Rick Scott defends opportunity zone tax breaks that benefited wealthy donors

Nov. 16--U.S. Sen. Rick Scott called a report that he steered lucrative new tax breaks for real estate development to wealthy campaign donors during his time as governor "ridiculous" Friday during a swing through Sarasota.

ProPublica reported this week that Scott was lobbied by Wayne Huizenga Jr. and a firm controlled by Jeff Vinik to designate census tracts in West Palm Beach and Tampa as "opportunity zones" that are eligible for certain tax benefits.

The West Palm Beach census tract contains a property owned by Huizenga Jr. that includes Rybovich superyacht marina. Huizenga Jr. has been planning luxury apartments on the site and wrote a letter to Scott touting the "significant private sector investment that is poised to take place," ProPublica discovered.

Vinik owns the Tampa Bay Lightning and is developing the upscale Water Street Tampa project in a downtown area near the Lightning's arena.

Opportunity zones -- which were created as part of the 2017 federal tax cut package -- were pitched as a way to help stimulate new development in low income communities, but both Vinik's development and Huizenga Jr.'s project already were in the planning stages when those census tracts received the opportunity zone designation.

The census tract that includes Rybovich marina was not originally among the three tracts identified by West Palm Beach city officials for the opportunity zone tax break, but city officials later supported the designation at Huizenga Jr.'s request, according to ProPublica, and Tampa officials supported designating the tract that includes Vinik's project as an opportunity zone.

"On the opportunity zones, I mean it's ridiculous," Scott said Friday after a veterans event in Sarasota. "They were done working with the counties to find out where the counties felt like they needed" the tax incentives.

Scott also noted that the U.S. Department of Treasury had to sign off on all the opportunity zones.

"The ultimate decider was (Treasury Secretary) Steve Mnuchin's shop," he said.

But ProPublica wrote that "While the law gave the Treasury the power to vet the selections of each governor, the agency appears to have simply rubber-stamped the picks."

Scott also continued to rail against the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Friday during an interview after awarding certificates of appreciation to local veterans at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post.

"I think it's a three-ring circus," Scott said, adding: "The Democrats and Pelosi have hated Trump all along and they're trying to figure out if there's some way to impeach the guy."

Asked if he has been watching the public hearings, Scott said: "No, just what I've read about them."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified Friday in a televised hearing in front of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. Democrats are trying to build a case that Trump abused his power by allegedly withholding U.S. military aid for Ukraine unless officials investigated a political rival.

The impeachment inquiry was set off by a whistleblower complaint that centered around a call between Trump and the president of Ukraine in which Trump asks for a "favor" and urges the Ukrainian president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Asked Friday about the evidence that has come out during the impeachment inquiry, Scott focused on the rough transcript of the call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.

"The evidence would be the transcript, I read the transcript, there was nothing in the transcript that would suggest that that's what happened," Scott said, referring to Trump conditioning the aid on an investigation. "So if you look at what they keep calling up, they keep calling up people that have heard from somebody else that says something and all this stuff. But Trump's the one, he's the only one that's been transparent in this. He put it out. He put the transcript out and it shows what he said."

Scott touched on a number of other issues Friday, including his efforts to try and bring prescription drug prices down and the recurrence of red tide in Southwest Florida.

Scott is supporting legislation sponsored by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio aimed at enhancing efforts to combat red tide and blue-green algae blooms.

"I'm focused on the federal government being a good partner," he said about tackling the red tide problem.

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