New College wants $400 million – for a school with 698 students | Commentary

Today we’re catching up on controversy at New College, revisiting one of Central Florida’s stranger environmental debates and bidding adieu to one of Florida’s funniest novelists.

We start with what increasingly looks like the biggest public money-grab in Florida — the orgy of incestuous spending at New College of Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ trustees at this school already generated national controversy when they hired former House Speaker Richard Corcoran, a guy with no higher ed experience, as the school’s president and hiked his compensation package to up to $1.3 million a year — all to run a school that says it has fewer students (698) than many elementary schools. (Seriously, Apopka Elementary has more than 800.)

$1.5 million to lead a college with 698 students? | Commentary

But now New College wants more money — a lot more.

The Sarasota Herald Tribune recently reported that its tiny hometown college has requested a “minimum” of $400 million in additional public money to spend over the next five years and increase enrollment by a few hundred students.

Even if the school grew to 1,200 students, you’d be talking about $333,000 per student. For that price, we could practically buy every student their own school. Or at least a classroom.

If only Florida’s political policymakers were as eager to fund public education when their buddies aren’t involved.

Given the cronyism at play — New College also hired a former senate president as its general counsel and the wife of a former GOP party chair as a fundraiser — there will be a lot of people watching to see who gets the contracts dished out when the new largesse is spent.

Then there’s the lawyer

Speaking of New College’s general counsel, that’s former Senate President Bill Galvano, who generously offered to serve the school and President Corcoran “at a reduced rate of $500 per hour.”

Well, keen Orlando Sentinel readers noticed that Galvano’s name also popped up in other stories the Sentinel has written about a lawsuit filed by a GOP Senate candidate from Lake County who claims former party officials conspired to sabotage her campaign in favor of another Republican candidate.

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Corcoran has been subpoenaed in that case. And Galvano is representing him — meaning the school’s president is now using the school’s attorney for personal legal needs. How convenient.

Galvano said in an email last week that Corcoran is paying his legal fees but wouldn’t say if Corcoran is getting a discounted rate or answer questions about whether the school’s trustees approved the overlapping representation, saying he considered those details “confidential attorney/client information that I do not disclose.”

Theoretically, it’s up to the trustees to ask probing questions about all that and share the details with taxpayers to instill public confidence. Also theoretically, I could enter and win a bikini pageant.

Split Oak reversal

In a surprising bit of news, Orange County commissioners this week reversed the board’s previous support for plowing a new toll road through a nature preserve.

To appreciate how whackadoo this state’s environmental politics are, just re-read the last nine words of that previous sentence: “plowing a new toll road through a nature preserve.”

This idea should’ve been a non-starter. The entire point of spending public money on a preserve, after all, is to preserve the land in question. This road plan is like proposing an open bar at an AA meeting.

But in Florida, where there are few swaths of land we won’t pave, a previous incarnation of county commissioners endorsed plans to allow the new road to cut through the Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area. Commissioners back then argued that the cut-through was the best of a bunch of bad options. (They apparently didn’t consider it an option to altogether refuse the development industry’s road-building desires.)

Well, after county voters sent a message to commissioners in a recent countywide vote that they considered paving over preserved land to be a violation of the public trust, the commission voted this week to reverse its position.

Mayor Jerry Demings and commissioner Mayra Uribe flipped their support from yes to no. Only Commissioner Christine Moore remained committed to the paving project.

Now the matter will go before Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointees to the state’s Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. If they’re listening, they will vote next week to deny the toll-road authority’s request to enable this environmental betrayal. If they don’t, well, it will be business as usual in Florida.

Split Oak: The Florida plans to plow a toll road through a nature preserve | Commentary

Goodbye, Tim

And finally, I couldn’t let the passing of legendary Florida novelist Tim Dorsey go without mention.

If you’ve never read any of Dorsey’s books, you’ve missed some of the funniest and most colorful Florida fiction around. Tim was one of the few authors who could make me laugh out loud.

His stories often centered around antihero Serge Storms, a coffee-chugging Floridian with such an overdeveloped sense of protection for the Sunshine State that he spent his days traveling Florida’s backroads, murdering people who disrespected the state’s residents and natural resources in grotesquely creative ways.

The plots and murders were often over the top. But you usually laughed and learned a lot of Florida history in between the killings. Sometimes even during them.

Fellow Florida author Carl Hiaasen told the Tampa Bay Times that Dorsey “rose to the challenge of satirizing a place where true life is routinely weirder than fiction” by lovingly portraying the state as “a rollicking, free-range paradise for lunatics, which of course it is.”

I know many Floridians are going to miss Tim, who died at the age of 62 after publishing 26 best-sellers. Dorsey’s books aren’t Dickens. But they’re good beach reading. So today’s cup of Joe is hoisted in Serge’s and Tim’s honor.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com