:
Welcome to Water for Fighting, where we discuss the past, present, and future of water in Florida with the people who make it happen. I'm your host, Brett Seifers. This week's discussion is brought to you by Sea and Shoreline and Resource Environmental Solutions. Sea and Shoreline is a Florida-based aquatic restoration firm that's on a mission to restore Florida's water bodies and to protect our coastline communities against severe storms. You can check out their projects at seainshoreline.com. And of course, Rez! REZ is a national leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, offering nature-based solutions with guaranteed performance through innovative delivery options. Discover more about their work and commitment to Florida and its environmental challenges by visiting www.rez.us. Alright, I'm very happy to be joined today by someone who I've either worked for or with on three different occasions over the last few decades, John Steverson. Florida Association of Counties, and has served three governor's administrations, including a stint as secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He's now a senior policy advisor with the Holland and Knight law firm. John, thanks for joining me on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Brett. So let's start way, way at the beginning. You were born and raised here in Tallahassee, which is uncommon, a lot of folks here from somewhere else, but your family goes back generations in the panhandle. Talk about that a little bit. Sure. Born and raised here in Tallahassee. And like you say, there's a few of us in the process, not many, but spent most of my weekends over in a little town called Bonafi out there in Holmes County where my family homesteaded in the late 1800s. And if you're going through the big city there, don't blink, but at the crossroads of 79 and 90, you go exactly four miles north on your right. That's Steverson road. That's us. You go two more miles. You hit Williams road. That's the rest of us between those two roads. I'm related to about 5,000 people in the panhandle and grow. and the Williams family has a big association of which I'm the current president of that association and then also president of the Williams family reunion and we're gonna have our 120th family reunion the first Saturday of October it's a big deal I invite you to come even if you're not family we'll treat you like it and even surrounds the Bonifay rodeo doesn't it? That's correct we used to call it the Redneck fabulous weekend you'd have the reunion rodeo an annual dove shoot. You'll have to actually fill that fill those stands there because I can, I can vouch, you know, for as an eyewitness to that family reunion. There are a bunch of Steversons and Williams out there. Yeah, it's something we're trying to hang on to, you know, people anymore technology like, oh, I saw so and so on Facebook. It's not the same. You have to be there and make those personal connections and personal relationships and I hope it's something I can hang on to for my boys. Holmes County in Boniface, people might not know it. I would not call it a bustling metropolis, but interestingly, your dad who is from there was an accountant and your mom who's actually from Georgia was a high school English teacher. Talk about them a little bit and how they ended up in Tallahassee. That's correct. So my dad was the most unlikely accountant you would ever meet. He was somewhat of a, you could call it a professional student, although most people go to school for eight years or called doctors. He bounced around a bit. School wasn't really his thing, but through six of those eight years, he was courting my mother and kept asking her to marry him. She goes, if you're going to marry me, you're going to have a degree. He goes, well, I just want to be right here in Bonnefee and raise hogs. She goes, that's fine. You're going to be a hog farmer with a degree. So the rest is opportunities over here. My uncle was actually working in the governor's office at the time. It was in an administrative role. He made it through five governors. That doesn't even happen anymore, but kind of hiring and firing and helped dad get on with the Department of Revenue and they had some opportunities in the rest of his history. You're here. You're growing up in Tallahassee. What was John Steverson like as a kid? I mean, I know how to surround the outdoors. That's absolutely right. And it's a good thing we don't have a camera on here so I don't up there a plow would be fitting, a bush hog, maybe those weed eaters with the big bull bars put to work. I mean I was a piece of agricultural equipment every weekend that's what we were we were on. It was work with the possible reward of going fishing or hunting when all the work was done. That was great. It got me in the outdoors, and I think we're gonna talk a little bit more about it later, but you get just off the field's edge, and there's a creek. You just get off the field's edge, and there's a spring. It brings appreciation for those types of woodlands and what that really means, and it gives you a great tie with the land that you're not just taking from it, you're returning to it, and you're protecting the surrounding areas. living. It's like here, I've seen your dad's old, old house and it's hard living out there in that kind of less populated parts of the state. But part of that hard work was designed by your father to also instill that kind of love and respect for the outdoors and these natural places, wasn't it? Absolutely. A lot of people don't realize what Northwest Florida was like. And when he was coming up, they didn't even have power. He would talk about salt curing meat and wrapping it in palm fronds and putting it down there in the smokehouse. I'm like, that's pioneer stuff. But that's just how it was. So you were reliant on the land and you were reliant on one another. Family meant something and you had to work together or you didn't eat. And so that's why from an early age, man, it's work, work. Mom would say works a four letter word. Well, it is, but you've got to get the job done if you want to reap the rewards. And a simple reward back then was being able to go fishing. But that also was kind of work because you clean the fish and you need them. But you have to have a good healthy environment in order to do that. Talk a little bit about your, your school days. Was it hard being the son of an English teacher? Well, it was really hard in high school where your mom's a teacher there and your sister was also at school. I mean, I was a good kid, but