Hillsborough transportation tax saga: still following the money

The mystery of the $6.2 million that the Florida House proposed taking out of Hillsborough County’s All for Transportation tax proceeds for unspecified legal fees has been cleared up.

It turns out the money was requested by Tampa lawyer Martin Garcia, an influential Republican political donor and ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, to be paid to lawyers, some of whom Garcia has ties to, who filed a class-action lawsuit over the tax.

The request from Garcia was first reported by Jason Garcia (no relation) in his Seeking Rents Substack newsletter.

Martin Garcia sought the fees for the lawyers even though the class-action lawsuit may be dismissed.

A judge in Leon County has said he intended to dismiss it after the tax was ruled unconstitutional and collections were halted as result of another lawsuit brought by former County Commissioner Stacy White. Garcia was involved with that lawsuit.

But in a letter addressed to state Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Dover, during this spring’s legislative session, Garcia nevertheless said the class-action lawyers should receive $6,214,556, five times their normal hourly fees of $590 to $881 an hour, for 1,804 hours of work on the case.

That’s justified under Florida law, the letter said, to compensate the lawyers for the risk of handling the case on a contingency fee.

Voters approved the transportation sales tax in 2018 to help solve the county’s worsening traffic congestion problems. A pot of nearly $570 million was collected before the tax was ruled unconstitutional in 2021. Courts and the Legislature have since been debating what to do with the collected money.

One paragraph tucked into the bottom of a 73-page House tax package during the session directed that the exact amount Garcia requested in his letter be set aside out of the All for Transportation money for “legal fees,” but without saying whom the fees were for or why.

When Rep. Susan Valdes, D-Tampa, publicly questioned the chairperson of the committee that proposed the bill, Rep. Stan McClain, R-Ocala, said only, “There was an estimate that there were going to be some fees, probably legal fees … We don’t know what the number would be.”

The proposal angered advocates of the tax, who say all the money raised should go for what the county voters wanted — local transportation improvements.

In his letter, Garcia said he wouldn’t receive any of the money. He worked with White pro bono and said in a brief interview last week he won’t accept any compensation for that.

He declined to answer questions in that interview about the legal fees and asked for questions to be sent by email. He didn’t respond to a list of questions by deadline for this column.

But Garcia said in his letter that taxpayers “would be getting great value” for the $6.2 million because the class action “assisted in invalidating this unlawful tax.” A draft legal filing attached to his letter says that’s partly because the class-action lawyers and one of their clients also intervened in the White case that Garcia assisted.

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Garcia is friends with one of those lawyers, personal injury attorney Howard Coker of Jacksonville, according legal association postings. Another one of those lawyers, Jason Gonzalez, was a reference for Garcia, along with House Speaker Paul Renner, when Garcia applied for a position on the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board, the new state board overseeing Walt Disney World’s special tax district.

That’s according to reporting by Jason Garcia in his Seeking Rents newsletter. Once appointed as chairperson to that board by Gov. DeSantis, Martin Garcia, the lawyer, moved to have it give a contract for legal work to Gonzalez’s firm.

In the spring session, the Legislature failed to decide on how to dispose of the All for Transportation money. That question, and possibly the legal fees, are expected to be considered again next year.

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