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Convicted Joel Greenberg, the former chairman of the St. Johns River Water Management District, is said to have been a go-to guy for clearing obstacles to environmental projects that would be difficult to approve.
Now environmental advocates want local officials in Central Florida to shut down any projects Miklos’ environmental consulting company is involved with.
Miklos’ name appeared in the June paper as Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector and former tax collector in 2015. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 1. Greenberg, who resigned in June 2020, pleaded guilty in May 2021 to six charges, including child sex trafficking. Conspiracy to commit a crime against the United States, wire fraud and stalking.
Re-elected. John Miklos won another term as chairman of the St. Johns River Water Management District board
Cleared. The chairman of the St. John’s Water Management Board filed an ethical complaint
Download: Miklos announced that he has left the board of Saint John
“Miklos would apply ointment or something, and they would all magically be approved,” Greenberg said in a redacted transcript of the permit applications before the board. “And this wash and repeat what you do.”
Miklos would “write checks” in return to certain people at the behest of an unknown entity whose name has been changed.
Miklos did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
In a plea deal in which 27 other charges were dropped, Greenberg admitted to using a “sugar daddy” website to meet young women. In the year He allegedly drugged and had sex with the 17-year-old seven times in 2017 and introduced her to unidentified other men.
He is closely associated with Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and has been referred to as the congressman’s “wingman.” Getz is under federal investigation by the Justice Department for violating federal sex-trafficking laws, which he has denied.
As part of the plea deal, Greenberg promised to cooperate with authorities investigating other cases.
Greenberg made the statement to state officials investigating illegal campaign contributions involving Justine Iannotti, a former Florida state Senate candidate in District 9, while serving in the Orange County jail in June to help her Republican challenger, Daytona Beach native Jason Brodeur. Brodeur, who won that election, is up for re-election.
Greenberg told investigators that Brodeur knew about the “ghost candidate” scheme, according to a 119-page document released to the USA TODAY network over the weekend by the Brevard-Seminole County State’s Attorney’s Office.
The document was made public last week after it was submitted as discovery to the attorney for Eric Fogelsong, another defendant in the dead-candidate scheme. The Orlando Sentinel and the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit organization, sued the state attorney to press for the release of the records.
When government investigators asked whether Greenberg had information related to other illegal activities, he picked up Miklos.
Miklos is president of Bio-Tech Consulting, a firm that helps developers obtain permits for environmental projects from local, state and federal agencies. The company does business throughout Florida, including Volusia and Flagler counties, and has been a consultant in many controversial local projects.
Greenberg told investigators that a man whose name has been changed asked Miklos to get involved in planning when there were environmental issues preventing a proposed project from being approved.
Greenberg said he couldn’t remember some of the details, but enough of what he told investigators raised similar concerns about Miklos when he was chairman of the Central Florida Water District’s governing board.
The district, one of five in the state, oversees water use, wetlands and other environmental resources in central and northeast Florida. Miklos served on the board for 8 1/2 years, including 5 1/2 years as the longest-serving chairman in district history. He left the board in May 2019.
He now serves on the board of the University of Central Florida, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Since 2016, as an individual and through his two organizations, Miklos has contributed more than $122,000 to candidates campaigning for state office, $53,000 to Ron DeSantis and Friends of Ron DeSantis, and $1,000 to Brodeur.
Chuck O’Neill, president of the conservation group Speak up Wekiva, is among the environmental activists who began meeting with local officials over the weekend to demand a halt to any projects in the approval process for which Bio-Tech is an environmental consultant.
“Seminole County, Orange County, the City of Orlando, Volusia County and other counties where Biotech operates must immediately halt development projects in the system,” O’Neill said. And they should bring in a credible, responsible third-party environmental engineer or consultant to review the baseline data.
“Miklos is the star child of developers,” O’Neill said. “If you want the most out of any environmentally-damaged property, call Miklos. That was his name.”
Controversies at DeBarry, Daytona Beach
While serving on the district’s board, Miklos represented dozens of companies and projects that needed permits from the district and the South Florida Water Management District.
At the time, Miklos’ decades of experience provided valuable knowledge for his role in the district. “I take ethics and conflicts seriously and I always live and always declare my conflicts.”
However, several former board members have questioned Miklos’ role, saying the companies hire him because of his influence among employees.
In the year Controversy over that impact arose in 2016 when the city of DeBary hired BioTech to help develop 102 acres of district-owned conservation land across from the Sunrail station for mixed-use development.
The city approved a $38,600 contract with Miklos’ company, agreeing to pay $155 an hour for the work he did privately. Roger Van Auker, the city’s director of marketing for transit-oriented development, emailed a Biotech employee to seek assurances from Miklos that the district would place no restrictions on the deal. The employee, Miklos, said the idea is to transfer the 944-acre site to the city.
Miklos later one Daytona Beach News-Journal A journalist never said that.
City staff had been assured by Miklos that the proposal would be approved, according to then-Mayor Clint Johnson. At one meeting, Johnson asked if the district would be OK with such a heavy development, and the city manager said the district had no problem.
After an outcry from the community, the city rescinded its plan and the district turned over the land to Volusia County for permanent conservation.
A Florida Ethics Commission investigator found probable cause that Miklos violated state ethics laws when the firm worked for DeBarry, but commission members appointed by the governor rejected the findings.
Also In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers twice halted and terminated the command on projects for which Biotech was a consultant.
At the time, Jeffrey Collins, a corporate license reviewer, said Miklos’ “normal business practice is to ignore (the rules) and force other people to comply.”
“He doesn’t think he should get a federal license,” Collins said. “It has influence with the government,” he said. “When people are afraid of their work, it can completely affect the process.”
In the year In 2017, Daytona Beach Biotech hired the United-Tomoka Land Company to help them meet federal requirements to restore wetlands that had been damaged without a permit on the property west of Interstate 95. Consolidated-Tomoka paid $187,500 to settle the lawsuit. – Tech started the renovation work without getting the necessary permission from the water district.
It’s the first of three cases in five months that a company using Bio-Tech Consulting has gotten into trouble with the water district for doing work without the necessary permits.
A citizen filed another ethics complaint in 2018 about Miklos’ financial disclosures and conflicts of interest. The commission failed to disclose how Miklos calculated his interests in his financial disclosures between 2013 and 2017, but there is no reason for repeated conflicts of interest complaints.
“It’s all about money.”
Greenberg’s filing states that the state attorney’s office initially did not make any promises or provide any assurances to Greenberg about his own sentence or outcomes in his federal case.
Seven redacted pages later in Greenberg’s collection, Miklos’ name appeared. Inspector Troy Cope told Greenberg they were looking for specific information about other state officials in the state.
“It all comes down to money and any way we can show it in terms of that,” Cope said.
Miklos was then the only individual known to be used in the plans by Greenberg as a willing convert.
At least three other people have been briefed, including Brodeur, developer Chris Dorworth, a former state representative and lobbyist, and a person Greenberg identified as “very close” to Brodeur, whose name has been redacted.
Bio-Tech acted as an environmental consultant for Dorworth’s River Cross development, which was dismissed by Seminole County in 2018. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed River Cross’s lawsuit against the county in 2021, ordering Dorworth to pay Seminole County legal fees of nearly $500,000. Payments.
Brodeur did not respond to a text message Monday seeking comment. No one answered calls to Dorworth on Monday.
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