you couldn't do anything without somebody knowing what you were up to, but no, man. I mean, she was particular, uh, made sure to instill in me an attention. to detail and it goes with me to this day. If I'm reviewing a document, I'm going to see the commas not in place. I'm going to see an extra space. People are like, how do you see that? I can't unsee it. It's there. And the editorial, uh, Jean there is strong, but she put into me, you've got to put your best product forward each and every single time. She was particularly good at it. You, you told me stories before where I know you're not the biggest fan of visiting New York city, but. Your mom and those journalism students that she had at Leon High, she used to take them to New York every year, I think to visit like the New York Times and places like that, didn't she? She did. So not just teaching English, but as a journalism teacher, she did the yearbook and newspaper there, the High Life and the Lion's Tale. And they were always in the top 5% every single year of the nation. I mean, as she would take them up there to Columbia, they were always winning awards. She produced several award-winning journalists. and people who went on to do their own journalism production companies. And when she retired, she had over 200 former students show up for retirement. And you just, you don't see that for teachers very often. And when she passed, they, it was a great article in there about the impact she had on so many students here in this town and they've gone on to do great things. So yeah, great example. What was your plan coming out of high school into your college years? Did you have an idea of what you want to study? What you want to do? Well, I knew I was going to Florida State. That was going to be a given. And then, you know, something in that environmental realm, because I spent all my time outdoors, it was always something there. Geography at that time was very close to environmental studies and had classes that would put you outdoors in addition to just learning about them. Might've been that you had a little bit lower credit score that you had to get through to do that. You didn't have to have as many credits. So I could major in geography, minor in communications. and be a little bit different. Law school was kind of always a thought in the background that became really prevalent when I realized absolutely how horribly bad I was at math. I mean, I should be a surgeon. You know, I'm pretty handy with a steel, but I don't know why I had to pass calculus in order to cut people open, but that kind of pushed me towards law school there. As far as geography, there's a lot of people who are poli sci majors or English majors, and I wanted to be a little bit different and stand out. And interestingly enough, My wife is also a geography major. One of the few. Wow. And so you said that you had your eye on law school from the beginning. Was it the, this here's this natural course for me to avoid math to the highest attainable degree that one can get without it. Is that kind of the philosophy there? Well, somewhat, but you know, writing papers, uh, doing public speaking, pushing something always in that advocacy role. I liked the idea of that. I didn't have anybody in my family who was a lawyer. I didn't really know. what that meant. But I had worked as a runner in several law firms around town going through school and would see people in the process and invariably it would always cross over where you're having to deliver something to the Capitol and it would be during session. And there was always just a kind of a luring buzz around what was going on there and everybody hustling bustling and knowing that there's people there. writing laws, changing laws, impacting laws that, that impact you in your day to day in the state of Florida. It intrigued me. It did. And it seems like, at least in, in this town, most attorneys literally recoil from the idea of actually practicing law, but you at least tried it out a little bit before abandoning it. Didn't you? Yeah, I did. When I entered law school, had the idea that I was going to go be an environmental lawyer. Well, again, I didn't have anybody in the family level to really kind of bounce that off. I didn't know what it meant to be a day-to-day lawyer. My professors killed environmental law, just made it so extremely boring. And I had the good benefit of clerking at the city attorney's office here at city of Tallahassee. And I got to see a wide variety of law. It was like, you know, I don't wanna be here just passing paper back and forth across the desk, pushing for a particular permit or this or that. And took a trial practice class with professor Erhart, who wrote the book on it. And he had this deep, Iowan accent. And I took the class pass or fail, but I mean, we just. we slammed, I should have taken it for a grade, slammed our case, absolutely had a great trial. And as I'm walking out the door, he goes, good job, Stevenson. And I was like, man, this is what I should do. And I'd worked as a runner at a local law firm here and they did insurance defense and med mal defense. And I ran into one of the partners at Potbelly's one evening after a football game. And I said, I'm gonna be getting out of law school soon. He says, well, you should come work for us. And I literally walked into the job. So from there. You know, I spent two years in litigation. I got fat. I was going bald. It was like a few more years of this. I'll probably be dead. And at the end of the day, I got back to the place where I didn't want to be. You know, you're kind of pushing paper. You rarely make it into the courtroom, maybe one or two trials a year. You're having little hearings there at the courthouse, but at the end of the day, either my company was stroking somebody a check or somebody was writing us a check for our attorney fees for defending them and. when the partner who I really went to work for was headed to another firm and had an opportunity to get back really more to policy and there was an opening at the Florida Association of counties and walked in the door and got going. Yeah. And that's when I first met you when you were at the Association of counties. You worked on at least from you know, from my chair, I knew that you worked on agricultural natural resource issues, but you worked on other things in your catalog to didn't you? Absolutely transportation, economic development. and all the agricultural issues. And when I started the Association of Counties, it was a early session. Now we have them all the time, and by then you only had them for apportionment. Two weeks into it, there I was at the Capitol, arguing with people, pushing around different language for bills. And it was a much more rewarding experience to me than just the practice of law, because one, you're getting to create it. But I could open up a statute book at the end of that session, of course, when they did the reprint, and point to language that I placed in the law. or talk about why I kept a certain sentence out. It was, it was a very intellectually rewarding experience. One of which, when literally I first met you, was called the Ag Enclave Bill. