Palm Beach County, FL Commissioner Masilotti resigns as feds investigate

Palm Beach County Chairman Tony Masilotti is resigning from office amid ongoing federal investigations into his potential misuse of power in several secret land deals, the top county administrator said Thursday.

Masilotti will fax a letter of resignation to County Administrator Bob Weisman Friday morning, Masilotti's attorney told Weisman, bringing his eight-year commission career to an end just three weeks before his term expires.

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Masilotti could not be reached for comment Thursday evening, despite messages left on his cell phone. Earlier Thursday, standing in his Royal Palm Beach insurance office, Masilotti declined to talk about whether he was considering resignation, saying he was advised by his attorneys to stay silent.

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The mercurial Masilotti's almost 20-year rise to political power, which began as Royal Palm Beach mayor, ends in scandal. The FBI probe into Masilotti focuses on a government land deal in southern Martin County, in which Masilotti and his ex-wife, Susan, pocketed roughly $1.3 million. The profit was shielded through a secret trust, but it came to light in the Masilottis' divorce papers in January.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

TALLAHASSEE — After a sharp rebuke from Gov. Jeb Bush — demanding Palm Beach County officials find a biotech park site and "make it happen" — County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti flew to the Capitol on Monday in hopes of assuring the governor that the drawn-out selection process was nearing an end.

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Masilotti said he reassured the governor that the county was "close to a solution" and showed him a study that said the eastern-most alternate site, the Briger parcel, would be easiest to market to the biotech industry. Legal challenges to stop development on Mecca Farms could drag on for several years, Masilotti warned.

"I'm not promoting one site over another. I'm working very hard to get to the bottom of this," Masilotti said after the meeting.

As he walked out, George de Guardiola, one of the original developers of Jupiter's Abacoa, slipped in with Bush to make a pitch for Scripps. Abacoa sits across Donald Ross Road from the Briger parcel, and has nearly all of the permits needed to start construction immediately, de Guardiola said. De Guardiola showed Bush a map of Abacoa with possible sites for Scripps, either on a 30-acre open tract or on property reserved for the state's university system.

Bush wants enough land to be able to absorb a large, 8 million-square-foot biotechnology park. That could be built across the street at the Briger tract in Palm Beach Gardens, de Guardiola said.

"He asked, 'How does it happen?' " de Guardiola said of his conversation with Bush. "And I showed him the site plan. He said, 'So what? Where does the other 8 million happen? So who's going to own it, and how does it happen?' There are no answers yet for all of those questions, and that's what frustrates him."

Indeed, in his acerbic e-mail exchange with Masilotti last week, Bush stated his requirements again: "To reiterate my broken record, you need to fulfill your commitment to permit a site that can have 100 acres and a . . . building for a world class research building for Scripps and at least 8 million square feet of office buildings close by. That has always been the deal and that is what we expect."

How did Palm Beach County Commissioner Tony Masilotti's brother wind up paying the taxes on a $7.7 million piece of property in Brevard County?
What is known from corporate records, land deeds and Commissioner Masilotti's actions indicate that it happened as part of a payoff to Commissioner Masilotti for allowing a landowner to bring suburbia to the edge of the Everglades.

Stories published Tuesday in The Palm Beach Post reveal that Commissioner Masilotti championed the county's decision to allow 2,000 homes on land that was supposed to have just 120. One year later, the attorney for the landowner transferred control of a $7.7 million property in Brevard County to a lawyer who has worked for both Commissioner Masilotti and his brother, Paul. This year, Paul Masilotti paid the $1,045 property tax bill on the Brevard property.
What it adds up to, as this newspaper sees it, is Commissioner Masilotti hiding behind his brother and behind attorney-client confidentiality to accept a $7.7 million bribe. As The Post reported, a federal grand jury has been convened, and investigators have been probing the deal.

They also are scrutinizing a Martin County land deal that delivered $1.3 million to Commissioner Masilotti's wife. How did the sellers of that land benefit? Commissioner Masilotti championed their $43 million land sale to the South Florida Water Management District, even though the deal was outside his county. Water district officials wondered about his involvement. When asked, Commissioner Masilotti first lied that he helped make the deal happen, then lied about the fact that he had benefited. Some of the money went to certificates of deposit in his name.

The Brevard land could end up being worth more than $8 million because it is in the path of a future highway interchange on the outskirts of rapidly growing Palm Bay. The land in Palm Beach County is at 20-Mile Bend, the halfway point between the coast and Lake Okeechobee. That property has been approved for 2,000 homes, one of the first breaks in the county commission's stated objective of limiting development in semi-rural areas west of Royal Palm Beach and Wellington.

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The following April was a good month for Commissioner Masilotti. On April 11, 2005, his wife pocketed $1.3 million on the Martin land deal. On April 29, 2005, his brother's attorney took control of the Brevard County land. If those aren't enough dots for investigators to connect, they aren't looking.
Commissioner Masilotti is completing his eighth year in office. He is the commission chairman. In May, after The Post broke the story of the Martin deal, he informed the elections office that he would not seek a third term. His behavior, exposed in The Post and under federal investigation, defies public trust. He only has a few weeks left, but why is this man still in office? Commissioner Masilotti should leave now.

Masilotti, 50, a former Royal Palm Beach mayor, first was elected to the county commission in 1998 and was reelected in 2002. Term-limited, he was preparing for a third and final run when he abruptly scrapped his reelection campaign in May and declared he wanted to spend more time with his children.

Before withdrawing from the race, Masilotti had been defending his connection to a multimillion-dollar land acquisition in Martin County reported weeks earlier in The Post — disclosures that eroded his support in the ranks of his Republican Party.

Masilotti at the time maintained that he did nothing wrong, that the stories were an attempt to oust him from office.