The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 36

Orlando Sentinel TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2001 Previous speakers have lobbied, but only after leaving office i iiiiimi)iiiii ji ii ui i uu iiiju.nu ii uu ii ii. I I II I I I 'T'TTHTrTTTTrTrlHM "You can't stop someone from making a living," Sindler said. Chairman Crotty, who finished his sixth and final term in the state House when Feeney was first elected in 1990, said that Feeney's two jobs are a "troubling" issue. "I've not been lobbied by him, but I am somewhat troubled by this," Crotty said. "It bothers me somewhat, but we do have a citizen-legislature form of government, where he's encouraged to have a job, too." Jon Steinman can be reached at jsteinmanorlandosentinel.com or -X 1 4.l Ill co mil Powerful figure.

Speaker Tom Feeney talks with reporters during the Florida recount in December 2000. Feeney pushed the Florida Legislature in a special session to award the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush. A- flfX if' i 1 vXy Sm n'h r4-' FEENEY FROM Al It is not a violation of state ethics law to serve" as a state legislator and to lobby local governments. It is a violation, however, to serve as a state legislator and lobby state government.

There is no evidence Feeney has lobbied any branch of state government. "Precaution is the better part of valor, and I do better than the law," said Feeney, noting that he scrupulously avoids any appearance of a conflict of interest while pursuing his vocation as a lawyer and lobbyist. No other speaker in state history is thought to have served as a lobbyist while presiding over the House. Eight of the past 10 speakers have become lobbyists, but only after leaving office. One, Bolley "Bo" Johnson, left a federal prison earlier this year after serving a two-year term for income-tax invasion, in part for money received while he was speaker from a business lobbying the state.

Feeney, 43, is a formidable figure in Florida politics. He first gained statewide attention as Jeb Bush's running mate in Bush's failed first run for governor in 1994. Before that, Feeney proposed banning students from practicing yoga or hypnosis without parental consent, and pushed for Florida to secede from the union if the national debt reached $6 trillion. During the 2000 election mess, Feeney drew national attention by pushing the Florida Legislature award the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush.

While there is no central record-keeping, experts say Feeney is the only member of the 160-person Legislature known to be a registered lobbyist anywhere in Florida. Feeney is registered to lobby in Orange for: Republic Services the massive waste-hauling firm owned by Republican Party donor Wayne Huizenga, who is the founder and former owner of both the Florida Marlins and Blockbuster Entertainment. Yang Enterprises an Oviedo-based computer-programming and data-storage company. Wackenhut the massive South Florida-based security company that runs two of the state's five privately run prisons. Yang did not return calls seeking comment.

A spokesman for Republic said the company hired Feeney not because of his political position, but because his law firm has long done work in Orange County for the company. A Wackenhut spokesman said the same thing, adding that most of the company's work in Orange County is handled not by Feeney but by his law partner, Michael O'Quinn. Wackenhut is the only one of Feeney's lobbying clients that does business with the state. The company's prison contracts total about $33 million annually. Wackenhut also provides more than a half-million dollars' JOE BURBANKORLANDO SENTINEL SINDLER contract is divided among three firms, with Republic and Waste Management, the largest of the three, taking the two biggest slices of county business and a third, Onyx Waste Services of Florida, a smaller firm, taking a smaller slice of county business.

Yang Enterprises, the third business for which Feeney lobbies, has no business with Orange, nor is it seeking business with the county. where I have businesses that need permits or zoning changes or site-plan approvals, you could argue I'm doing legal work by consulting with businesses about how to get these things. "I don't want to use a bunch of legal-weasel words here. But do I make a living by lobbying officials? No. Do I make money giving advice to businesses, and some do business with counties and cities? Yes.

I've been doing that since I passed The Florida Bar exam" in 1983. Feeney said he considers appearances before accepting lobbying contracts, that he is registered to lobby only in Orange and has lobbied in the county for more than a decade. "If you are asking me if I have turned down boatloads of money because I felt uncomfortable, the answer is yes," he said. Feeney didn't say which companies he has turned down. Even so, Feeney's lobbying activities make it seem as though he is profiting from his position, said Ben Wilcox, director of Common Cause Florida, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Tallahassee.

