By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Gov. Rick Scott has used his emergency authority to spend $33.3 million to combat Zika, some of which went to pay for aerial spraying done by a company that is partnered with his wife’s mosquito spraying businesses in another state.
Florida Bulldog reported in August 2016 that Scott, via First Lady Ann Scott, had an undisclosed financial interest in Mosquito Control Services (MCS) of Metairie, LA. The company describes itself on its website as a “fully-certified team of mosquito control experts – licensed throughout the Gulf Coast, including Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.”
Further examination of Louisiana corporate records, however, shows the Scotts are also tied to eight other active mosquito control firms all at the same Metairie address. Several have lucrative, multi-year contracts to provide aerial spraying and other services to local parishes and cities.
The nine are not on Florida’s list of state vendors. Records show, however, that at least four of them, including MCS, conduct aerial spray operations in Louisiana using planes owned by one of Florida’s largest Zika-fighting subcontractors, Dynamic Aviation Group of Bridgewater, VA.
Dynamic Aviation contracts with the Scotts’ companies to handle their aerial bug spraying because those companies have no planes of their own, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
Dynamic is partnered in Florida with Illinois-based Clarke Environmental Mosquito Management, the principal vendor to more than a dozen Florida counties, cities and independent mosquito control districts, including Miami-Dade. FAA records list Dynamic or its affiliates as the registered owners of dozens of aircraft, including a fleet of turbine-powered Beechcraft King Air spray planes.
“The Clarke and Dynamic Aviation Partnership is the leading provider of mosquito control application services to federal, state and local governments throughout the United States,” Clarke boasted in a bid document submitted to Ocala in August 2015.
Today, the Florida Department of Health reports that there are “no areas of ongoing, active transmission of Zika by mosquitos in Florida.” In February 2016, however, public anxiety in the state about Zika was on the rise.
Public health emergency
That month, Gov. Scott declared a Zika public health emergency in 23 counties and directed Florida’s surgeon general to decide how long the emergency declaration should last. It has continued this year in a hodge-podge of counties across the state, including Miami-Dade. Late last month, Surgeon General Dr. Celeste Philip re-declared a Zika public health emergency in Broward and Palm Beach counties citing travel-related cases. Emergency spending also carried over into 2017 in Miami-Dade and Broward.
Gov. Scott led last year’s high-profile anti-Zika campaign. He also politicized it. From August through early November, during the height of the presidential campaign, Republican Scott’s office issued a dozen press releases attacking Washington, specifically the Obama administration and Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson – who many believe Scott will run against next year – about the lack of immediate Zika funding.
On Sept. 22, Gov. Scott wrote an op-ed article for USA Today in which he denounced Obama, called the “entire” federal government” incompetent and alleged that federal inaction against Zika was “sad, sick proof that Washington isn’t just broken, it must be completely overhauled from top to bottom.”
Scott’s article doesn’t mention how under Scott state money for mosquito control programs was cut 40 percent – from $2.16 million to $1.29 million – in 2011. Politico had reported that in a story published one month earlier. Likewise, Scott didn’t mention that he’d cut a special $500,000 appropriation for a public health “mosquito lab” in Panama City Beach, effectively shutting it down and “causing the state to lose half of its mosquito researchers,” according to Politico.
In response to an inquiry by Florida Bulldog, Florida Department of Health spokeswoman Mara Gambineri said the state has to date expended $52.8 million in Zika emergency funds, including nearly $9 million this year. Of that, Scott’s emergency order caused $33.3 million to be sent to 69 counties and mosquito control districts “to increase their capabilities and to prevent and respond to Zika,” she said.
State records also show the Department of Health paid Clarke $783,572 directly to supply mosquito traps and monitoring services in 2016-2017.
How much emergency money went to pay for aerial spraying is not known. “Decisions on the mechanism for vector control, whether it be aerial, truck, etc. were made by the mosquito control districts. We do not track the funding specifically each method,” Gambineri said.
Tracking spending on the county level is problematic.
For example, Miami-Dade spokeswoman Gayle Love said the county has paid Clarke/Dynamic $175,000 for aerial spraying since the governor’s February 2016 emergency order. Yet in May the county commission ratified its acceptance of $1.2 million in state emergency funds to pay for last year’s aerial spraying services. The balance was diverted into another pot of $22 million in emergency funds that paid for truck spraying, Love said.
