Florida fires whistleblower who leaked plan to put golf courses and hotels in state parks

MIAMI - James Gaddis had just returned home Saturday afternoon when he found a dismissal letter waiting on his townhouse’s doorstep.

The former two-year Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee told the Tampa Bay Times he was the one who leaked information about the state’s plans to build golf courses, 350-room hotels, pickleball courts and more at nine state parks, including two in the Tampa Bay area.

Now, the agency appears to be firing him, according to a copy of the letter shared with the Times.

Gaddis, 41, who was hired by the agency as a cartographer, said his actions weren’t political, and that there were two main reasons he chose to speak out: The rushed secrecy that was behind the park plans, and the vast environmental destruction that would be caused if they were to be completed.

“It was the absolute flagrant disregard for the critical, globally imperiled habitat in these parks,” Gaddis said in an interview Monday morning. Gaddis said he was tasked with making the proposed conceptual land use maps that depicted the golf courses and other developments. Two proposals were especially egregious in his eyes: The Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf course, and the 350-room hotel at Anastasia State Park.

“This was going to be a complete bulldozing of all of that habitat,” Gaddis said. He recalls his hand, hovering over a computer mouse, shaking with anger and frustration as he was told to rush his maps from senior leadership. “The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this.”

According to Gaddis’ timeline, he was ordered in a Microsoft Teams meeting to begin working on the rushed proposals the week of July 29. The first map document he made was marked with a creation date of Aug. 1. As tensions rose within the Office of Park Planning, Gaddis began drafting a document outlining all of the parks plans by the weekend of Aug. 17.

“The office was directed to drop/hold other tasks and compose these amendments as quickly as possible,” Gaddis wrote in his anonymous document. He warned in his memo, correctly, that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection was planning to schedule eight near-simultaneous public meetings for Aug. 27. Just days later, on Aug. 19, the document that Gaddis says he wrote, and other documents, were shared with Tampa Bay Times reporters, who then broke the news about the proposed developments one day later.

Gaddis said the directive was coming straight from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, and that the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, was the liaison between the Florida Department of Environmental Protection senior leadership and the governor’s office. Farill and a DeSantis spokesperson have not responded to requests for comment.

“Recently the Department became aware that you intentionally released unauthorized and inaccurate information to the public,” the dismissal letter reads. “At least one document was created, authored, and disseminated by you without direction or permission.”

Gaddis is steadfast that he worked alone, and nobody else helped him. “I’ve taken sole responsibility for this,” he said.

He said the agency was able to track the origin of his document back to him, and he told a Florida Department of Environmental Protection attorney last week that he drafted the document on a work laptop. He also told the Times that he made that document while at home from his dining room table, outside of work hours. Gaddis said he was still working to acquire an attorney as of Monday morning.

A state government personnel database showed Gaddis was first hired as a full-time state employee in 2012. Gaddis said he began working with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration that year, but moved over to the environmental agency in 2022. State data show his full-time salary is roughly $49,300.

The state is firing Gaddis over “conduct unbecoming a public employee, violation of law or department rules, negligence and misconduct,” according to the dismissal letter. The letter cites Florida statutes about state employment.

During a news conference Wednesday, DeSantis said the Florida Department of Environmental Protection would “go back to the drawing board” over the state park plans and that nothing more would happen for the rest of the year.

In his leaked memo, Gaddis said his office was to have all documents submitted to a group of appointees who vote on land changes, the Acquisition and Restoration Council, in time for its presumed approval in September. The agenda for the group’s Sept. 12 meeting doesn’t show any state parks issues will be discussed. The agenda also doesn’t mention anything about a secretive land swap, first reported by the Times, that would trade more than 300 acres of state forest land to a Hernando County golf course company. The deal still needs council approval.

Gaddis, a single farther to an 11-year-old daughter, has started a GoFundMe as he searches for a new job. As of Tuesday morning, the campaign had raised more than $26,000.

The dismissal letter given to Gaddis said the information he gave to the public was inaccurate. But not only did Gaddis accurately predict that his agency would try to fast-track public meetings, he also correctly outlined the proposed changes at nine state parks that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection would go on to confirm in social media posts several days later.

While Gov. DeSantis has tried to distance himself from the plans, saying they were “half-baked,” his own spokespeople were defending the proposals to reporters and online. Spokesperson Jeremy Redfern previously told the Times it was “high time we made public lands more accessible to the public,” and spokesperson Bryan Griffin wrote on social media that it was an “exciting new initiative.”

On top of that, Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Alex Kuchta defended the plans in an email to the Times and said the agency’s social media posts were “pointing out the fallacies” with this newspaper’s “narrative” (those posts were the first official confirmation of Times reporting hours earlier).

Regarding Gaddis’ termination, Kuchta said in a statement Monday night that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection doesn’t comment on personnel matters.

The letter is signed by Mara Gambineri, deputy secretary of the agency’s Land and Recreation department.

Online, Gaddis is being revered as a hero by state parks enthusiasts and environmentalists as links to his donation campaign circulates across the Internet.

‘Thank you sir, for putting our State Parks and all the incredible species and habitats before yourself and your financial security,” wrote Jessica Namath, conservationist chair of Tequesta’s environmental advisory committee and a leader in the online fight against building golf courses at Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

She continued: “You’re a legend in my book.”