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Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Person posed as ‘60 Minutes' producer to hunt for info on Florida land deal
For Matt Chipperfield, the request seemed like any other. Since the St. Johns County fishing charter captain first learned last month the state could trade away 600 acres of his community's pristine wilderness preserve, he'd been speaking to reporters and podcasters to spread information that he hoped would block the deal. So when a person claiming to be a producer for '60 Minutes' called him May 19, Chipperfield figured it was just another inquiry. The person, who identified themselves as 'Oliver,' asked him what he knew about the land swap and who he thought might be behind it. He also scheduled an interview. But Oliver repeatedly rescheduled the sit-down, according to text messages reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times. The producer first cited food poisoning, then said '60 Minutes' had secured an interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis but the governor was running late. Eventually, Chipperfield stopped hearing back. But the person wasn't a producer with '60 Minutes' at all, the Times has confirmed. The news program doesn't employ any producer named Oliver, according to a spokesperson for CBS. Additionally, no one from '60 Minutes' interviewed the governor. DeSantis has had an acrimonious relationship with that news program since a segment aired in 2021 that was critical of his handling of the COVID pandemic, sparking backlash from both the governor and some Democratic officials. '60 minutes? That's funny‚' replied DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin via email when asked if an interview took place. ('60 Minutes' in Australia, which has no affiliation to the CBS News show but has the same name, also confirmed it doesn't have any producer named Oliver — or anyone in Florida at the moment.) 'They were pumping me for information about who I was talking to,' said Chipperfield, whose social media videos about the controversy have drawn hundreds of thousands of views. 'It was nefarious in nature, but it also let me know that I said something that put pressure on somebody.' It's unclear who Oliver really works for. The Times called and texted the numbers used to contact Chipperfield, but no one responded. This episode is the latest and perhaps most bizarre twist in a public lands controversy that has remained a tightly kept secret. Weeks after a recently created limited liability corporation withdrew the proposal in response to protests by Floridians, nearly all the particulars of the deal have remained hidden. That includes what The Upland LLC would have done with the 600 acres of pristine wildlife preserve. When the company shelved its proposal, a letter from its lawyer to state officials said only that the public was misinformed, and 'there was never any intention to develop the acquired land for commercial or community development purposes.' The public also still doesn't know the identity of the person or company behind the LLC. State Rep. Kim Kendall, R-St. Augustine, has asked the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for weeks to reveal the person behind The Upland LLC so she can meet with them. The 600 acres in the deal are in her district. But the agency has so far refused, Kendall said in response to questions from the Times. Last week, the agency's legislative affairs director, Brett Tubbs, told Kendall that 'nobody' in the department knows the identity, she said, and the staff has only interacted with the lawyer representing The Upland LLC, Gary Hunter. When asked for comment, Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Alexandra Kuchta did not address the question directly. 'Ordinarily I wouldn't respond to a question like this, but to be clear: (the Department of Environmental Protection) provided Rep. Kendall with the contact information for the applicant's representative,' she wrote in an email. The agency houses the committee that was days from voting on the land swap when it was pulled. Department of Environmental Protection staff had recommended that state officials on that committee approve the deal. On May 6, the agency's public lands director of eight years, Callie DeHaven, abruptly resigned, according to a copy of her resignation letter obtained by the Times. Kendall said it's been 'frustrating' to not be able to meet with the person behind the land swap. She has said she wants to explore getting the state to buy the LLC's land, adjacent to the Guana River Wildlife Management Area, to add it to the preserve as well as file legislation next year to prevent swaps like this from emerging again. 'Based on the applicant's withdrawal letter, he seems to have a lot to say,' Kendell said in a text. 'From my end, the offer to have a conversation remains open, should he choose to reconsider.' The Times submitted a public records request for a copy of the slideshow presentation that would have been shown at the council meeting to describe the proposal. Kuchta said in an email that officials didn't possess one. The governor's office, too, did not respond to emails asking whether DeSantis' staff knows who's behind the LLC. DeSantis ignored a question from a reporter about the landowner's identity at a news conference in Tampa last month. There are a few other people that may know who owns the 3,066 acres that would have been purchased by the LLC to give to the state in return for the preserved land. There are four landowners, each with hundreds of acres that were identified on the land council's public meeting agenda. Two of the four men did not respond to calls, texts and social media messages from reporters. Daniel Lanier, a senior adviser at Lakeland-based Saunders Real Estate, said a broker approached him in January about buying roughly 1,200 acres of Osceola County land from his client, a Miami man named Ceferino Machado. On May 21 — two days after The Upland LLC formally withdrew its proposal — the broker, whom Lanier said worked for Fusilier Realty Group, canceled the sale. The Fusilier Realty broker has not responded to repeated calls and emails from the Times. 'There was nothing special about it, it was a simple vacant land contract,' Lanier said in a recent interview. 