Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings came out on the losing end of a heated debate over how the board that controls Orlando International Airport will hire its next general counsel and another firm to study the airport’s practices for awarding contracts.
The two mayors, the only Democrats on the seven-member airport board, called moves by Chairman Domingo Sanchez, an appointee of former Gov. Rick Scott, and Carson Good, a new appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis, “unprecedented” and “dangerous.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Demings said after the meeting. “It clearly reeked of some kind of political agenda at some level, and I think it was a sad day for the airport overall. That is not the way we do business at the airport and that is not the way that board should operate.”
Dyer agreed that he had never witnessed such a play at keeping the public out of open government with a board attempting to vote on major contracts that weren’t on the agenda.
The board manages a more than half-billion dollar annual budget and more than $4 billion in ongoing construction work.
“In my 16 years as mayor and serving on many boards, it was unprecedented to walk-on unnoticed items of that magnitude and have them verbally presented without any back-up materials and vote on it,” Dyer said.
The agenda for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority included a proposal from airport Chief Executive Officer Phil Brown to allow him to begin to recruit for a new position: in-house general counsel.
That was a matter that became necessary after longtime contract airport general counsel Marcos Marchena resigned earlier this month. Marchena of Marchena and Graham said in his resignation letter that he wanted to “pursue other challenges and new opportunities" and would leave the airport role at the end of the year.
As the chairman of the UCF Board of Trustees, Marchena became embroiled, along with UCF President Dale Whittaker, in a scandal earlier this year over the wrong funds being spent on university construction. Marchena and Whittaker both resigned from their UCF roles.
But on Wednesday, Brown’s idea to pursue an in-house general counsel was never taken up.
Sanchez, the airport board chairman, said he wanted to take a vote on naming Tara Tedrow of the Lowndes law firm and former Florida Supreme Court Justice James Perry as interim co-general counsels for up to six months. He said he also wanted them to lead a committee to study how the airport should proceed with hiring a permanent attorney.
Tedrow leads her firm’s cannabis and controlled substances group and also focuses on land use and development. She represented Chris Dorworth in the former legislator’s attempt to win approval in Seminole County of the River Cross development east of the Econ River.
Perry retired from the Supreme Court in 2017 because he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and had often voted with what was then a liberal majority on the court.
Tedrow and Perry were both in the room Wednesday afternoon as the board debated the matter.
“It’s apparent that this has been talked about because the candidates are here in the audience,” Dyer said.
Ralph Martinez, appointed to the airport board earlier this year by DeSantis, also questioned how the two attorneys were selected.
“How did we pick the law firms and the lawyers and all of that?” he asked.
Good, another new member, suggested a change to Sanchez’s proposal. He said Tedrow should be co-counsel with someone from the law firm Nelson Mullins, which already does the most legal work at Orlando International and was paid more than $3 million last year. David Brown, former general counsel at the airport, is a leader at the firm.
Perry, Good said, could be hired by Lowndes as a consultant on the deal and still give the airport advice on how to fill the permanent lawyer job.
Demings said he was concerned the board was writing a “blank check” to firms that had not been selected by the full board since there was no information provided about what the contracts will cost.
“It seems like you’re usurping the authority of the full board here and that’s a slippery slope,” Demings said to Sanchez.
“We’ve got to move forward,” Sanchez responded. “... I would never try to usurp anyone or anything. I know we all have reputations to protect.”
“I’m going to vote against this,” Dyer said to Sanchez. “This procedure we’ve used is unprecedented and you know it is ... this really didn’t have to be done this way ... this is dangerous the way we are doing it.”
Demings also voted against the final co-counsel proposal, with Good’s amendment added, leaving them on the losing end of a 5-2 vote.
Sanchez agreed to bring back the contracts with dollar amounts to the board next month for full approval.
Then, apparently in a moment of confusion after the contentious debate, Sanchez tried to adjourn the meeting.
But the others reminded him they still had not voted on another idea proposed by Good earlier in the meeting to expand the contract of McKinsey & Company to help determine best practices for the airport’s billions of dollars in procurement and concessions contracts. Airport CEO Phil Brown said after the meeting that a proposal from that company obtained by Good said the new work would cost $750,000.
Both mayors were against that proposal, too.
Demings said he found it odd that a contract in the name of seeking “best practices” for government procurement wasn’t following what he considered a best practice.
“It remains to be seen if what happened is good or bad, but I believe it was not a good day for transparent government,” Demings said after the meeting.
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