By Miranda Nazzaro - 09/03/24

A Florida state staffer who admitted to leaking plans about putting golf courses in state parks told local media Tuesday he was fired from the state’s environmental protection agency.

Jared Gaddis told the Tampa Bay Times he received a letter from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) over the weekend informing him he was dismissed from his role as a planning consultant, as of last Friday.

The dismissal letter, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, told Gaddis the department “became aware that you intentionally released authorized and inaccurate information to the public.”

“At least one document was created, authored, and disseminated by you without direction or permission,” it read.

The agency hired Gaddis as a cartographer to make conceptual land use maps for state proposals, he told the Times. The proposals reportedly included golf courses and other developments, including a 350-room hotel at one state park.

His leaking of the plans was not intended to be political, Gaddis said, but stemmed from his concern over the rushed timeline of the plans and the environmental harm they would cause if carried out.

“It was the absolute flagrant disregard for the critical, globally imperiled habitat in these parks,” Gaddis said in an interview Tuesday.

“This was going to be a complete bulldozing of all of that habitat,” he continued. “The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this.”

The Hill reached out to the Florida DEP and governor’s office for comment.

The leaked plans immediately drew scrutiny, with people protesting in parks across the Sunshine State. Petitions against the plans received hundreds of thousands of signatures.

Top Florida Republicans pushed back on the plans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, who called them a “half-baked” plan that was “intentionally leaked out to a left-wing group to try to create a narrative.”

“This is something that was leaked. It was not approved by me, I never saw that,” DeSantis said, per the Miami Herald. “A lot of that stuff was half-baked and was not ready for prime time.”

Gaddis claimed he was told to begin the proposals the week of July 29 and, by Aug. 1, he created a document for the first map and started drafting a document of all the park plans by the weekend of Aug. 17, the Times reported.

“The office was directed to drop/hold other tasks and compose these amendments as quickly as possible,” Gaddis wrote in his anonymous document, which was eventually shared with the Times last month.

The memo revealed that Florida’s DEP intended to schedule eight near-simultaneous public meetings for Aug. 27, the Times reported.

Gaddis said the agency was able to track the memo back to him, and he told a Florida DEP attorney last week he created it on a work laptop by himself without the help of others.

According to the dismissal letter, the state terminated Gaddis over “conduct unbecoming a public employee, violation of law or department rules, negligence and misconduct.”

Gaddis, a single father to an 11-year-old daughter, started a GoFundMe to support his future endeavors, which had raised more than $96,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.

“As a state employee and single dad working a weekend side-job, I knew that sounding the alarm was a risky move. However, I saw myself as a public servant first and felt that it was the only ethical thing to do. This issue became far more important than any individual’s employment status with DEP,” he wrote.

The Florida DEP told The Hill last week it has since withdrawn all remaining amendments to state parks “at the Governor’s direction.”

“We will shift to discussions with our local park managers and will revisit any park improvements, if needed, next year,” Alexandra Kuchta, a communications director with the Florida DEP, said last week.

The shift in plans comes nearly a week after the state first announced the “Great Outdoors Initiative.” The initial release said the initiative would have increased “the number of outdoor recreation opportunities available at Florida’s state parks, including pickleball, disc golf, golf and paddling.”