'I had no idea who they were or what they were doing.' A landowner in Volusia County who owns a parcel the LLC would have acquired, Matthew Boni, said the sale of his land also didn't go through. 'As the seller, I was blind to all of that,' he said, referring to the state's controversy. Boni declined to elaborate further, including naming the broker that approached him for the land. Kendall has also been trying to get answers from Hunter, the LLC's lawyer. Rumors have persisted that the developer behind the trade was Patrick Zalupski, chief executive and founder of Dream Finders Homes, a national homebuilding company based in Jacksonville. Zalupski was also appointed by DeSantis in 2023 to serve on the University of Florida Board of Trustees. Dream Finders Homes, through its general counsel Rob Riva, has said it had no involvement in the swap. But Riva has not responded to follow-up emails from the Times asking if Zalupski was involved in his personal capacity, nor has Zalupski responded to repeated voicemails and text messages from reporters. When Rep. Kendall pressed Hunter to set up a meeting with his client, he replied in a text: 'Rep., I'm not trying to be difficult but am not authorized to release any information concerning this matter. That would include Mr. Zalupski's phone number.' The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida's most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Maxwell: Florida fights efforts to save manatees. Insurance costs rise again
Today we're looking at new developments in stories featured in two previous columns. And fair warning: Both are pretty depressing. In one case, Florida has decided to fight a court ruling that ordered the state to stop allowing the water pollution that has led to record manatee deaths. (Yes, the state's environmental protection agency is fighting an order to protect the environment.) In the other, a new report shows that home insurance rates are continuing to rise in Florida, despite Tallahassee lawmakers repeatedly telling you they delivered relief. (In other words, the politicians hope you'll listen to their words and not look at your own bills.) Let's start with the manatees. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the record number of manatees starving to death due to water pollution that has killed off the seagrass they eat to survive. Stories from both the Orlando Sentinel and Tampa Bay Times described nightmarish demises of the state's official marine mammal with the docile creatures literally rotting from the inside due to empty bellies. In one case, biologists found a calf still trying to nuzzle its mother's corpse. Other sea cows were found so starved that their bones had pierced their thinned skin. Maxwell: Manatee corpses — the price of the 'freedom' to pollute in Florida The in-depth reporting by the two newspapers detailed how water pollution in the Indian River Lagoon had killed off much of seagrass, contributing to the deaths of around 1,900 manatees over the past three years. I wrote at the time: 'To stop that pollution, lawmakers would have to stand up to development interests, agribusiness and influential utility companies, something they rarely do.' Well, an animal-rights group called Bear Warriors United filed a lawsuit saying the state had a legal obligation to do just that. And a federal judge agreed, ruling that Florida had violated the federal Endangered Species Act in allowing the wastewater discharges to pollute the habitat of the threatened species. But instead of agreeing to belatedly fight to save the sea cows, Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration decided to fight the ruling — and made some eye-popping arguments in a court filing last week. In its appeal, the state's laughably named Department of Environmental Protection agreed that there is an indeed existential threat afoot. But it isn't manatees that the state is worried about. It's developers. As the News Service of Florida reported, the state argued that the judge's ruling 'threatens to impede commercial and residential development in the state.' Yeah, forget the dying sea creatures. Florida is rallying to protect the state's development interests, whom the state said 'have no ready means to challenge this moratorium.' You know who else has no ability to show up in court and file a brief? The dying manatees. Admittedly, the judge's order is severe in calling for a temporary pause on all new development with the septic systems that have created much of the pollution. But the state ignored one warning after another to do the right thing on its own. So now the state's acting like a whiny kid who was warned time and again to stop misbehaving and then complained when Mom and Dad finally laid down the law. The bottom line: You know things are bad when the state not only allowed the manatee die-off to happen, but is now fighting for the right to let the deaths continue. In the insurance arena, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's intrepid insurance reporter, Ron Hurtibise, just reported that home insurance rates are rising again in Florida. The latest quarterly report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation showed an average premium increase of less than 1%. That's small. But it comes on the heels of increases in nine of the previous 10 quarters. All told, the average premium price in Florida is now 30% higher than it was in 2022 — when lawmakers claimed to have 'reformed' the market. In other words: you got conned. Lawmakers in Tallahassee definitely made reforms, but most of them benefited the insurance companies, not consumers. Insurance costs edge higher for Florida homeowners and condo owners Yes, there are more insurance companies now in Florida, which is good. But most homeowners aren't seeing financial benefits. The insurance companies are. So Florida's politicians and insurance officials carefully choose words like 'stabilization' to refer to the relief they delivered and hope you won't notice your costs keep going up. The reality is that Florida has a complicated and risky insurance market, thanks to frequent storms and rising floodwaters. The only way to provide meaningful relief to consumers — meaning lower rates — would be for lawmakers to either beef up the state-run Citizens Insurance program, so that more people can access it, or use tax dollars to subsidize the market even more than it already does by investing even more in underwriting of reinsurance or through direct subsidies. Because it's clear that the state's version of 'reform' — which mainly involved making it harder for homeowners to sue their insurance company, even when they're denied benefits they're owed — didn't bring down costs. The state's own numbers say as much. smaxwell@
