DeSantis may try to scapegoat, but state parks plan is a big political blow to his brand | Opinion

The debacle over the plans to add golf courses, pickleball courts and more to Florida’s state parks has dealt a blow to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to brand himself as a friend of the environment.

DeSantis, who withdrew the parks proposal at least for now, has tried to deflect blame and scapegoat others for the “Great Outdoors Initiative” that drew widespread ire, from both environmentalists and Republicans across the state.

With the firing of the state cartographer who leaked documents about the plan, the DeSantis administration is looking more like the punitive and vindictive entity that it’s famed to be. James Gaddis worked in the Office of Park Planning and said he was personally tasked with drawing plans for golf courses, 350-room lodges and other amenities at nine state parks, including pickleball courts at Miami’s Oleta River State Park.

Gaddis admitted to the leak and over the weekend received a letter of dismissal saying he violated Department of Environmental Protection policies by acting in a manner unbecoming a public employee. He told the Palm Beach Post he doesn’t regret making the plan public and that he was “disgusted” by the work he was assigned to do.

Gaddis’ firing might be justified under state policy but has not made the controversy go away — he’s already being hailed a hero in the environmental community. On the contrary, it has added to the suspicion that the DeSantis administration was trying to slip a bad idea through the approval process right under the public’s nose.

The DEP originally scheduled nine meetings across the state to discuss each park proposal for the same date and time, making it hard for conservation groups to drum up large crowds in opposition. The meetings were then postponed before DeSantis withdrew the initiative.

Gaddis told the Tampa Bay Times that the proposals were rushed and veiled in secrecy and that the orders came directly from DeSantis’ office with the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, serving as the liaison with the DEP.

“The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this,” Gaddis told the Times after his firing.

If he is correct about the governor’s involvement, that contradicts part of DeSantis’ own narrative about the issue. His office initially defended the initiative — saying via a statement, “it’s high time we made public lands more accessible to the public.” Yet he distanced himself from the plan as it grew more controversial.

“It was not approved by me, I never saw that,” DeSantis said last week. “A lot of that stuff was half-baked and was not ready for prime time. It was intentionally leaked to a left-wing group to try and create a narrative.”

It’s plausible that the governor might not have personally read the details of the plan, but it’s hard to believe the DEP would act — and under such urgency, at least according to Gaddis — without input from a governor’s office that’s known for closely controlling all levels of government.

For DeSantis to try to blame his administration’s blunder on a leak to “a left-wing group” defies the facts. Over the past weeks, conservative Republicans — from state legislators to members of Congress — from some of the state’s reddest areas came out in opposition to the DEP plan. The “blame-it-on-the-left” tactic might have worked against teachers and so-called “woke” culture, but in this context it fell flat — and it shows how DeSantis lost control of the narrative on the issue.

That so many Republicans were willing to publicly criticize his administration suggests that his grip on the state and his party might have loosened since he lost the GOP presidential primary to Donald Trump. The governor must have known that, in Florida, the environment and state lands are not bipartisan issues in name only.

If his administration is hoping that the dust will settle before it sneaks through a revised version of the “Great Outdoors Initiative,” let’s hope this united opposition will squash any such ideas. Floridians should keep up the pressure.

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