‘Aviation solutions’
Privately owned Dynamic provides what it calls “special-mission aviation solutions” to customers that include “national defense, military intelligence, federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofit research organizations and private companies.”
Records show the Scott’s nine mosquito control companies – all Louisiana limited liability companies with names like Mosquito Control Services, Mosquito Control, Terrebonne Mosquito Control and St. John Mosquito Control – are led by two officer-managers, Gregory Scott and Steven Pavlovich. The companies make most of their money exterminating mosquitos for local governments in Louisiana.
Gregory Scott is also the managing director of G. Scott Capital Partners, the Connecticut private-equity firm in which Ann Scott is a substantial investor-owner. Its investment program “aims to generate high financial returns by making direct control investments in established, U.S.-headquartered lower middle market companies,” according to paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Also known as Scott Capital, the firm boasts on its website of its ownership of MCS as well as investments in other companies owned or formerly owned by Gov. Scott, including Continental Structural Plastics. Florida Bulldog reported in June that Gov. Scott apparently pocketed $200 million earlier this year after the $825 million sale of CSP to the Japanese conglomerate Teijin Ltd.
Gregory Scott has said he is no relation to Gov. Scott, but SEC records show that from 2000 to 2012 he led the private-equity group at the governor’s Richard L. Scott Investments. He previously told Florida Bulldog that Ann Scott is a “passive investor” in Scott Capital.
The governor and other Florida state officers are not required by law to disclose assets held in the name of their spouses or other close relatives.
Gov. Scott, a multimillionaire, maintains his personal investments in a state “qualified blind trust” that’s ostensibly independent, but is in fact overseen by another of the governor’s former business cronies, Alan Bazaar of New York’s Hollow Brook Wealth Management. Bazaar also serves as an advisory board member of Scott Capital, according to SEC records filed last year.
The governor’s office regularly cites the blind trust in declining to answer questions or comment on the known business dealings of Gov. Scott and the First Lady.
“After Governor Scott took office in 2011, he put all his assets in a blind trust so they would be under the control of an independent financial professional. As such, the governor has no knowledge of anything that is bought, sold or changed in the trust,” the office said on Friday.
Dynamic Aviation was likewise silent in response to written questions.
“Dynamic Aviation declines to comment on the questions below,” said company spokeswoman Avis Foster in an email last week.
MCS manager Steven Pavlovich did not return phone messages seeking comment.
A lucrative business
The business of spraying mosquitos from the air can be lucrative. For example, MCS has a five-year mosquito abatement contract with Louisiana’s Jefferson Parrish that’s worth $4.3 million a year – or $21.5 million in total. The latest contract runs until Jan. 31, 2023.
A bid document submitted by Scotts’ company in January shows how it cultivated goodwill with local politicians. An affidavit by company manager Pavlovich says MCS contributed $25,000 to the campaigns of 15 Jefferson Parish elected officials in 2015-2016.
Bid documents also disclosed that MCS passes its aerial spraying work in the parish to Dynamic Aviation, the same subcontractor that sprays in Florida.
MCS’s home page features a photo of what its literature calls “our fleet of Beechcraft King Air” spray planes. In fact, the photo is at least six years old, and FAA records show that the planes it depicts were owned or formerly owned by Dynamic Avlease, a member of the Dynamic Aviation Group.
Some agencies in Florida’s decentralized mosquito control scheme, like Broward County, own their own planes or helicopters and do their own aerial spraying. The Clarke/Dynamic partnership has mosquito control contracts with Miami-Dade, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Martin, Henry, Volusia and Alachua counties, among others.
In its bid for a multi-year contract with the city of Ocala in 2015, Dynamic identified five planes that it said were “registered here in the State of Florida to perform mosquito control services.”
Online flight records indicate that the Scotts’ Terrebonne Mosquito Control, in addition to using the same aerial spraying subcontractor, may also have used that Florida-registered mosquito control plane.
In July one of those planes, tail number N72J, flew back and forth four times between Sarasota/Bradenton International Airport and Houma-Terrebonne Airport in Houma, LA, the records say.
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