John McKay, the man who comes off in Tallahassee as deliberate, reserved — even statesmanlike — is a different character from the man his hometown of Bradenton has come to know.
Those who follow the Senate president through the public-records trail of business partnerships and personal conflicts see a John McKay whose behavior is opportunistic and vindictive at best, ethically dubious at worst.
You might suspect local politicians, for instance, would be grateful for the power of a Florida Senate president representing their turf. Not so in Sarasota, where county commissioners resent McKay for what they view as retaliation. The gutsy commission told McKay no last year when he and partners wanted to pave over a Sarasota County wetland.
Now those commissioners say they're paying the price. At a recent praise-fest of other lawmakers, commissioners left out McKay, who they say retaliated for their stalling of his project. Commissioner Jon Thaxton called McKay "the obvious saboteur," viewing it as no coincidence that — after the commissioners denied McKay's wetlands-paving idea — money for a sewer project dried up, and Sarasota County lost power on a regional board dealing with vital water issues. The Sarasota-Bradenton Airport Authority — long a McKay target — took a pounding, too.
Contacted on his cell phone, McKay expressed annoyance at having been directly reached, asking repeatedly, "How did you get this number?" He declined to engage in conversation, insisting that a formal interview request be made in writing to his office. Once that request was made, McKay communicated through a staff person that he would be answering none of the questions.
The questions involved these key facts:
McKay is a longtime developer and real estate professional in Bradenton. He holds an office in Florida that reportedly makes him second in power only to Jeb Bush. In addition to the dignity of this high office, McKay is involved in multimillion-dollar real estate development deals in Manatee and Sarasota counties, playing with the big boys such as Sarasota's high-powered businessman David Band. And yet, pleading poverty, he now is suing his first wife and the mother of his three daughters. He wants to stop paying $3,300 each month in alimony, even though the courts gave Deborah Dye a permanent stipend after her 24-year marriage to McKay collapsed following his high-profile affair with a lobbyist in Tallahassee in the mid-'90s. Dye, an elementary school teacher by profession, has never remarried.
Also, McKay used his Senate public trust to elevate two of his Bradenton business partners and associates (developer Ron Allen and lawyer Ed Vogler) — and to retain a third (developer and former politician Pat Neal) on the state Ethics Commission that holds the powerful last word in deciding conflicts of interest.
McKay gave Vogler an exclusive contract as the Senate's consultant on growth-management in the session just past. The job paid $175 an hour, earning Vogler tens of thousands of dollars in a sweetheart deal that gave him singular influence over the shape of any new growth-management laws.
McKay pushed through an Enterprise Zone designation for a prime waterfront portion of land known as the "Sandpile," benefiting Bradenton Riverfront Partners, which holds a 99-year lease on the city-owned land. Not only does Vogler represent Bradenton Riverfront Partners, but another McKay colleague stands to gain big as well. Prominent Sarasota attorney David Band and the Benderson Corp. made headlines involving McKay in Sarasota in 1999 and 2000. That's because Band and Benderson Corp. not only partnered with Allen in the Sandpile development but also orchestrated the bailout of a threatened 1999 foreclosure on a McKay project, the Sarasota-based, $9.65-million Pen West Office Park mortgage.
Conveniently, former state Sen. Pat Neal — in private life a powerhouse Bradenton developer — sits on the state's Ethics Commission. He is the appointee of ... guess who? That's right, the Florida Senate, and he is poised to rule on any ethics complaints that might come up. These new McKay-Vogler, McKay-Allen potential conflicts may be ripe for an ethics complaint. But with Pat Neal in place, any such complaints would have even less chance of success than a previous one by the late Bradenton environmentalist Gloria Rains. She filed an unsuccessful conflict-of-interest charge against McKay and then-Bradenton County Commissioner Stan Stephens over a land-development deal.
And here's another fact: McKay is poised, during the upcoming Florida Legislature 2002, to oversee the first major rewrite of growth management laws in two decades, a process that started in the 2001 session that ended May 4. The anticipated relaxing of rules would grease his way to profits on a number of development fronts in Bradenton. Arlene Sweeting, a schoolteacher and Sierra Club officer (who lost her bid to represent Bradenton in the Florida House in the November 2000 race) says, "They say they'll have more public involvement in the process (by amplifying local control). That's certainly going to help them as developers. That's going to pave the way. Unfortunately when you send it back to the local level, these people have so much more influence there. It's kind of scary."
Like the four blind men describing the elephant — each reporting contrasting textures and shapes — the daily newspapers have come up with a piece here, a piece there of John McKay's Byzantine business connections. Civic activists who focus on the power trails more narrowly than news reporters say even with years of digging, no one can connect all the dots. No wonder: Ownerships are obscured under various names. Bailout documents are tough to find. Public records contain only sketchy details.
And yet potential quid pro quos are many and overlapping. Here is just one example that gives an idea of the multilayered networks: Former Bradenton County Commissioner Stan Stephens, defeated in his last election, was McKay's partner in a property for which they sought the wetlands rezoning in Sarasota.
