Guest blog: Slimy politics of Big Oil in Florida

Reprint from Julie Hauserman, former St. Pete Times reporter, published by Progress Florida:

To see how in bed oil drillers are with our government, look no further than Florida’s Capitol. Gov. Charlie Crist appointed an oil driller lobbyist to head a team that’s advising the state on its legal options in the BP oil spill disaster.

This has stirred nary a peep in the cynical Capitol. Crist, who is, of course running for U.S. Senate, and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running for governor, say they have every confidence in their pick for oil spill legal guru, Jim Smith.

Last year, Smith was a lobbyist for Florida Energy Associates, the shadowy group of oil drillers who refused to say which oil companies they were representing. They got key leaders to push a proposal to open Florida’s coast to oil drilling 3 to 10 miles offshore – a reverse of the ban we’ve had on drilling in state waters for two decades. Smith’s lobbying registration is public record, and no one seems bothered by it.

Smith acknowledges he also lobbied for BP off and on between 2001 and 2005. His son is a BP lobbyist.

This time last year, Smith and the other 30-plus Florida Energy Associates lobbyists were busy indeed. They hired professional spinners -- former aides to Governors Jeb Bush and Lawton Chiles -- to convince people that dirty and dangerous offshore oil drilling was all of a sudden clean and desirable. They held fundraisers for Tallahassee politicians. They got Florida’s two most powerful lawmakers – incoming Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon and incoming Florida Senate president Mike Haridopolos to be their drilling shills.

The Oil Boys sidelined us environmentalists and winked that we were a bunch of whiny Chicken Littles. We pointed out that the same type of “state of the art” rig they wanted to put right off Florida’s beaches had just blown out in Australia, and was causing a massive slick bigger than the state of Connecticut. That spill has many scary parallels to what’s happening in the Gulf now. We weren’t just warning what MIGHT happen – we were telling folks that it was actually happening as we spoke, with the very kind of equipment Florida Energy Associates was peddling.

When it became clear that a drilling bill wasn’t going to be heard in 2010, Smith and the other Florida Energy Associates lobbyists pulled up their stakes and planned to wait to push offshore oil drilling in the 2012 session, when their BFF’s Haridopolos and Cannon would be running the Legislature.

Now that the drillers are presiding over the worst environmental disaster in history, you’d think they’d lose their death grip on politicians. Think again.

Crist deliberately picked an oil driller lobbyist to head the state’s legal advice team, and now he and McCollum – who both hope to get your vote this November -- defend their ridiculous conflict-of-interest choice.

Smith sells influence, and in this case he hit the jackpot. Lobbyists like him spend years building up their cozy relationships with the powerful and selling it for big bucks.

Don’t blame Smith for his success – he’s so influential they practically beg the fox to come on in and watch the hens! Blame these politicians who blatantly suck up to the oil drillers, even as our white sand beaches get slimed with a heartbreaking blanket of dirty oil.