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Florida AG James Uthmeier denies involvement in Hope Florida transfers to committee he ran
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier denied being involved with the Hope Florida money transfers that are reportedly under investigation and blamed the scandal on interest in the marijuana industry. 'I don't control the decisions of other nonprofits,' Uthmeier said. 'I was on the board of the nonprofit that was focused on exclusively defeating Amendment 3, unrestricted marijuana.' Uthmeier made the comments during a press conference in Pensacola, where he announced the signing of an agreement with the Florida Department of Education to cooperate with the newly created Office of Parental Rights in the AG's office. 'I'll mention the Hope Florida thing," Uthmeier said. 'It's clear there's some political attacks going on.' Uthmeier said he believes the accusations about Hope Florida are being pushed by the marijuana industry. 'I know the big marijuana industry, they put in over $150 million (in the Amendment 3 campaign), they're not very happy about this,' Uthmeier said. 'I know there's some Democrat officials and a legislator in this area that are in bed with that group, and so they want to bring this fight. But at the end of the day, we did the right thing. Everything we did was lawful. We won. I'm proud we won, and I'm glad that we have kept Florida safe, free and open for business in a healthy manner.' Hope Florida is a state program whose stated goal is to help steer Floridians away from state assistance and toward services offered by nonprofits and faith-based organizations. Hope Florida has a foundation to raise private money to support the program. The program was championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis, and news of the scandal broke as speculation in the political press mounted about the first lady making a bid for governor in 2026 to succeed her husband. Earlier this year, the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald reported that a $10 million donation to Hope Florida came out of a $67 million lawsuit settlement with Florida's largest Medicaid contractor, Centene. According to the report, Centene overbilled taxpayers by $67 million, and the DeSantis administration settled the lawsuit with the company for the same amount. Rather than all $67 million going back to the Medicaid program, $10 million was sent to Hope Florida. Hope Florida then passed on the $10 million to political committees, and the money ultimately went to support the campaign against the amendment that would've legalized recreational marijuana in Florida. Pensacola Rep. Alex Andrade, chairman of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, held hearings to investigate the issue and said he found evidence that Uthmeier directed the money to Hope Florida when he was DeSantis's chief of staff. Andrade said he believes the $10 million transfer was illegal and turned over all of his documents his committee obtained to state and federal prosecutors. On May 20, Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald reported that the Leon County state attorney's office couldn't provide the documents because they were part of an open investigation. Andrade's investigation of the transfers has made him a persona non grata in the DeSantis administration. He told the News Journal that state officials have stopped responding to requests from him for other legislative work and on May 21 DeSantis blasted Andrade during a May 21 press conference in response to a question about a reported criminal investigation into the Hope Florida. 'You had a one state representative with a political agenda, and he has a political agenda to try to smear Hope Florida—to try to smear people associated with the administration,' DeSantis said. 'Even my wife, who's done a great job for this state by the way, not just on Hope Florida, saving taxpayers $100 million, getting 30,000 people off means-tested welfare. Show me someone else in this country that has been able to do that?" DeSantis said his wife worked to start Hope Florida and other initiatives while she was first lady and has never been paid for any of that work. He said a person who was clearly Andrade was trying to smear his administration. He never mentioned Andrade's name, but he did use other terms. 'She has led an initiative to help people, and you have one jackass in the legislature—I'm sorry, it's true—who's trying to smear her, smear good people,' DeSantis said. DeSantis repeated the claim that the scandal surrounding Hope Florida is a 'manufactured political operation.' 'How pathetic is it that we have a Republican representative who's engaging in lawfare to try to advance a political agenda?' DeSantis said. 'It stinks, and everybody knows it.' Andrade said Uthmeier's comments in Pensacola on May 23 were 'more deflection from the chief laundering officer of the State of Florida.' 'Why didn't he just answer the question?' Andrade said. 'Unless I'm missing something, his comment amounts to bragging that he used Medicaid funds to fight a ballot initiative.' After DeSantis made his comments on May 21, Andrade responded with a post on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter. 'I want to publicly apologize to @GovRonDeSantis for hurting his feelings by… (checking notes) handing over evidence of criminal activity to law enforcement… My heart bleeds for you Governor…' Andrade wrote. Andrade brushed off the personal attacks by DeSantis when asked by the News Journal. 'I think it's inappropriate of him to be complaining about a criminal investigation,' Andrade said. 'I discovered evidence of money laundering and wire fraud, turned it over to law enforcement. And he's, like, mad that I care about protecting taxpayer money?' Andrade said he doesn't think most people in Pensacola are paying attention to DeSantis' press conferences, but the constituents he has heard from about it have given him positive feedback. 