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Governor Needs To Get New Pal For Liar's Poker
DANIEL RUTH, Tampa Tribune
Published: Feb 2, 2004

Oh, c'mon now, why all the fuss?

After all, if outgoing Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David Struhs gave a possum's patootie about appearances, the Ichetucknee River wouldn't be in the process of being turned into a sluice gate for the Suwanee American Cement Co.

This much we can pretty well conclude about the tenure of Struhs at DEP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Sugar/Big Cement/Big Daddy/Big Pockets.

Good grief, Sad Sack has more self-respect.

What? You expected Struhs to go to work for the Sierra Club? That would be like the National Organization for Women hiring Andrew Dice Clay.

Like a basset hound rolling over for a cheesy treat, Struhs announced a few days ago that he was taking leave to go to work for a company he supposedly regulated as the state's alleged guardian of what's left of the environment.

Struhs is going to work for International Paper. As what? Who knows? Executive Vice President Lotion Boy/Cabana Attendant/Grape Peeler?

What Problem?

Indeed, it was International Paper's new Senior Executive Hotsy- Tot in charge of brown-nosing who only late last year guided a $60 million low-interest federal loan to the company to fix long- standing pollution problems at its Pensacola mill.

Isn't that special?

And it never entered Struhs' mind that taking a job with a company you just helped land $60 million in federal largess wouldn't look hinkier than a Mons Venus dancer doing unspeakable things to a brass pole?

Apparently not.

At the same time, not even Gov. Jeb Bush saw any problem with Struhs in theory regulating the environment one day and going to work the next for one of the state's biggest polluters.

``I'll miss him,'' Bush said of his bird-of-a-feather pal, as if Struhs is the only gofer in his administration he can play liar's poker with.

``He's been an extraordinary secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection,'' the governor said.

Extraordinary? Well, that's one word one might use.

Resume-In-Waiting

Jeb Bush saw nothing tacky with his DEP secretary going to work for a company he not only regulated but helped land a fat federal low- interest loan?

Insert ``Duh!'' here.

Then again, Jeb Bush and David Struhs are the same Katzenjammer Kids of the environment who had no problem in allowing the sugar industry to write the Everglades bill essentially giving the industry a 10-year pass to the clean up the River of Grass.

What's next? Allowing the Medellin Cartel to draft drug trafficking laws?

By any standard of common sense, it hardly enhances the tarnished image of DEP as an independent guardian of the state's fragile environment when its leader can so blithely walk away from his public obligations for a bigger paycheck.

So, quite naturally it might be appropriate for the Florida Legislature to consider some lawmaking preventing the state's department heads from going to work for companies they previously regulated for at least three years upon the termination of their government employment.

Insert: ``Hahahahahahahaha!!!!! Fat chance!'' here.

Why would the Florida Legislature, a vast assemblage of resumes-in-waiting, want to stand in the way of Struhs' career path?

International Paper and its fellow polluters are more than merely huge corporations with vast holdings and enormous political clout, who use the state as their own executive loo.

They're potential employers.

And Struhs is more than a former bureaucrat. He's a letter of recommendation.