"I think there's a problem at least in appearances," Wilcox said. "That's really kind of blurring the lines between what the public's business is and your own private business. The problem I have with it is he's benefiting because of his public posi-. tion. While it may not be against the law, I have a problem with the ethics of it." The issue of legislators lobbying local governments during their own time is so novel that staffers with the National Con ference of State Legislatures' Ethics Center had never heard of it.

The center compiles lobbying rules issued by the states, among other activities. "I would say that generally a legislator who is in that position needs to be cautious because of public appearances," said Peggy Kearns, the center's director and a former Colorado state legisla tor. New York, for instance, has no rules prohibiting state legisla tors from lobbying local governments. Neither does California nor Pennsylvania. "I'm not aware that it's ever come up," said Clancy Myer, parliamentarian of the Pennsylvania House of Repre sentatives.

"I'm not aware of leg islators, any of them, lobbying in any capacity at any level of government." Feeney, and others, say Florida's system of part-time legisla tors, in which the speaker is paid about $39,000 a year, demands that elected officials have out side jobs. Unlike Congress, with rull-time legislators paid full-time salaries, Florida's Legisla ture meets for only two months a year except when special ses sions are called. "Mainly this does sort of show the drawback of having a part- time Legislature because the vast majority of elected officials in this state do have full-time jobs, and just like in other states, many are lawyers that have cli ents, said Aubrey Jewett, a po litical-science professor at the University of Central Florida. "It's certainly not a technical violation of the law, but it does look bad," he said of Feeney's lobbying activities. "I don't know how you can get away from that appearance without telling people they can't do their, full-time jobs." Although Feeney may be his Orlando law firm highest-pro file partner, he is not the only registered lobbyist at Fowler, Bance, Feeney and O'Quinn.

"I've had contact with his law partner, Michael O'Quinn," said Commissioner Ted Edwards. Edwards said O'Quinn "has never used Feeney's name or im plied anything about Feeney's political power. Commissioner Bob Sindler said Feeney has to have a job outside of the Capitol to support himselr. Buseck said there was inadequate similarity between Earthly magnetite and that found in the Mars meteorite to prove that the material was formed by a living organism. The Arizona State researcher said there are computer-driven electron microscope techniques that can be used to determine if the NASA researchers are correct.

Everett Gibson, a NASA researcher who was among the group that first proposed that ALH84001 contained evidence of life, said that Buseck has not even looked at the Mars meteorite. "How can he draw this conclusion without seeing the material?" Gibson asked. In 1996, Gibson and some other NASA-supported researchers announced that they had found evidence in ALH84001 of life microscopic fossils that could have been bacteria, and carbon chemicals that are linked to life processes. They suggested that the bacteria lived on the Red Planet billions of years ago. Tired of Time for a Better Water Conditioner? KINETICO Quality Water Systems Is electricity used? No Yes Yes Longest manufacturer warranty on all parts Yes No No (Not Pro-Rated) Are electrical part Yes No No problems eliminated? Does the system use soft clean conditioned water for complete cleaning cycle? Yes No No Provides clean water 24 hours a Yes No No day, 365 days a year! Clean, soft water with No Electricity No Salt WE FIX CITY WATER WELL WATER Try it for only Introductory Trial Limited Tim Offer W.A.C.

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Republic Services the waste-hauling firm, has provided garbage services to parts of the county for years. It does about $6.2 million worth of business with the county annually. The county's garbage-services don't talk about things that are in the procurement process," she said. "And that was the end of it." The procurement committee is an appointed group of county staffers that ranks bids submitted by companies seeking county business. More than two months ago, Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty urged commissioners not to meet with lobbyists on issues in the procurement process.

"It surprises me that elected officials put themselves in a position that the public could question whether they are abusing their political power," Jacobs said. "The potential exists." Wackenhut, which does not now have business with the county, is seeking the three-year contract with the county. Feeney said he has never abused his political power. "I am a representative of businesses and other clients. That's what lawyers do," he said.