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what your, what your view of it was then and how you see it now? Sure, you know, at the time I started at the counties, all 67 counties were members. And so you got to put your finger on the pulse of what was happening all across the state. make a lot of good connections and those managers, you know, county managers, they move around quite a bit, but there's always somebody in the state you can call somewhere. You get to see what's going on from a whole host of issues, but I think, yeah, the one that kind of defined my time there was Ag Enclaves and it was straight out of the gate. When I started, I was able to change some of the language, some of the verbiage, help impact that bill. The second year, they just flat out passed it exactly the way they wanted it, but then I was able to go. to the governor's office, plead my case, and Governor Bush actually vetoed that bill that year. And then I get hired on by the governor's office and the first assignment I get is to rewrite the ag enclaves bill and make it something tenable that can pass. And so that was a lottable effort in what the overall stated goal is. I'm not going to reveal too much about, you know, particular properties and what they were trying to accomplish, but it's the thought that as an agricultural landowner. you're not going to be left as the last man standing and all the green space requirements are going to be put on you. These ag families, you know, people, they get larger, people grow up, they have different interests and the property owner should not be punished for being the last green space in their area. So how do you help preserve that property? Right? How do you help encourage them to continue in agriculture, continuing to produce the food and other crops that we need here? in the state and not penalize them. And I think that overall goal was achieved. And I'm really encouraged lately when you look at, especially this year's budget, the money that's being put in for conservation easements, especially through Department of Agriculture, Rule and Family Lands, so that those families can continue to farm. They can sell off those development rights and not be punished later because they're getting a value now that really means something to the family. I wanna take just a moment to talk about my friends at Rez. Florida is a... treasure trove of natural wonders, but the cost of that treasure is our collective responsibility to restore and protect its ecological and water resources. That's where my friends at RES, the nation's leader in ecological and hydrological restoration, are at their best. With an extensive Florida-based team, RES provides top-notch, nature-based solutions that uplift Florida's ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. From water quality to hydrological restoration, wetland mitigation to coastal resilience RES addresses the complex challenges facing our state with our unique operating model of taking full responsibility for their project's performance over time. Working with both the public and private sectors, RES is tackling the issues affecting Florida's water and land resources the most. Their long-term, cost-effective, and sustainable projects rehabilitate impaired ecosystems, helping them do the work nature intended. Cleansing water, sheltering wildlife, buffering storms, and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Join Rez on their mission to restore and uplift Florida's ecosystems. Visit www.rez.us to learn more about Rez and their commitment to creating a resilient future for Florida. All right, let's get back to the conversation. Yeah, and that's something that you talked to me a lot about over the years is, and it's how important your family's farm is there in Bonnefay and preserving that as a... a green space and it seems like the state has made a real sharp turn into doing that into what is it that we can do by using these conservation agents by creating these wildlife corridors that also include keeping farmers farming keeping these places green because they're doing a good job of managing the land right absolutely they're doing a great job managing the land and I think people have realized You know, the state can go out and buy up every acre, but there's management tasks that are necessary to continue to preserve those properties. And I also think too, it sounds a little hokey, but to have a good connection with a common man, you need to have a good connection with the land. And it helps you in your relationships with others and gives you perspective that a lot of people don't really have anymore. And so after your time with the counties, you mentioned going into the governor's office and working on the exact same issue of the ag enclaves, but you were with. Teresa Tinker in the transportation and economic development unit. Yeah. And then later as the head of the environmental unit, where I ended up working for you, talk about your time with Teresa a little bit. I hope she gets to hear this man. Cause that woman taught me so much about working hard and accomplishing the goals of your principal. She's what? Maybe four, 11, five feet tall at most, but just made a steel and heart of gold and spend a lot of time making sure that you don't just get an answer. You get the answer. You keep digging. until you get it, because your job is to have the most and the most accurate information for your principal in order for them to make a decision. And when they make that decision, you carry it out. You see it all the way through. And so it was a great, great learning experience. And at that point in time, I came in on the tail end of the Bush administration. So they were a well-oiled machine, just finely tuned and they were clicking. And I will say the time with governor Bush, it was almost like an academic experience. I would do a briefing paper, get that ready, get it downstairs to plaza level to Ms. Betty or Ms. Vicki. She would make sure you'd