In response to what they believe are state efforts to seize control of RESTORE Act funds, representatives of eight counties in the Panhandle have scheduled an emergency meeting Monday in Tallahassee.
The Gulf Coast Consortium Committee of Eight Disproportionately Affected Counties will meet at 1 p.m. in a cabinet meeting room in the Capitol on the same day the Senate is to debate controversial Bill 1024.
“We’re hoping we can get a floor amendment introduced to eliminate any reference to the RESTORE Act,” Okaloosa County Commissioner Dave Parisot said.
Officials from Okaloosa, Walton, Santa Rosa, Bay, Escambia, Franklin, Gulf and Wakulla counties say the Senate’s attempts to create an endowment to hold BP fine money actually is a covert effort to get control of millions of dollars from the RESTORE Act that federal law says should be distributed to directly to the counties.
An amendment to create the nonprofit Triumph Gulf Coast was slipped into the bill recently late in a Senate committee review.
“I have grave concerns about it,” Franklin County Commissioner Pinki Jackel said. “This is so rushed and hurried.”
Senate President Don Gaetz has denied the allegations that the state is looking to control RESTORE Act funds. He said the Senate simply wants to establish the nonprofit Triumph Gulf Coast as a distribution center for BP funds coming to the state, not to the counties.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.