Stephens was also connected with McKay plus Mark Ogles and Bill Manfull in a corporation called Crescent Moon Enterprises, the company seeking to build a natural gas plant alongside Port Manatee.
The Stan Stephens-John McKay land connection leads to Band-Benderson, the bailout agent during the threatened foreclosure. Band-Benderson connects to Ron Allen, Band-Benderson's partner in the Sandpile. Allen, meanwhile, is party to an entity called Manatee Avenue Developers, for which Ed Vogler is a registered agent. Vogler is McKay's attorney, according to ex-wife Dye. This is the same Vogler "advising" the Florida Senate at McKay's behest.
What's more, Manatee Avenue Developers shows up on McKay's 2000 financial disclosure statement as an asset worth almost a quarter-million dollars.
These interwoven connections, invisible as spider webs against white walls, are part of the reason so many people call Bradenton's power structure "incestuous." Development deals dot the map.
Most of this business is proceeding outside public view. Consider, for instance, McKay's connection to Bradenton's Pine Island development controversy. Pine Island owner William Manfull also is president of Manatee River Community Development Corp. and president of Crescent Moon Corp., whose principals include former state Rep. Mark Ogles, former Manatee County Commissioner Stan Stephens and the president of the state Senate, John McKay.
Crescent Moon shows up on McKay's 2000 financial disclosure statement as an asset worth $100,000.
Dizzy yet? If so, you may have forgotten that John McKay and Gov. Jeb Bush are united in ending state professional administration and oversight of Florida's higher education establishment. Once John McKay retires from public life, building and land sale contracts at the community college and New College (now divorced from any scrutiny the University of South Florida might have offered) will be locally controlled.
And remember those names Ron Allen and Ed Vogler? Both are members of the Manatee Community College board of trustees.
Connections and more connections.
According to Barbara Elliott, a civic activist in Bradenton: "Every time McKay comes up with something (in Tallahassee), there's going to be some building (in Bradenton or Sarasota) associated with it somewhere."
A look at McKay's legislative goals shows that even when McKay does his politician's work, he tends to business. McKay's Senate tenure began in 1990 with his defeat of then-Gov. Lawton Chiles' son Ed. Any of his actions that drew public notice invariably related to his promotion of business and development. Bills he authored would, say, strengthen property rights, or weaken government controls over development, or offer tax breaks to real-estate related interests. The Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations have consistently put him at the top of their politician ranking lists, while environmentalists such as the Florida League of Conservation Voters have put him at the bottom.
A Sarasota magazine piece early this year exposed no embarrassing new details of McKay's business deals in Bradenton or his debt to Sarasota mover-and-shaker David Band. Even so, writer Susan Burns' amplifying of incidents already in full public view drew McKay's ire. She described how people fear McKay, given his penchant for carrying out the old don't-get-mad, get-even axiom. Burns detailed McKay's first wife's domestic violence charge, in which Deborah Dye complained he threatened, physically abused and hurt her (prosecutors filed no charges). Burns also repeated earlier reports that McKay had "threatened to kill" state Rep. Mark Ogles, now a business partner with McKay. Finally, writer Burns also dealt with current wife Michelle McKay's curious October 1999 phone call to 911, classified as a "domestic disturbance, verbal only" emergency call that McKay later dismissed as a misunderstanding. All of this is old news. But the magazine's account — balanced by quotes showing McKay as a hard worker with a reserved manner who cares about issues such as children's learning disabilities — so angered McKay that he is estranged from publisher Jimmy Dean, a former friend.
A locally famous retaliation story involves the airport. McKay's baggage dates back to the 1980s, when he ran for a seat on the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport Authority. At the time he lived near the airport and was angry about jet-engine noise that caused a drop in the value of land he once owned. He lost the election. But he has not given up battering the entity he once claimed in a lawsuit had endangered the lives of nearby residents.
When he had the chance to wield power as a state legislator, he pushed through a law abolishing the Airport Authority's elected board.
John Reed Buckley, an authority member at the time, now says, "He owned a home at the end of the airport. He swore up and down he was going to get even with us. I was told by other people, "He's never going to forget it.' He carries his resentments far afield. He just came around the back door and came in with bombs. You didn't see him until he hit you." With all of the airport's decision-makers now named by appointment, "that means somebody other than the public has authority to run the airport," Buckley says.
During the 2001 Florida legislative session, John McKay came out for tax reform and spending on social services. At the same time, his pro-business voting record remains intact. The most enduring legacy of the man who says next year's Senate presidency is his last public office likely won't be reform, however. It will no doubt be the cumulative effect of a dozen years of chipping away at laws, rules and watchdogs designed to keep Florida's rampant development in check.
WP Copy Editor Cynthia Finn contributed to this report.
Freelance writer Andrea Brunais resides in Sarasota.
