By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
When Pam Bondi appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee today to answer questions and explain why she should be confirmed as the next U.S. Attorney General, there’s a Broward-centric story about her that’s telling, yet likely won’t come up.
Back in late 2015, Florida antitrust regulators working for her when she was Florida’s attorney general approved Waste Management’s $525-million purchase of Southern Waste System’s assets, including the assets of Sun Recycling.
Sun, you’ll recall, was partners with Davie businessman Ron Bergeron’s Bergeron Environmental in a joint venture – Sun/Bergeron – that handled recycling for most Broward cities. But after the city’s recycling contracts expired in 2018 and Waste Management and Sun – by now rebranded as LGL Recycling – demanded fee hikes of 70 to 100 percent to renew, cities balked, Sun’s recycling facilities were shuttered and Sun/Bergeron died.
The fallout as Waste Management flexed its monopoly: residents and businesses were forced to pay more to dispose of their garbage, recycling across the county plummeted and more trash ended up in north Broward’s mountainous Monarch Hill landfill.
(Waste Management today is pushing the Broward County Commission to change land use rules to allow it to keep dumping into the landfill – now about 210 feet high – until it rises another 10 stories to 325 feet. The proposal was put off for two months in November and could come up for a vote again at the commission’s next meeting on Jan. 28. The meeting agenda, however, has not yet been posted.)
Where does Pam Bondi, who Trump nominated after another Floridian, Matt Gaetz, withdrew, fit in all this? On Dec. 3, 2015, her antitrust chief Lizabeth Brady sent a two-page letter to Waste Management attorneys at two large law firms, Bracewell & Giuliani and K&L Gates, in which she declared the AG’s office would not block the SWS acquisition, based on “agreements or commitments” made by Waste Management in the course of its review of the deal.
Included in those seven commitments was Sun’s consent to extend to any Broward city that wanted it a five-year renewal “on the same terms, conditions and prices as the initial term” and Waste Management’s agreement “to provide access” to recycling facilities and services for at least the same five-year period.
BONDI’S GOT A SECRET
Other records obtained by lawyers for Bergeron after he sued claiming Waste Management’s machinations had ruined his business and cost him millions show that the same Waste Management attorneys gave similar assurances to U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Frederick Parmenter. Sun/Bergeron “will continue to be free to compete in Broward County for disposal contracts as it does today,” wrote attorneys Brian McCalmon and Daniel Hemli.
Similarly, they wrote that Sun/Bergeron’s access to Sun’s processing facilities would not be impeded and that its contracts with its municipal customers “will remain unchanged, potentially through July 2, 2028.”
Waste Management’s takeover of SWS and Sun Recycling without state opposition was also conditioned on an understanding that should the Houston-based trash giant breach its obligations, it would be required to pay damages.
“If anything should change in these agreements or commitments, or if this letter does not accurately describe the representations the parties have made to us during our review, please call me,” Brady concluded her letter. “This office reserves the right to bring an enforcement action in the future if actions taken by the parties [Waste Management and SWS] should prove anticompetitive in purpose or effect.”
Now normally you would expect that the beneficiaries of such a letter – most of Broward’s cities – would be sent a copy so they’d be made aware and perhaps even insist on a more formalized agreement. But Bondi’s office kept it a secret.
Rumors about the letter flew for three years, but the 17 cities didn’t learn its terms until May 30, 2018, after Florida Bulldog obtained a copy through a court clerk’s error and published a detailed story about it.
From the day Brady’s letter was sent to Waste Management’s lawyers in 2015 until she left office in January 2019, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi never sought to enforce the terms of the letter that would have benefitted Broward cities, residents and businesses. Instead, she kept silent – choosing to ignore requests for comment from city representatives and media alike.
BIG MONEY IN THE MIX
Why might Bondi, who was on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial in early 2020, favor Waste Management in such a way?
In the six years before the letter, while Bondi was running for AG or in office, Waste Management contributed more than $150,000 to the Republican Party of Florida, then-Gov. Rick Scott and Bondi.
Bondi and Scott only got a little of that money directly. Instead, state election records show, $147,000 went to the party, which recycled much of it back to the campaigns of Bondi, Scott and other top Republicans.
And what about the other beneficiary of Bondi’s inaction regarding Waste Management’s $525-million SWS acquisition? That would be SWS owner Anthony Lomangino, a longtime political supporter and financial backer of President-elect Donald Trump.
In 2024, Lomangino, a member of Trump’s posh Mar-a-Lago Club, contributed $400,000 to Trump’s Make America Great Again Super PAC. He also contributed $7.85 million to Right for America, another independent expenditure-only political committee (Super PAC) that supported Trump and opposed his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lomangino may currently be giving more we don’t know about yet. The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee Inc. reportedly has accepted millions from Big Tech CEOs, financial giants and crypto companies. But it does not have to file a report with the Federal Election Commission disclosing its donors until 90 days after the inauguration. And unlike other political committees, it must do so on paper, not electronic forms that are easy to upload and are searchable.
Going back a bit, in 2018 Lomangino gave $150,000 to the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust, set up to help Trump associates caught up in ex-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In October 2016, Lomangino co-hosted a breakfast fundraiser with then-candidate Trump at Mar-a-Lago at which attendees paid $10,000 each or gave or raised $100,000 per couple.
In the past, but apparently not in 2024, Lomangino’s wife, Lynda, often doubled her husband’s contributions on the same day.
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