedule.

“We are holding our nose. We are supporting this agreement,” Koons told the packed conference room.

(more…)

Florida labor unions blasted state transportation officials for refusing to back down from a proposal to do away with union workers on railroads.

Lawmakers are expected to meet later this week in a special session to vote on commuter rail issues in an effort to tap into nearly $4 billion in federal stimulus money for transportation projects being doled out in January.

At issue is the controversial Central Florida SunRail commuter rail project that lawmakers failed to approve during the past two regular legislative sessions.

Florida Department of Transportation officials already signed off on a deal in which the state would pay transportation behemoth CSX Inc. about $500 million for 61 miles of track and upgrades to its railyards and continue to be able to haul freight on the line that would also be used as a commuter system.

The unions accuse FDOT of refusing to negotiate with them over language in a proposed bill that would effectively prohibit union laborers from working on the construction of new projects or on the SunRail line.

Mike Williams, head of the state AFL-CIO, called the effort “government-sanctioned union busting at its very best.”

FDOT officials have not yet responded to the accusations.

SunRail has the backing of prominent GOP lawmakers, including Gov. Charlie Crist.

The session is also supposed to include a fix for the financially ailing Tri-Rail line.