Top officials in the U.S. Department of the Interior worked with the office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on a plan to remove the Sunshine State from the list of coastal states that the Trump administration had targeted for offshore oil and gas drilling, Politico reported Tuesday.
After reviewing more than 1,200 documents it received as part of a public records request in Florida, Politico learned that top officials from both offices were in regular contact for several days leading up to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s announcement that Florida would be taken “off the table” for offshore oil and gas drilling.
Zinke’s initial announcement in January was viewed as a spontaneous decision made after intense lobbying by Scott himself. At the time, most political observers also viewed the announcement as a favor to Scott, albeit done without much consideration.
Here’s how the Tampa Bay Times reported on the January 9 press conference in Tallahassee, Florida with Zinke and Scott: “A hastily-arranged airport rendezvous Tuesday ended with an announcement from President Donald Trump’s administration that the state of Florida is ‘off the table’ for new offshore oil drilling, a declaration that brought both relief and protests of election-year politics.”
Politico has now learned the press conference wasn’t as hastily arranged as previously believed. In fact, the decision was “carefully choreographed” to help Scott gain public support — the vast majority of Floridians oppose offshore drilling — in his widely expected challenge to unseat Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), a Senate incumbent up for reelection this year.
The Trump administration released its proposed five-year offshore oil and gas leasing plan on January 4. But less than a week after releasing the proposal — which would open up nearly every inch of federal water to the possibility of offshore drilling — Zinke made the unexpected announcement about Florida’s exemption.
Read my full statement on taking #Florida off the table for offshore oil and gas. Local voice matters. pic.twitter.com/fJhv0p0CDC
— Secretary Ryan Zinke (@SecretaryZinke) January 9, 2018
Calling Scott a “straightforward leader that can be trusted” and noting that “Florida is unique and its coasts are highly reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” Zinke said he would be removing Florida waters from consideration for new oil and gas platforms.
Observers were quick to note that the move likely had political motivations, handing Scott and other Florida Republicans — who had been outspoken in their opposition to the plan — a win.
Legal experts also pointed out that Zinke’s hasty exemption was probably illegal. Offshore leasing decisions are subject to a number of federal laws that dictate formal processes for how the Interior Department must consider and revise its decisions regarding which offshore areas can be opened up to oil and gas. By granting Florida an exemption so soon after releasing the offshore plan, Zinke had not followed the formal process.
For his part, Scott cast the January 9 news conference at the airport in Tallahassee “as unplanned and the Trump administration’s decision as something Scott had influenced at the eleventh hour,” Politico reported. But according to documents, a Zinke staffer, who makes arrangements for events, was in Tallahassee the previous day.
Gov. Rick Scott and Donald Trump's Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will meet at Tallahassee airport to discuss offshore oil drilling pic.twitter.com/IbWkrbhuie
— Steve Bousquet (@stevebousquet) January 9, 2018
Rusty Roddy, Zinke’s former advance staffer, has acknowledged that the event was “planned” and that he was in Tallahassee prior to the airport meeting, Politico reported. In emails, Roddy indicated he was planning to be in Florida before the event as early as January 5, a day after Zinke announced Florida was on the oil drilling list, and days before the January 9 airport event, which officials said was not planned, according to Politico.
The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment from ThinkProgress on the planning of the January 9 announcement at the time this article was published.
A couple weeks after the press conference, Zinke was accused by a White House official of going “rogue” by abruptly removing Florida from the list of states only one week after the Interior Department released its five-year offshore drilling plan. But it’s now unclear whether that comment was a further attempt to make the decision look spontaneous rather than a concerted effort by the Trump administration to help Scott’s potential run for the Senate.
Causing even greater confusion was a comment made at a House hearing by Walter Cruickshank, acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Cruickshank told lawmakers at a January hearing that Florida is not off the table for offshore drilling activities, contradicting Zinke’s earlier statements.