"But DAVID PERRYLEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER In Louisville, Ky. Secretary of State Colin Powell wants Mideast peace. rael. "It is time no, it is past time" for bloodshed in the region to end, Powell said. The secretary had been scheduled to make a Middle Eastern policy speech, more than two months ago, but it was postponed because of the Sept.

1 1 terrorist attacks. The war on terrorism will be long and arduous, but it has also created new opportunities and partnerships in which America can exert its power and influence in the cause of peace, Powell said. "We will not rest until the job has been done, and civilization is safe again," Powell said. ssS CROTTY HUIZENGA worth of work for the state De partment of Transportation, providing security at interstate rest stops in Seminole and Brevard counties, and at the department's DeLand offices, among other sites. Feeney's role as a local lobbyist surfaced in October as Orange County commissioners debated how to bolster security in county-owned buildings.

At stake was which of three companies would land a three-year, roughly $3 million contract to provide security at 20 county facilities. The decision was delayed after commissioners learned their staff hadn't investigated the raft of legal and security problems facing the private security firms bidding on the contract including Wackenhut. Feeney, and his law firm, registered to lobby for Wackenhut on Oct. 5. "I haven't done any lobbying on the issue," Feeney said.

"I haven't contacted any of the commissioners." While he hasn't actually met with a commissioner on behalf of Wackenhut, he did try to contact at least one commissioner. On the day Feeney registered as a Wackenhut lobbyist, he called Commissioner Teresa Jacobs to set up a meeting. "He only spoke to me once about wanting an appointment to discuss a client of his," Jacobs said. "He didn't even tell me who the client was." Jacobs said she asked Feeney whether the issue was something the county's procurement committee was looking into, and he told her it was. "I told him I the secretary said.

Powell said William Burns, an assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, would return to the region and that Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general with wide experience in the Middle East, had agreed to become a senior adviser to the State Department. The secretary said Monday, as he did in a television interview Sunday, that a solid, workable foundation for peace could be found in the Mitchell report, a plan proposed by a committee headed by former Sen. George Mitchell. One point made by the committee is that a violence-free cooling-off period should be a prelude to settlement talks. Powell noted that Monday is the 24th anniversary of the historic trip to Israel by Anwar Sadat, then the Egyptian president, in a quest for peace.

He said one of his own proud memories as a soldier was his role in the Persian Gulf War a decade ago. By leading the campaign to liberate Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion, Powell said, the United States showed that its commitment to peace and friendship is not just to Is- Adviser, envoy will work for cease-fire, Powell says Group casts doubt on Mars findings POWELL FROM Al Powell said Israel must be willing to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and recognize that Palestinians have legitimate grievances, including the building of Israeli settlements, the deaths of innocent civilians and the daily annoyances and indignities of going through checkpoints. He said Palestinian leaders must hunt down and prosecute terrorists who attack Israeli civilians if Israel is ever to shed its doubts about whether the Palestinians really want peace. "The intifada is now mired in the quicksand of self-defeating violence and terror directed against Israel," he said. Monday's speech broke no new policy ground for the Bush administration, but Powell was clearly trying to dispel any impression that the administration would be just an aloof onlooker in the Middle East.

At several points, he said the United States would remain fully engaged in the region. But even if the United States works tirelessly, it cannot dictate the Middle East's future by itself, "nor should we want to," By PAUL RECER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON A group of researchers says NASA scientists have failed to prove their contention that a Mars meteorite contains evidence of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. A group led by Peter R. Bu-seck of Arizona State University said the NASA researchers have inadequate evidence showing that tiny crystalline structures in Mars meteorite ALH84001 were formed by bacteria billions of years ago as the rock was sitting on the Martian surface. A study with Buseck as the first author appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Buseck said NASA-supported researchers claimed in February that crystals found in the meteorite are identical to crystals formed on Earth by bacteria. The material, known as magnetite, is formed by some bacteria that live on the bottom of lakes. The magnetic crystals act as a sort of compass to allow the bacteria to orient themselves. 1 vrvwv.waterusa.net.