have it. You know, and then the governor would walk. Every afternoon, he'd walk from the Capitol back to the governor's mansion. You'd see FDLE cruising behind in the suburban and a couple of guys walking on either side of them. But then he'd get home and he'd break all his papers and start going through that evening. And you might get an email at 630-730-839-3010 at night from the governor asking you questions about the document you put together. And then when you walked in the briefing room at 7.30 in the morning, there'd be 40 to 50 people there because he would have all of his policy advisors in the same room. And education could speak up on an environment issue or environment could speak on transportation if you knew what you were talking about and you better bring your A game because even if he totally agreed with you and what you put in that briefing paper, he'd play devil's advocate just to see how well you could defend your position. And like I said, it was, it was just a great, great learning experience. Yeah, that was my experience as well with him. And you're right. You talked about Teresa saying, getting it right. You were going to embarrass yourself in that room if you didn't have the answers. And he asked hard questions and he went down to not just the policy heads, the policy coordinators in the units or the legal team or legislative affairs. He was talking to analysts. If you had a bill and you were the analyst on that bill, you were going to be explaining it to the governor and you were going to have to explain what you thought about it. and he was going to challenge you. And you needed to know what you were talking about. I always thought it was like, Hey, it helps you sharpen your mind in preparation for that. And you kind of take that with you as you go, as you go on in later years. Some of those later years, you don't end up using it as much, but it's still a nice tool to have in the box. Well, people say whatever they want to, but the man cared and he either knew the subject or he wanted to know more about the subject. You talk a lot in conversations about serving the principal. You're an attorney and so by almost by nature, I don't know if they pounded into you in law school or, or where you get, or maybe it's just ingrained to you, but it's, it's doing what you came for the principal. And you did that. You worked for three governors over the years and it didn't matter which one it was or whether sometimes you even agreed with what they were doing, but you carried what they wanted you to do and do the best you could to carry it out. Is that a fair assessment? Absolutely. You work for the principal. You know, a lot of these folks who get into this process, they want to become an elected. I never wanted to be that guy. I like helping the elected reach and attain and implement good policy. I like helping driving that and steer them in the right direction, but it's their job to make the decision. And then my job to see it to the end. So you leave government service for a few years and you join the Tallahassee lobbying core, but somehow you get pulled back into service. under a guy named Herschel Venier, who is named the new secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under new governor, Rick Scott. How did you manage to get pulled back in? You're outside private sector, building up your book, working on folks, trying to help them through their issues. And you have somebody like Herschel Venier come start knocking on your door. I kind of was really hesitant to get back into government. It's like I've already been the environmental policy coordinator. I used to tell Legislative affairs directors what to do and but he just kept coming and kept coming and he'll tell you a story I told him no three different times and finally said I we're gonna bring you in you can be special counsel I'm gonna use you as a multi-tool You're gonna cover a wider range of topics for me, but I need you for my legislative stuff as well And sometimes to become part of a new administration You just have to become part of a new administration and I saw opportunities there and more importantly I saw a man, much like Governor Bush, again, committed to policy and wanting to do the right thing and going out and trying to find the right people to help them accomplish that. And I'm so glad I went in. We got to make a sea change there in the department. I know Secretary Vineyard with Deputy Secretary Littlejohn immediately began on the regulatory side of things and there was work to be done all over water management districts as well. The changes that we made there where people would actually begin to get... answers from the department versus your permitting questions just languishing for years. It was just a drastic improvement. I mean, the press made it sound like if you rolled by there, we winded down, we throw a permit in there. That's not true. You had to stop. All right. Bad joke. I give all the credit to that to Louis Grisard. But people need to know what they can or can't do with their capital and where to invest it. And if you tell them no, then at least that's an answer and they can make up their minds about what they want to do. and move on. And so there was, there was a lot of that, but then we got to work in on the water management districts and their budgets and making sure that every dollar went to water and not just administration. Yeah. And that's where you and at the time, Melissa Meeker and Herschel pulled me over to the department. But the thing that I thought was the coolest thing was the amount of latitude. that Herschel afforded folks to think through issues, to try out things, so long as the intent was to make it better. Was that your experience as well? Absolutely. You know, his philosophy is easy. Surround yourself with professionals who know what they're doing, who can help you generate good ideas and then take that to the principle for decision-making. And part of the changes, and you mentioned it just a second ago in terms of water management districts, and that's the stuff that I worked on. In terms of you leaving the department to go take the helm of the Northwest Florida Water Management District. I came along with you talk about why you took that job and why it was important to you. Again, something I wasn't necessarily looking to do, but there was a void there and the principal thought it would be good if I went and did it and signed me up. I'm going to do whatever needs to be done to overall benefit the state. And it was really. nice to be able to go back to where your