In 2002, the Bush administration announced that it would buy oil and gas rights on a large section of land in the Florida Everglades. At the time, this seemed like a good move. Environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, which is not always fond of the administration’s policies, endorsed the proposal and Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton as “a win for all sides.”
We didn’t realize, though, just how big a win it would be for one particular side.
The U.S. Interior Department inspector general concluded that the Bush administration offered in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family for oil and gas rights on Everglades land, according to people familiar with the matter.
In a report to the Senate Finance Committee to be made public today, Inspector General Earl Devaney says the department nearly tripled earlier estimates of the value of the mineral rights, the three people said. The agreement wasn’t completed and the people familiar with the situation said Devaney’s findings would scuttle it.
President George W. Bush announced in May 2002 that the federal government would pay $120 million in cash plus an undetermined amount in tax deductions to prevent the Collier family’s privately held Collier Resources Co. from drilling for oil and gas on 400,000 acres of land it owns in what he called “critical parts of the Everglades.” Two previous government assessments valued the rights between $5 million and $68 million.
A career Interior Department official said there’s no way we should pay the Colliers so much, but the advice was ignored. The Geological Survey said the rights were worth between $5 million and $20 million, but that too was ignored. In fact, a Bush administration political appointee solicited several appraisals, all of which were lower than $120 million, but the ridiculously high bid moved forward anyway.
What’s more the report on this deal showed the government may have already owned the mineral rights because the Colliers sold the government surface rights for the same land in 1988. The administration would be paying triple for land the government may already own.
And who are the Colliers?
Members of the Collier family contributed more than $121,000 to Republican candidates in the last election cycle, including at least $5,000 to Jeb Bush, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations.
The Interior Department had no comment; the White House had no comment; Collier had no comment. Critics did.
“This is a sweetheart deal for one of the richest landowners in America” that would have been financed by taxpayers, said Keith Ashdown, who has tracked the case for three years as vice president of tax policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes government waste.
We wouldn’t even know about this controversy were it not for Montana Senator Max Baucus, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, asking the Interior Department’s inspector general to investigate the agreement in late-December 2003. (Conceivably there could have been some kind of congressional hearing on this, but Republican lawmakers don’t believe in administration oversight for Republican presidents.)
This could be an interesting situation. It’s pretty straightforward as scandals go: rich GOP donor has land, Bush administration makes donor even richer by overpaying for land.
Where’s Ken Starr when we need him?