'The only thing I've gotten from constituents is encouragement to get to the bottom of what happened with the funds,' Andrade said. 'As far as like, DeSantis kind of going off the rails, most folks aren't really paying attention.' Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Hope Florida investigation, Andrade said he plans to bring legislation next year that will make it an outright crime to steer money in a state settlement away from state coffers like what happened with Hope Florida. He also wants to look at restricting what type of political activity staff members of the governor's office can engage in similar to restrictions on staff at the federal level. "This wouldn't have happened if DeSantis hadn't had his chief of staff running his presidential campaign, and then running these campaigns against amendments out of the governor's office," Andrade said. "They conflated personal, political and public service, non-stop." This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Florida AG James Uthmeier denies involvement in Hope Florida scandal
Int'l Business Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
ICE Detains Dozens in Florida, Including a US Citizen, Despite Judge Blocking New Immigration Law
Despite a federal judge blocking Florida's harsh new immigration law, state police have continued to arrest people under the statute, leading to dozens being detained by ICE, including a U.S. citizen. In February 2025, Florida passed a sweeping immigration crackdown that made it a crime to enter the state while undocumented, according to the Tampa Bay Times . Civil rights groups immediately sued, arguing the law unlawfully gave immigration enforcement power to local police. On April 4, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a temporary restraining order halting enforcement, citing constitutional concerns. But the arrests didn't stop. At least 25 people were arrested by Florida Highway Patrol after the freeze, with nine ending up in ICE detention centers across the country, from Miami to Washington state. Most were stopped for minor infractions such as driving with tinted windows or jaywalking. One man was arrested after being the victim of a hit-and-run. Several detainees had no criminal charges besides alleged immigration violations, and one was an American citizen, arrested in Leon County and held for over a day. Experts say many of the arrests were illegal, and those detained may be able to challenge their cases. None of the individuals were arrested for violent offenses. Detainees have been transferred far from home, face legal obstacles, and some have already been deported. Judge Williams has since clarified her injunction applies to all state police and is weighing contempt charges against Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who advised that officers could still make arrests. Originally published on Latin Times
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Resources for Tampa Bay seniors, others needing hurricane evacuation help
Among the Tampa Bay locals who were killed during last year's historic hurricane season, many shared a tragic trait in common: They were over 60 years old. Most lived in mandatory evacuation zones but didn't leave. Some also had mobility issues, such as needing walkers to get around. Jeff Johnson, the state director for AARP Florida, which advocates for people over the age of 50, said that in addition to physical hurdles, older adults also may have a harder time, emotionally, leaving their homes and not knowing what it'll look like when they come back. After living somewhere for decades, possibly filled with items that represent friends and family who have passed away, the process can be difficult. But it's important to heed mandatory evacuation calls. Johnson noted that even if residents think they're safe from storm surge on an upper floor of a condo high-rise, they need to consider what it would be like to live there without any power or water for days, including if the elevators go out in tall buildings. Some people of all ages might need help evacuating, too, because they lack transportation or the financial means to book a hotel room. For people who need help evacuating ahead of a hurricane, there are resources available. Residents who rely on medication, oxygen or power can add their names to the state's special needs registry before a hurricane looms. That registry, run by the Florida Department of Health in coordination with county governments, is at Pinellas County: County officials encourage residents with medical needs, who lack transportation, or need help walking or getting out of bed to register for the county's special needs program. Residents can ask their home health care provider about registering or do so online at You can also request a form by calling Pinellas County Emergency Management at 727-464-3800. Hillsborough County: Special needs residents should register at the state health department website above, according to county officials. The Hillsborough County Hurricane Evacuation Assessment Tool at includes real-time shelter locations, evacuation zones and HART bus evacuation routes. For assistance, the county's main information line is 813-272-5900. Residents can also call the storm information line when emergency staff are activated: 833-427-8676. Pasco County: Residents with special needs can find information on registering, plus a short video on how to register, at Kevin Guthrie, the director of Florida's Division of Emergency Management, said residents can also call 800-729-3413 with questions on evacuation orders or for assistance getting out. Times staff writer Justin Garcia and Times/Herald staff writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report. A version of this story was previously published in the Tampa Bay Times. The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida's most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here. For Tampa Bay, Helene was the worst storm in a century More hurricanes are slamming the Gulf Coast. Is this the new normal? Want to know what areas are flooding in Tampa Bay? Here's where to look. Checklists for building all kinds of storm kits.