family has generations of history and actually help people in these smaller local governments, areas that often get overlooked. And then you had the ability to actually save some of these natural resources, not just have to come back and try to restore them. And all that was very important work. So much gets sent in Florida down to South Florida. You hear about the Everglades, you hear about these other areas. in Northwest Florida can kind of get overlooked and it was nice to be able to put a spotlight on that and go in there and work to improve these areas that have always meant so much to me. Yeah and that's an important distinction that perhaps people in other parts of the state might not get. You can find a creek in its springs. You have Gainer spring which is a outstanding Florida spring. You have the Chipola river, Perdido river, St. Joe bay, you name it on and on and on. There are these places that are important, special, but surrounded by small communities. You started something where we had a whole bunch of money. It was something like, I want to say $110 million that was sitting in a savings account. And you said, why don't we put this to work in these communities? Right. And you did that places like Blunstown, Bonifay, Noma, Century, that hadn't got any attention from anyone. And a couple hundred thousand dollars meant a lot to them. Didn't it? Yeah. A little bit of out of money goes a long way here. the panhandle, but you also have to build the case and let the decision makers over here in the Capitol know why you're doing what you're doing. And you need to follow the rules that they've set out in order to do that. And first and foremost, we walked in the door, you know, the work we had to do. That's actually implement the law. We began the first MFL, minimum flows and levels program there that for years had just been ignored. We did that in order to protect these natural resources. And yet also be able to turn around with our handout, ask for more money to protect those. And then ask for more money for these smaller local governments to provide people good, clean, safe drinking water while protecting the surrounding environment. Yeah. And that's something that stuck or maybe it was a difference in maybe what I'd seen prior to that, which is I don't recall at any time when you and I were at the water management district or later. And we'll get to that in a second when you were, ended up becoming the secretary DP. I don't remember a time under governor Scott or even the beginnings of governor DeSantis when I was still at the district where they said, no, when you explained something that you needed to accomplish, you were able to articulate that need. And so where there was MFLs land management, hurricane recovery, and also things directly related to these small communities, they were, I don't remember ever getting a no, do you? No, and that's a big part of the work that we did on a personal level as well. First and foremost, you got to follow the law. You got to do what's right by the resources and try to help the folks around you. But you've got to build those personal relationships with the decision makers over here so that they know when you come to see them, that you're going to do the right thing with the dollars that they'll give you. They need to know that you know what you're talking about in order to accomplish the goals that you're setting out and that you're laying out for them as a path to help. their citizens. And that extended the work in Northwest, at least extended to the regulatory side of things as well. You're a big proponent where we talked about minimum flows and levels quickly there, but there are other issues where you look at something going into it and say, what does the law say? The law says we have to do minimum flows and minimum levels. So we're going to do that. The law says that we have to protect these resources doing environmental resource permitting, But that doesn't mean you can't do it better and more efficiently and come to decision-making faster, right? Correct. The improvements there from the time that you were there to the day I walked out the door, those numbers just kept getting better and better with the same level of protection that people would expect from folks that are there to protect that resource. Absolutely. Wide open say fast is fine, but accuracy is final, but there's no reason to be slow about it. Let's go. Herschel Vineyard moves on from the secretary role. You come in, tell me about how that decision making process worked. Was it something that you looked at that role and said, Hey, I can probably do some good there. When did, when did that happen in your mind? Well, it really happened when I got the ask from the governor. And there I am in Northwest Florida amongst my people. giving back to the community. People are happy to see you when you show up, right? Cause they know that that's either one money to help them accomplish a project or two, you're there to protect the resource. And it was nice to give back to the area that had given so much to me. Then you get the call from the gov like, Hey, why don't you lose all your free and family time, take a pay cut and have over half the state hate you. What can you say except for sign me up gov, but yeah, was there a desire to do it? Absolutely had a long list of secretaries who were really good and strong, but seeing what Vineyard was able to accomplish, certainly I would want to have gone in there and be able to, to leave my mark as well and help protect this state and the natural systems that mean so much to me. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. Cause I know you well enough to know that you care about the thing in the end. You care about the resource. You care about people. You care about people's money that pay to help these places. All right. Let's pause for a moment and talk about my friends at seeing shoreline. As we in Florida wonder what the future holds when we face the storm season ahead, Sea & Shoreline is working to protect our coastline communities against severe storms by installing a variety of green and gray infrastructure solutions to make our cities and counties more resilient. These solutions include seagrass restoration, mangroves, oyster reefs, riprap, oyster break waters and something called a WOD, which stands for Wave Attenuation Device. By installing their patented WODs, Sea & Shoreline can help protect our communities against sea and storm surges by defusing wave energy, stopping shoreline erosion, and even rebuilding shorelines through sand