Democrats on Wednesday fired back at Republicans who called for an ethics investigation into a Democratic lawmaker, saying Republican members have acted similarly.
Tuesday it was revealed that a nonprofit run by Rep. Tom Plant, D-Nederland, received $25,000 from a state grant program he helped create.
He has denied any impropriety.
But Pat Waak, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said that Rep. Diane Hoppe, R-Sterling, did the same thing when she carried legislation in 2002 that spent $250,000 to create the Water Education Foundation. House Bill 02-1152 also set up a $150,000 annual appropriation. Hoppe was later voted president of the organization.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state treasury were diverted to an organization she runs,” Waak said. “I do think there’s something wrong with that.”
Hoppe said she carried the bill when she was chairwoman of the agriculture committee. She said “it’s a real stretch” to compare her situation, as a voluntary board member, to Plant’s, as a paid executive director.
She called both allegations “election-year politics.”
Waak said if Republicans are going to ask for investigations into Plant and other Democrats, they should do the same for Republicans.
Republican Rep. Al White of Winter Park expanded the state tourism board and received a seat on it. He then sponsored a bill to direct $19 million to tourism funding, she said.
White said Democrats also sit on the board and support tourism funding.
Meanwhile, the director of the Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation said Wednesday it seemed Plant was trying to receive all the grant money in the program he helped create.
“Why was he lobbying our office for these moneys almost three months before this information was available to the public?” asked director Drew Bolin, who ran against Plant in 1998.
Plant said: “If we were going to qualify, we were going to apply, but they hadn’t put out the criteria yet, so I needed to find out when that was going to come out.”
