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Updated: No waffling here—Crist rebuffs call for delay in bill signing

Posted Dec 15, 2009 by Catherine Whittenburg, Tallahassee bureau

Updated Dec 15, 2009 at 05:57 PM

Sterling Ivey, spokesman for Gov. Charlie Crist, says the latter will not yield to a call from Ax The Tax chairman Doug Guetzloe to delay signing the special-session rail bill until the recently announced investigation into Wafflegate has been completed.

The governor has big bill-signing ceremonies planned in Tampa and Orlando tomorrow, but agreed today to investigate transportation officials’ use of breakfast foods in the subject lines of SunRail-related emails. Critics—like Guetzloe, Sen. Paula Dockery and CFO Alex Sink—are claiming it was an attempt to conceal them from detection in public records searches, though DOT denies it. The emails came to light when Dockery, R-Lakeland, made such a public records request for emails pertaining to the SunRail project.

“Sen. Dockery requested the 8,000+ emails in anticipation of the special session so that a careful review of the emails could shed light on the financial and environmental impact to Florida taxpayers that SunRail legislation would establish. FDOT intentionally mislead and concealed these vital emails until after the session by bureaucratic slight of hand. A full forensic investigation of the contents of all emails should be conducted and released to the public prior to the signing of this legislation ... Governor Crist should either veto or withhold his approval of this legislation until the taxpayers of this state have a complete financial analysis of this boondoggle,” Guetzloe wrote this afternoon.

Dockery also “encouraged” Crist this afternoon to delay the signing “or better yet, veto ... the legislation we’ve now learned was authored by CSX.”

Ivey said tomorrow’s bill signings will not be delayed. He also confirmed that Crist is not yielding to Sink’s earlier call for getting rid of DOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos, who has denied that there was any deliberate concealment of anything in the email messages.