Last week we raised questions about two new members of the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board, because newbies Thomas Hurley and Robert Spottswood Jr., are both developers.

This week we raise concerns about an EXISTING SFWMD board member — because he’s a lobbyist.

Scott Wagner, who represents Miami-Dade County on the board, is an attorney with a boutique law firm headquartered in Miami. He’s been Vice Chairman of the governing board since 2023, served as Co-Chair of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2022 Transition Team, and subsequently worked as CEO of DeSantis’ “Never Back Down” Super PAC.

Let’s just say his clout and connections have served him well — so well, in fact, that at some point he landed a gig as a Partner with Ballard Partners, the most powerful lobbying firm in Tallahassee (which also has more than a dozen other offices around Florida, around the country and the world).

According to the state’s lobbying directory, Wagner is registered to lobby on behalf of Meta Platforms Inc. — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, among other brands. So it does not appear that he’s lobbying on water management district issues.

But come on. Wagner went to Yale; he’s a smart guy and doesn’t need us to explain how sketchy this looks.

We notice Wagner’s work with Ballard isn’t mentioned in his bio posted on the SFWMD website. Why might that be?

Does anyone with Wagner’s firm, Ballard Partners, ever lobby the SFWMD? If so, will Wagner recuse himself on those issues?

This takes place against the backdrop of our state Legislature, via Senate Bill 7002, cracking down on water management districts’ business practices. Witness this paragraph from a Florida Senate analysis of SB 7002: “The bill prohibits a lobbyist or a principal from making, and a water management district governing board member, executive director, or district employee who qualifies as a local officer from knowingly accepting, any expenditure from a lobbyist for the purpose of lobbying.”

There are other provisions in the bill attempting to clarify how lobbyists can and can’t interact with governing board members. But what if the water management district governing board member IS a lobbyist? Is he even allowed to buy himself lunch?

Though he serves as vice chair, Wagner isn’t exactly a guiding force for the SFWMD. As one recent report noted, he’s missed several meetings in recent months and attended most of the rest virtually; since January 2024, he’s only attended one meeting in person.

Maybe the lobbying gig is taking up more time than he expected.

And for those following along at home, we’ve gone from a SFWMD governing board that featured several conservation-minded members to one that now looks to be increasingly dominated by special interests.

As we said last week, it’s like we’ve gone back to the bad old days, when those special interests called the shots – and we saw the results coagulating in our waterways.