Backroom Briefing: Scott nemesis pops up in pot snafu

BY DARA KAM AND BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, September 3, 2015…… Steve Andrews, a perennial thorn-in-the-side of Gov. Rick Scott and his administration, popped up again recently in one of the Tallahassee lawyer's more obscure public-records requests, this time regarding pot.

Andrews has garnered a reputation within and outside of Scott's inner circle for his requests for documents accessible to the public under Florida's broad Sunshine law.

Scott's office recently agreed to pay Andrews $700,000 in taxpayer money to settle a public-records dispute concerning a piece of property near a historical site known as The Grove.

Andrews has been at odds with Scott since the former health care executive's initial bid for governor five years ago. The attorney also has represented Department of Corrections inspectors in a lawsuit against the agency and Scott. The inspectors accused the agency of retaliation after exposing an alleged cover-up of the death of an inmate. An internal investigation later found that the inspectors had not done anything wrong.

More quietly, Andrews is a participant in a snafu generated by the Department of Health, the agency charged with selecting five nurseries to become the state's first legal growers of medical marijuana.

The agency's Office of Compassionate Use received a number of public-records requests --- including one from The News Service of Florida --- for "dispensing organization" applications, due in mid-July.

The department provided highly-redacted copies of the applications, blacked out by the applicants themselves, to numerous requesters, including The News Service.

But prior to the release of the censored documents, health officials erroneously gave unredacted versions of at least one application to more than a dozen people, forcing the department to engage in some damage control.

Andrews was among the lawyers who received the unredacted documents, according to emails obtained by The News Service.

In an email to nursery owner and applicant Robert Tornello, lawyers for the health department acknowledged they had erroneously given his unredacted application to 13 others, including some of his competitors in the state's Southwest region. Tornello learned of the release after being notified by someone who had received the documents, according to a message he sent to health officials last month.

Andrews was identified as one of four recipients --- all attorneys or law firms --- whose clients were unknown to health department officials.

"We are currently trying to determine who their clients are. Keep in mind, some attorneys may not be allowed to release the clients' names as it is protected attorney/client information," department Deputy General Counsel Janine Myrick wrote to Tornello on July 27.

Myrick also told Tornello that she was "happy to let you know" that all but one recipient had agreed to return or destroy the unredacted material.

It's unlikely that the state has a clue about the identity of Andrews's pot client, something the lawyer himself is not revealing.

"Not only can I not disclose it, I'm not certain who my actual client is, which is not unusual. I have no idea who my client is. I was retained, I believe, through another law firm," Andrews told The News Service in a telephone interview Thursday.

It's unclear why exactly health officials were worried about who requested the public records --- Florida law doesn't require requesters of public records to identify themselves. But it seemed important to them to find out.

"Let me know when you find out the clients for Steve Andrews, Broad and Cassel, and Greenberg/Traurig. TX. J," Myrick wrote to Office of Compassionate Use staffer Amanda Bush the same day she contacted Tornello.

RUNNING TOWARDS --- OR AWAY FROM --- IRAN

With the days ticking away until a congressional vote on a nuclear deal with Iran, some of the top candidates in the race for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat are having to stake out positions. And so their statements of disappointment (in most cases) or support have begun trickling out.

As a practical matter, the votes of the four congressmen running next year for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio mean very little to the calculus of whether the agreement aimed at halting Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon will take effect. Enough Senate Democrats have voiced support for the measure to ensure that Congress will sustain a certain veto from President Barack Obama of any legislation that would halt the pact.

But as a political matter, a deal that critics call too easy on Iran's theocratic rulers could be a political football in the fight for Rubio's seat.

On Monday, Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy announced he would support the deal, even though he thought America might eventually be forced to take military action to stop the Iranian program.

"Before placing our country's brave men and women in uniform in harm's way, I owe all Floridians --- and especially our service members --- to have tried every available option," Murphy said in a statement issued by his office. "The deal on my desk is flawed, but after searching my own soul and conscience, I have decided I will support this agreement as the best available option to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon."

Murphy's primary-election opponent, liberal firebrand Congressman Alan Grayson, has yet to take a position on the agreement. Despite the fact that many liberals back the deal, Grayson has said parts of the deal "concern" him.

In an unfortunate bit of phrasing, Murphy's statement said he would support the deal in the interest of "peace in our time," a near mirror-image of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's infamous appeasement remark in the run-up to World War II --- something opponents were quick to highlight.

"While Murphy thinks this deal will lead to 'peace in our time,' the Iran agreement will make the Middle East more volatile, increase the likelihood of war, and undermine the security of the United States," said Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis, running as a tea-party conservative in the GOP primary for Rubio's seat.

"Perhaps the next time young Patrick wants to express himself on an issue of critical international security, he should avoid references to one of the greatest diplomatic blunders in history," said Ian Prior, communications director for American Crossroads, a Republican-aligned "super PAC."

Meanwhile, Republican Congressman David Jolly, who is also running for Senate, launched an online petition Wednesday targeting the agreement.

"The president's decision to negotiate in the first place was wrong," Jolly says in a video accompanying the petition. "His agreement is even worse."

Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, another contender for the seat, piped up with an op-ed column posted online Tuesday for the Sun-Sentinel. Lopez-Cantera, who is of Cuban descent and whose wife is Jewish, put an additional twist on the topic by labeling Obama's naivete about the deal as part and parcel of what led the president to re-open the United States' embassy in Cuba.

"In normalizing relations with Cuba, the Obama administration is ignoring the history of the last 60 years, renewing relations with a government that epitomizes the word dictatorship and is responsible for the wholesale confiscation of life, liberty and happiness of the Cuban people," the lieutenant governor wrote. "It is this willful blindness to history and past behavior that makes me look at the administration's Iran deal with the deepest concern."

The vote on the agreement with Iran will happen relatively quickly. But it might reverberate in the state's Senate race for some time.

TWEET OF THE WEEK: "1 guy running for Senate Prez is a lifelong Republican. The other? He was a Democrat party chair and a dem candidate for the FL Legislature" --- Rep. Chris Latvala (@ChrisLatvala), whose father, Jack, is embroiled in a leadership battle with Sen. Joe Negron.