accretion. To learn more about how Sea and Shoreline can protect your community, visit seainshoreline.com. Alright, let's get back to the conversation. But you actually end up being a rather controversial secretary at DEP. Was that by design or, I mean, what do you attribute that to? Certainly not by design. But when I looked at what had been already tackled and handled at the department under the four years of Vineyard, I mean, you've gotten regulatory rocket and rolling, he had other areas of the apartment where you'd made a lot of efficiencies and things were moving forward and really the last piece was state lands and a big chunk of that. When I looked at it was state parks and just the revenue suck that it was. I mean, all the money, it was basically relying. on the government for a handout. And where I came up and how I was raised, being self-sustainable was okay. Apparently, all of a sudden that became a very bad word. And we had a lot of folks who had just recently left their role in the state parks, and then a few people who probably should have gone ahead and left their role in state parks, where we couldn't even get together and talk and brainstorm. Like if I had, if I said something in a meeting at 2.30 by five o'clock, there was a reporter tweeting it out. They just absolutely wanted no change whatsoever and what these people couldn't grasp. And what I was trying to make happen is that if folks in Florida don't get out and appreciate these wild places and get out and see them and experiencing them in a good state of management, they're never going to have an appreciation for that. And they won't understand why this is so important. And a lot of folks saw those parks as their personal parks. They didn't want anybody else there. And the things that I was talking about in those meetings and we're sitting there brainstorming, like, okay, we're gonna talk about timber management. Oh, they're gonna clear cut the parks. I mean, that was, you know, the next headline. No, there's things called timber stain improvement that you do to help forested woodlands, whether that you're looking for that kind of more natural look, or if you're actually managing for timber production, but that's not what we're going for in the state parks. But the natural cycles that would happen, the lightning strikes and the... massive low burning fires that would move across the state of Florida. That's been disrupted by man. So you can't just say, we're going to buy this, put a fence around it and never touch it again, because that doesn't work. You have got to manage and take care of the properties that are in your charge. And there was the other one, Oh, hunting state parks, they're going to start just shooting things out on the, that was the farthest from the truth. You remember when we were at the water management district. We hosted a wounded warrior hunt, I think, when you do it in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, it's called Operation Outdoor Freedom. The difference that made in those people's lives, I remember the one young man, his dad came up there and he told me he has had horrible crippling migraines every day since he got back from Iraq. He has been so excited about this hunt, he has not had a headache in two weeks, and then that guy sat in the blind from sunup to sundown and he got his deer. And I made... a difference in that person's life. And so, okay, well, what does that have to do with state parks? All parks aren't just small tracks, a couple hundred acres. We have parks that are 30,000 acres in expanse. They are run over polluted with wild hogs. In some cases, we're just letting it go. In some cases, we're paying trappers to do it. Why couldn't we have the benefit of an area of a wounded warrior type hunt in an area where you're not going to have the traffic and hikers and all that stuff? And certainly you would do it in a coordinated method. But that was never the information that was allowed to get out. Also, knowing my audience, Republican-led legislature, and you know the people who were chairman at the time, if I'm going to go and ask them for millions of dollars of land management money so we can actually put some of these practices into place and take care of the places that are in our charge, I need to be able to show a return on investment. So I'm playing to my audience, and man, some of the park people, they could not stand it. So there's a couple of reporters that would just come and write articles and just come after me nonstop. It's interestingly enough, those people have now been moved along from their positions. And I think then too, a lot of people still really believed the press. It was, you know, I'm not in any way remotely equating myself to Trump, but you know, it's kind of pre-Chump before people saw a lot of what really happens, that there's a narrative and if you don't fit the narrative, we're going to write you down. And this is how it's going to be. I mean, you talked a little bit about those reporters. Some people said some pretty mean things about you. I can understand disagreeing with somebody you and I have, you know, disagreed once in a while over the years. Some of it seemed pretty personal. Did that start to wear at you a bit? You know, it didn't really bother me that much. It bothered my mama because she was a journalist and she raised journalists. And she's like, why are they writing this? What are they doing? And that's because I said, mom. It doesn't fit the narrative. It's all about the story they want to tell. We even sat with one of the writers in front of his editorial board and communications director told him at the time, your job is to print the truth. And he said, nope, my job is to write what I think my readers need to hear. And that was the mindset. I just put my head down. I get about my work. I know what we were doing. I know what we were doing was right. I knew what my principal wanted to accomplish. And at the end of the day, it was after I left the department, but they had right at an additional $50 million for land management. The park rangers, the managers of those parks finally started realizing what it was we were trying to put into place. I wanted them to be able to focus on the visitors of the park. They call it the nomenclature within the department is interpreting the park. So I want you there. Showing people around the park, explaining to them why this is important, what this means to the state of Florida, what this means to them versus you having to worry about whether or not it's time to burn. Do I have to plow the fire lines, you