Is that Charlie Crist's old pal U.S. Sugar Corp. I see over there buying land with taxpayers' money?
Land smack in the middle of the Everglades restoration footprint?
Better land than it sold to the state?
Why, I believe it is.
You remember U.S. Sugar Corp., don't you? Fifteen months ago the Clewiston-based company virtually held a gun to the head of the South Florida Water Management District Board to buy 26,800 acres for $197 million.
The board didn't mind. We buy this land now, we can buy the rest of the U.S. Sugar holdings later, as money loosens up -- that was SFWMD's rationale on Aug. 12, 2010, when the board voted to pay $7,350.75 an acre for 9,000 sugar cane acres and 17,800 mostly unusable citrus acres.
Well maybe, just maybe, U.S. Sugar has no intention of selling its holdings. Maybe it unloaded a ton of bad land, grabbed that $197 million of taxpayers' money and waited to get the better land it wanted to grow more sugar cane.
Everglades restoration? Not a priority at U.S. Sugar Corp.
On Wednesday, USSC announced plans to acquire A. Duda and Son Inc.'s sugar cane production business near Belle Glade. That's the lock, stock and barrel business including land and equipment.
It's the good stuff, muck land high in organic content, some of the best land in the Everglades for growing.
The company announced it's keeping the terms of the deal -- price and number of acres -- under wraps until closing, expected in spring next year.
Well, of course it is. The farther away U.S. Sugar can get from the Charlie Crist-inspired boondoggle, the easier it will be for the company to slip the new Duda deal under the radar. The company isn't going to want anybody to connect the dots on the two deals.
In 2010 it took a newspaper from New York City to show Floridians that U.S. Sugar was taking them for a ride on the land deal. And even then, they wouldnt believe it. Land is the thing. Gotta have land. And so, with Crist's encouragement, the U.S. Sugar deal continued through two downsizings.
Well, I spent a lot of years as an editor and columnist in Stuart writing about the folly of land purchased for something that turned into nothing the millions of dollars spent on the Inlet State Park that never became one, the property for a public golf course that lapsed into a preserve, the rights of way purchased for roundabouts that were engineered and then canceled on a commissions whim.
But I had never seen anything to match the sheer dimwitted absurdity of handing over $197 million, the sum total of all your cash as the water management district did on Aug. 12, 2010 to a seller holding a gun to your head.
The seller, U.S. Sugar, gave the district one day to agree to the deal, and a week to get the board to the Aug. 12 decision meeting. Its that or nothing, U.S. Sugar said. And if you agree to the $197 million for 26,800 acres but have to back out of the deal later, you owe us $10 million.
And for $197 million, you get to let U.S. Sugar use 17,900 acres of dead citrus land for free, for as long as 20 years; and 8,900 acres of the sugar land for $150 an acre. Bottom line, you empty your pockets, U.S. Sugar fills theirs, you come to a dead stop, they keep on truckin.
Youve created one happy seller because now you cant afford to develop any part of the Everglades restoration project. Youre broke, theyre flush, and unless you raise some taxes, you haven't got a hope of using acre No. 1 of that land you've just bought the taxpayers of Florida.
Can't blame Duda. Those folks did what they had to do.
In a prepared statement, David Duda, president and CEO, said, "This transaction allows Duda to grow its east coast vegetable operations and take advantage of opportunities in other areas of our business, including the expansion of our diversified agricultural operations and real estate holdings across the country."
DUDA will continue to grow sugar cane in Glades County and in South Texas.
Like other taxpayers who feel as if they had their pockets picked, I can't wait till the spring to see how the Duda-U.S. Sugar deal shakes out.
This is an opinion column: Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com, or at (850) 727-0859.
