> <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238>
>
> A potential blockbuster from Bloomberg's Ryan Donmoyer: "The U.S.
> Interior Department inspector general concluded that the Bush
> administration offered in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family
> for oil and gas rights on Everglades land, according to people
> familiar with the matter."
>
> "In a report to the Senate Finance Committee to be made public today,
> Inspector General Earl Devaney says the department nearly tripled
> earlier estimates of the value of the mineral rights, the three
> people said. The agreement wasn't completed and the people familiar
> with the situation said Devaney's findings would scuttle it."
>
> "The report says that Ann Klee, a Bush administration political
> appointee, led the effort to reach an agreement with the Collier
> family shortly after she was named in January 2001 to administer the
> transition at the Interior Department between presidential
> administrations."
>
> "Klee, and two Interior Department lawyers, Barry Roth and Peter
> Schaumberg, relied on a private sector estimate that recommended the
> $120 million payment after soliciting several appraisals, all of
> which were lower, Devaney's report says. It also says at least one
> career Interior Department official contested the high estimate."
>
[This (nicely formatted) version courtesy HighBeam Reasearch.]
U.S. News & World Report; 6/13/2005; Edward T. Pound; ; Edward T. Pound
A Real Swampy Deal
U.S. News & World Report http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050613/13swamp.htm
06-13-2005
Some deals seem too good to pass up. In the spring of 2002, President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, unveiled a plan to prevent oil and gas exploration in a vast Everglades wildlife refuge. For $120 million, they announced, the Interior Department would acquire 400,000 acres of mineral rights held by a private company. Environmentalists, not usually big fans of the president, cheered. "This agreement," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "is a win for all sides."
The reality, federal investigators now say, is quite different. In a searing report obtained by U.S. News, the Interior Department's top investigator, Inspector General Earl Devaney, assailed the actions of senior Interior officials and Collier Resources Co., a prominent family-owned concern in Naples, Fla., that stood to profit from the deal. Interior officials ignored legal requirements and the strong objections of career employees, the report said, provided "incomplete" information to Congress on the deal, and agreed to pay a bloated price for the oil and gas rights controlled by Collier.
The report also said that investigators "found nothing to indicate" that the mineral resources have "any significant value" and even suggested that Interior paid for those rights in an earlier deal with Collier. After investigators began an inquiry two years ago, the report said, the deal fell apart and never received the required congressional approval. Devaney declined to comment but is scheduled to testify this week when the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Charles Grassley, holds hearings on the Everglades deal. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, calls the deal a "fiasco," saying, "This report shows that, for years, the Interior Department has been happy not only to bend but also to flat-out ignore its own rules regarding land deals."
Interior officials did not address many of the questions raised in the report but said the agency's efforts were aimed at preventing exploration in the Big Cypress National Preserve and in two nearby wildlife areas.
"Good faith." Collier Resources officials said they had not seen the report but emphasized that they had "worked openly, patiently, and in good faith with the federal government" in an effort to strike a deal. They vowed to move ahead with exploration. Collier companies have contributed thousands of dollars to Florida Republicans; Jeb Bush has been among the recipients.
In his report, Devaney said that Collier Resources employed a sophisticated scare campaign during the Clinton and Bush administrations to convince officials they needed to buy the oil and gas rights or they would face exploration in the Everglades. Congress established the Big Cypress preserve in 1974. In 1988, the inspector general said, Interior expanded the preserve, acquiring property from Collier in a land swap. Interior appraisals, Devaney explained, included the value of the mineral rights, but those rights were "excepted" from the final deal. To pay for those rights now, he added, "would result, in practical terms, in dual compensation."
Describing the history of the Big Cypress dealings, the report said that Interior agencies performed "evaluations," not formal appraisals, of the mineral rights in 1996 and again in 2000. Collier Resources, Devaney wrote, believed the evaluations were too low, wanting no less than $130 million. Finally, the parties agreed on $120 million, along with a potential tax write-off. Devaney said that an official in Interior's Minerals Management Service strongly opposed the deal but was "effectively silenced and cut out."
The deal expired in 2003, but talks reopened the next year. By then, Interior had developed new rules generally requiring appraisals in land transactions. Collier Resources, Devaney said, dropped out of the talks, arguing that a draft appraisal by an outside consultant was "seriously flawed." The appraiser valued the mineral rights in the Everglades deal at only $10.6 million.
Leigh http://www.leighm.net