know, putting in fire breaks? Do I have to do this? There's all types of management activities that can occur under that park manager's overall supervision but not necessarily them having to do the day to day. I mean, you say you weren't terribly frustrated, or at least that, you know, not enough to afford to be the reason that, you know, somebody's running you out of the department, but you ended up leaving, but it was for a different reason, wasn't it? Tell the story that you told me a long time ago and shared sense about what your son said. And I think it was a school assignment or something like that. That kind of turned your mind. Yeah. So this is not to be the, the woe is me part of the thing, but from the day I took that job, I mean, it was one little personal trial after another, literally the day I took the gig lost a great aunt, she'd made it to one Oh five. It was pretty amazing. Then a few months later, my grandmother. Right after that, my dad had a surgery that led to multiple complications. I lost him in June of 2016, right there at the beginning of July. And during that time, my mother was also battling cancer. While all that's going on, I'm trying to run an agency of nearly 3,000 people. And then also, I had a young family. I had a very young child at the time. He's at Faith Preschool, and they're doing a little unit on their dad. They would do one on the mom, one on the dad, different family members. And I remember when my oldest went through there, they said, what's your daddy's favorite place to go? And he said, Oh, he takes us to the woods. We go to the farm. We go fishing. My youngest wrote a daddy's favorite place to go is the airport. When you're running a department like that and Florida is a big state, is he got a lot of areas of cover. You're gone three or four days out of the week. So it takes a heavy toll. And the situation with my mom had gotten to a point where it was. pretty rough again. We'd gone through chemo that wasn't working. We had tried some different experimental stuff was not working and things were getting bad. I left only had another month with her after leaving the department, but she wouldn't have wanted me to do any different. And she probably would have wanted me to stay right there and keep grinding it out. And if I had known we were have a chance to implement 404, maybe, maybe I would have, but I do believe it was the right thing for me to do at the time for my family. With those challenges, especially toward getting your tenure there in place, but in the end, were you satisfied with your time there and what you got accomplished? Absolutely. Wherever I go, I leave it all on the table. And if you read the articles, it sounds like we didn't get anything done except for destroy the state, but I know personally what we did. And I know the improvements we made in land management. A lot of those efficiencies had been made and permitting. We just fine tune them. But for me, really. It's the people, it's the team that you get to put together and the folks like, I believe one of your first guests, Brian Armstrong there at Southwest Florida Water Management District. I think you've also had Ann Shortell on here, you know, very bright scientists running multiple water management districts. So you had Ryan Matthews on here, you know, people who could make a difference and impact the state of Florida and just bring about positive change and being able to surround myself with those folks and getting them out there. And I mean, all the work you did. at Northwest after I left there. I mean, it has had a positive impact on the state and I'm very proud of that. So I think the year at that point is 2017. You head back out to the private sector as one does to lobby and consult. First, you did it for Foley and Lardner and now you're doing it for the Holland and Knight firm, very highly regarded, well-respected firms here in the state and beyond. Tell me about that work and why the skillset. that you have is unique and what value that brings to your clients. Yeah, when you look at this process and lobbyists across the spectrum, and people now, I guess, lobbying is almost a dirty word, but you've got the guys that are straight politicos, big checks, shiny suits, face men, I'm obviously not that. And then you've got guys on the other side that are just straight up policy wonks, and then you've got folks who are here in the middle. with political sensitivities and relationships they've either built from working inside an agency or then also on the straight up the campaign side who also have some substance to them. And that's where I really fit in right there. And so that comes from the relationships that I've built with the folks, some of them who I worked with and helped with when I was at the department, and some of those who learned about that goal, you know, those works later, but know that they can rely on me for good policy information. And so it's again, always in that advocacy role for your principal. And look, man, government creates a lot of problems. And so you got a lot of people who need help inside those agencies making things move. Or what I really enjoy is the day-to-day blocking and tackling that happens there at the Capitol. And so your principal needs help developing a policy platform. So you can put that policy platform together, go meet with the legislative members, help them understand why this is important. And then you have to go out with everyone and work pushing that through the process for people who build up support and agree with you, and then fight off the ones who disagree with you and get to a good work product at the end of the day that benefits your principal. I think some people have the idea that you have a company, a corporation, and because they're large and make a lot of revenue and do large things, a lot of times projects, stuff like that. I'm thinking about some of your clients right now, but that doesn't necessarily equate to them understanding. how to relate to their own government. Same as I imagine many people in this big state are in. Do you see yourself as somebody that's just helping folks with their relationship with the government? In part, I really see my job as to have the most and the most accurate information at any given point in time so that my friends will make a decision. When you're on the outside, you're helping them take that information, break it down and then figure out how to get to the key decision makers to get to the decision they need. to help them. So yeah, you're, you're a guide in a way, getting through the