Posted on Mon, Apr. 07, 2008

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio quietly slipped tough-to-spot language in a state budget plan last week that helps a friend and political money-man bid on a major fuel contract in a $265 million turnpike overhaul proposal.

This is the second year in a row that South Florida fuel distributor Max Alvarez has relied on the man he has said is ''like a son'' to push the budget language to ensure he can more easily bid for the job.

Rubio said in a written statement that he was concerned the turnpike contract paved the way for anti-competitive "monopolies," and acknowledged through spokeswoman Jill Chamberlin that his office ''had a role'' in putting the language in the budget, adding that ``others are interested in it as well.''

Republican lawmakers and staffers, including Rubio allies, told The Miami Herald that the speaker was the one who inserted the language in the budget. Chamberlin said she wasn't told.

At issue: the Florida Turnpike Enterprise's mammoth plans to combine its separate food and fuel concessions for its rest stops into one contract. But the contracts have remained split due to the budget language pushed by Alvarez, giving him a better shot at winning the fuel concession that supplied 54 million gallons of gas last year.

Senate Republican leader Dan Webster said the budget language -- which surfaced last year ''in the dark of night'' -- remains a ''bad deal'' because it would prohibit the state from even getting bids to see if a combined contract is advantageous.

''That doesn't make sense,'' said Webster, a transportation department ally from Winter Garden.

Turnpike officials say that more than a year of study and national road-building trends show that the state should combine the lucrative concession contracts for 30 years. That way, they say, the turnpike can lure a major corporation that could afford to spend $175 million of its own money up front to help rebuild the eight rest-area plazas and give the state the best cut on concession revenues.

But Alvarez's supporters say bigger corporations aren't always better for the public. He says any conglomerate would just siphon money by getting between the state and the fuel vendor, which would ultimately work as a subcontractor for the new mega-corporation.

''It would be a middle man and wouldn't be good for the state or consumers,'' said Nelson Diaz, a lobbyist who spoke on behalf of Alvarez, who declined to comment to The Miami Herald.

OWNS 60 STATIONS

Alvarez owns about 60 gas stations and supplies fuel to about 100 more through his independent Sunshine Gasoline Distributors of Miami, and he was the only one to object 18 months ago when the turnpike unveiled the plans to nearly two dozen interested companies and multinational firms, officials and lawmakers say.

After Alvarez failed to sway the turnpike officials, he made good on a promise to seek help from state legislators. Alvarez, his family members and corporations have contributed at least $319,000 over the past two decades. Of that money, at least $9,000 was contributed to Rubio since 1999.

The 36-year-old West Miami Republican's relationship with Alvarez appears deeper than money. Rubio is really just ''Marquito'' and more ''like a son to me'' than a lawmaker, the affable Alvarez told a Miami Herald reporter when he flew to Tallahassee in 2005 to see Rubio designated the first Cuban-American House speaker.

In the waning days at the end of Rubio's first session in charge last year, turnpike officials and Webster noticed that the House had slipped in the one-paragraph language dividing up the contract in the state budget.

AUTHOR NOT ID'D

Few knew who did it, and those who tried to find out at the time said they were thwarted. Webster only said House ''leadership'' was behind it.

Unable to remove the language, turnpike officials decided to wait until this budget ends June 30 to bid out the contract.

When word of the stalling plan leaked out, House leaders then tried to enshrine the language in law by tacking it as an amendment to a Senate bill over contracting. Webster had the language stricken.

Then last week, the turnpike language reappeared in the House version of the budget for 2008-09, which begins July 1.

The language is one of numerous sticking points between the House and Senate as they start reconciling wide differences in next year's $65 billion state budget, which has to be approved before the session ends May 5.

The turnpike budget language sheds light on one of the most effective ways legislative leaders can wield the power of the purse with little input from the public or even the majority of rank-and-file lawmakers. Called a ''proviso,'' the language requires an agency to spend money a certain way.

In a tight budget year, more proviso language is likely to crop up so lawmakers and lobbyists can protect pet projects. Proviso language is tough for Gov. Charlie Crist to delete from the budget: If the language gets vetoed, it also cancels the spending plan it's attached to -- in this case a $123 million line-item for unrelated turnpike operations.

The turnpike last year earned $6.8 million from food vendor HMSHost and $2.7 million off the fuel concession run by Fort Lauderdale-based Martin Petroleum Corp. Both contracts expire Dec. 16. Alvarez lost the bid for the fuel contract in 1994.

Richard Nelson, the turnpike's business development and concession management chief, said studies and the experience of other states show that the combined contract is the best way to modernize the service plazas, some of which have 50-year-old buildings and designs.

A plus in this new proposal: The right to open at least two hotels with business-meeting space.

''It's good for the contractor, it's good for the state, it's good for the public,'' said Nelson, who ''vaguely'' recalled an ''aggressive'' Alvarez pledging in late 2006 to seek relief from Tallahassee to block the turnpike's plans.

Rubio said in his written statement that the turnpike and its parent agency, the Department of Transportation, are too close to making a bad deal for consumers.

“We strongly support requiring DOT to make competitive its bidding processes for businesses on the Turnpike and elsewhere. DOT makes the bidding decisions—not the Legislature. The Legislature’s job is to ensure that the citizens are well served by this process. Monopolies don’t serve consumers well. The rising cost of gas already burdens motorists; it’s vital that we stimulate an open marketplace with the most competitive prices possible. By limiting the bids to a small number of big companies, as DOT wants to do, they would actually reduce competition and that could lead to further price increases," he said.

ALLY SEES PLANS

Miami Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a top Rubio ally from Miami and a friend of Alvarez's as well, first saw details of the plans at a Jan. 23 meeting in his Tallahassee office.

The meeting was requested by Alvarez, who attended with Department of Transportation chief Stephanie C. Kopelousos.

''My involvement began there and ended there,'' Lopez-Cantera said. ``But I kept thinking: This is too grandiose. Do we have to do this? No one's really beating down the doors asking for us to fix the plazas.''

Miami Herald staff writers Evan S. Benn, Rob Barry and Lesley Clark contributed to this report.