An entanglement with a space tourism training venture that hired a former state employee, running afoul of state ethics rules? Not much of a problem. Spending millions on a new launch facility that doesn’t have any customers? A needed investment. But spend money on lobbyists? That was a bit too much for one Florida lawmaker after hearing that Space Florida spent nearly $300,000 last year on lobbyists at the state and federal level, without much positive effect.
When the Orlando Sentinel revealed that spending Wednesday, state senator Mike Fasano, chair of an appropriations committee with oversight of Space Florida, reacted by announcing he planned to cut the organization’s budget in half—over $1.8 million—for the upcoming fiscal year. Fortunately for Space Florida, though, Fasano backed down Thursday and restored the funding after meeting with Space Florida officials and its supporters in the legislature. Space Florida agreed it would not use state money on lobbyists, although Fasano said there’s no reason for the organization to spend any money on lobbyists, given that it has strong allies at least in the state legislature. “I still impressed to them they don’t need lobbyists. … There’s no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Fasano told the Sentinel.
You forgot to mention the no-bid contract that Space Florida awarded to Capitol Alliance Solutions, a company owned by Courtney Stadd. Stadd not only was a former Space Florida board member but also was on the committee that selected Stephen Kohler to be president of Space Florida’s board. Stadd is currently under federal indictment handed down by a grand jury for his role in steering NASA contracts to a client for which he benefitted financially. Steve Kohler himself has connections to the lobbying firm Blank Rome which received a no-bid contract from Space Florida.
I believe that “NellaSelim” is referring to this article, which was published shortly after the original post.
Mea culpa.
[…] It’s not surprising that, after the series of articles it did on Space Florida, the Orlando Sentinel called for a shakeup of the agency in an editorial Sunday. The paper called […]