Report: College building tied to Speaker’s friend
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Public records show an airport building that a Panhandle college plans to construct with tax money secured by House Speaker Ray Sansom is nearly identical to one the speaker’s friend wanted for his jet business, a newspaper reported Sunday.
College officials have said the facility is not the same, and Sansom, R-Destin, told the Northwest Florida Daily News that critics are unfairly linking the projects.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that interviews, planning documents and e-mails between Sansom and developer Jay Odom, his friend, show “inextricable links between what Odom requested and what the college is now planning to build.” The college’s plans reference Odom’s project and request an extra thick floor for “aircraft storage,” the paper reported.
Odom has said he abandoned his original idea, using public money for a hurricane-proof hangar. The hangar would have been used to house his company’s largest jets but vacated during emergencies.
College officials said their airport project isn’t a hangar but a training center for students in emergency response that would be used by officials during the storm.
Odom had proposed using $6 million in state money, equivalent to the cost of the project at Northwest Florida State. Sansom obtained funds for it during the 2007 legislative session. The only difference between the plans is that the college added some classrooms, the paper reported.
Sansom and the president of Northwest Florida State both declined to be interviewed for the paper’s story.
Sansom has come under criticism for accepting a $110,000 job at Northwest Florida State a month ago, the same day he was sworn in as House speaker.