quagmire of government and helping make things move. All right. Let's get to some questions that I asked to all the guests and some of them are, you know, they're not the, some of them are not the fairest questions, but you're going to get them anyway. So what professional accomplishment are you most proud of? I'd never listened to a podcast before you asked me to be on this one. So I tried to listen to a couple of years. I've casted to some pods of fish, but I tried to listen to a couple of years before coming in here today. And I guess a lot of people will go to a post or rank achieved with the side of the government. So it's obviously being executive director at Northwest Florida water management district and being secretary of department from, from that standpoint, you know, feathers in the cap. Absolutely. But I will try to look at the projects, especially a lot of those that you and I got to do there. at the district, like the hardening of the springs there at Econ Finest so that people could come enjoy them without destroying them. That's huge in my mind because people need to be able to get out and recreate and appreciate these places in order to understand the work that we do and why that's important. So lots of things like that, fighting for the ACF, Appalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint River, you know, even though I took a beating over it, it was worth it. the fight. It was worth the cost because we had an opportunity to try to save an ecosystem versus just having to come back later and try to restore it. But really for me, it is about the people, the people you get to work with, the professionals that you get to help see their careers progress and know that they're making positive changes in the state. I miss the team. I don't miss the day to day agency, you know, just everything you have to deal with there, but I miss the people around it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Is there something that nags at you in terms of something maybe that you feel was left undone, at least in the public service side of things? You know, there's things you wish you could have had more of an impact on. You know, we talked about ACF, we talked about some of those, but man, I leave it all on the table and I'm proud of what I was able to do. Are you optimistic about the future of water and the environment in Florida and why? I am. A large part of that is funding. When you look at $117 billion this year in the budget, if you and I had numbers like that to work with back in the day, when you look at Florida, we have an overabundance of water in so many areas. So we have almost a funding problem more than we really have a water problem. And we're coming up with all kinds of innovative technologies in order to deal with these situations. And I think from all the work that folks in our arena have done, people are starting to realize... the importance of water and its necessity, not only for growth in Florida, but for the natural systems. And you know, used to when we started this, people didn't really think about water unless they turn on their tap and it either didn't come out at all or it came out green or brown or smelling funny. And now that's not the case, it's on people's conscience and I think that's a good thing for the state. What, if anything, keeps you up at night regarding Florida's future? Just general apathy. When you look at, we're probably what, entering our second generation? of Floridians who all they know are cement and lights. They're not getting out. They're not seeing these places. They're not engaged with their environment. And if you're not having that connection, you're not at least going to the beach, dipping your toe in the salt water, casting a line out there, reeling in a fish or getting to the heartland and seeing these springs and understanding, wow, you know, this really is a part of Florida. That, that concerns me. What advice would you give a young person? who's either just entering or has some interest in entering public service. I would say find your passion and pursue it. Figure out how you can make the most impact for the state of Florida. When you get a task, you know, go, go all in on it. Don't just find an answer, find the answer, and don't let somebody tell you that you can't do something because you can and you'll do it better than them. If folks want to know more about how you can help them with a four permit or anything else, how can they reach you? Absolutely. So I'm. somewhat of a troglodyte, but Holland and I has a great marketing team. And I think if you go online and look us up, you'll see my ugly mug there, but all my contact information is right there, right here in Tallahassee and tons of people have my telephone number anyway. So give me, give me a call. We'll be happy to help you. Right on. And I'll put the website link and your email and the, the episode notes as well. So people can reach it that way as well. Sounds good. John Stevenson. Thank you for coming on the show. Well, thanks for having me, Brett. It's interesting to try to have this conversation when you already pretty much know all this stuff, but I guess you did your best to tease it out of me and let me try to say it. That's all right. It was nice to get your story out there for other people to hear as well. Thanks, man. Yep. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening to Water for Fighting. This podcast has been brought to you by Rez and C&Shoreline. Don't forget to check the episode notes to visit their websites and learn more about how they can help you. If you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you use. and don't forget to leave a 5 star rating in review. You can follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, probably even Twitter at FLWaterpod and you can reach me directly at FLWaterpod at gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and or what you'd like to know more about. Production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thanks to Carl Sworn for making the best of what he had to work with and to Dave Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. A very special thank you goes out to Bo Spring from the Bo Spring Band. for giving permission to use his music for the podcast. The song is called, Doin' Work for Free, and you should check out the band live or wherever great music is sold. Join me next time for another amazing conversation with someone who has helped shape water and environmental policy in the Sunshine State. Until then, keep your whiskey close and your water close.