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.
