Flagler’s New Legislative Delegation, Meager in Money and Seniority, Tells Locals: Don’t Expect Much

Paul Renner and Travis Hutson had all the money, all the power, and all the fun to dish it out in pork-barrel projects for their home counties the last two years. Renner was Speaker of the Florida House, Hutson was among the Senate’s top leadership, the state budget was swimming in the Biden administration’s Covid aid (not that the state’s GOP-dominated and Biden-loathing lawmakers ever acknowledged it), and vetoes aside, Flagler County and its cities raked in historic hauls of state aid.




A very different cast took its seats at the annual Flagler County Legislative Delegation meeting this afternoon at the Government Services Building in Bunnell: the newly-elected and very junior Sam Greco, who’d been in the military until last year and is now Flagler County’s representative fated to be a backbencher for a few years, and the decidedly less junior and far more politically seasoned Sen. Tom Leek. Leek, an insurance lawyer, brings eight years of service in the House, where he rose to the chairmanship of the powerful appropriations committee. He is nevertheless starting anew as a junior senator in the upper chamber.

The power is gone. The money is gone. But for Leek’s humor, the fun is gone, too. Leek’s naming Greco chair of the two-member legislative delegation was part of the fun just before representatives from every government, the school board, social service agencies, non-profits and others submitted their annual wish lists of money for this and that project.

Leek waited until the end of the hour-long meeting before cautioning the supplicants: “I will tell you bluntly: I am not a speaker the house, neither is Sam, nor am I a senior senator. So things have changed a little bit. But we will fight like hell to make sure Flagler gets its piece of the pie and to make sure that we’re doing the right things with that money in the county of Flagler.”

The pie, however, is now more wafer-sized.




As appropriations chair Leek was familiar with the state’s finances and all the so-called “member projects,” as he called pork–individual lawmaker earmarks for their constituencies. Before Covid, that pot of money was roughly $500 million, give or take $100 million. During Covid that pot grew as the first Trump administration then the Biden administration, in far larger amounts, distributed trillions in aid to the states and to residents.

“Our choice in the state was, do you give this money back to the federal government into what I consider a black hole of spending, or do you maintain control of it and make sure it goes to the benefit of Floridians?” Leek asked rhetorically. He did not explain how the “black hole of spending” would be different in Tallahassee: the money would be spent either way. Nor did he say the obvious: the federal government was handing the state the close equivalent of free money. No state, not even Biden-Loathing Tallahassee, rejected the money.

That increased the amount of money available for home-county bacon to $1.9 billion.

“Now, that money had to be spent by a certain time and in certain ways. That time has gone,” Leek said. “What I’m telling you in a not so subtle way is I think we are returning to a pre-Covid member-project pot. So you should expect somewhere between $500 to $750 million for the state in that pot, for all members. So what that means is probably a pretty serious reduction in funding of member projects, and so be prepared for that.”




On the other hand, Leek said, while many water-related and environmental projects in Flagler, Volusia and other counties were vetoed (Palm Coast is still reeling from not getting money for the expansion of its overrun sewer system), it was only because a new source of money is available for those projects through grants administered by state agencies. “Go to the state, to the executive agency, and apply for those grants,” Leek advised. “You’ll see that those will start to come online pretty quickly.”

Revenue projections from the new, 30-year gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, for example, will exceed what had been projected at $450 million this year, Leek said. “That pot will be healthy, you will see funding available for water projects and environmental projects,” he said. “I encourage you not to overlook those types of grants that are out there, the executive agency has a great deal of flexibility, more so than the legislature and authority to provide funding for different things that you’ve talked about today. So if you’re if your project doesn’t come through the legislature, don’t think that that’s the end. In fact, it may not even be the beginning. Maybe the place to begin is to try with the agencies and to try to get those grants.”

Flagler County Commission Chair Andy Dance had presented the county’s push for various items but “most importantly, continued support for beach renourishment programs to restore and stabilize the coastline” and county funding priorities for drainage projects, a sheriff’s substation and a tourism center. Palm Coast City Manager Lauren Johnston asked for help with the city’s estimated $240 million utility infrastructure upgrades and expansion, widening Old Kings Road North and that hoped-for Town Center YMCA from which Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $6 million last year.




Flagler Beach Commissioner Jane Mealy echoed Palm Coast’s infrastructure needs, with the extension of a water main north along Lambert Avenue being the priority, so the city doesn’t depend on just one water main across the Intracoastal. Superintendent LaShakia Moore boasted of the district being “merely a point away from an A district” and asked legislators to help raise the state’s share of transportation costs back to 80 percent, from the current 50 percent, and to include pre-K students in school capacity reports. “Several of our elementary schools, they currently look like there is capacity when they are indeed full. This is confusing for those who are working to plan for school concurrency needs,” she said, concurrency being a different way of saying future school construction.

Daytona State College President Thomas Labasso requested $17.2 million to finance a partnership with Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to build an airframe and power plant facility where the colleges will teach the certificate and associates of science degree program. He also requested aid to help remodel two buildings in the college’s DeLand campus.

Also addressing the delegation were representatives of tourism, the arts, AdventHealth (at 1,800 employees, the single-largest private employer in the county, whose hospitals treated 63,000 patients), transportation, mental health, early learning, and a few other organizations and companies. The delegation got lucky though: the session lasted barely an hour. In Volusia County, the delegation meeting lasted five hours. Most of the elected officials from local governments were in attendance with one glaring exception: Bunnell government was not represented, nor did a Bunnell official address the delegation (though a member of the Grand Haven Community Development District did).

The legislative session begins March 4.

Leek plans to go through all four of the requests he’s gotten from the four counties in his district. He will filter them, asking himself: “Is this something I’m on board with? Sometimes I’m not,” he said. “When we’re on board, we’ll fight like hell to make sure that you guys get everything that you deserve.”