Gov. Rick Scott, Solantic and conflict of interest: What's the deal?
By Kris Hundley, Times Staff Writer
Friday, April 1, 2011 5:48pm
If you have a $62 million investment, representing the biggest single chunk of your $218 million in wealth, and you put it in a trust under your wife's name, does that mean you're no longer involved in the company? Florida Gov. Rick Scott says it does.
Scott has aggressively pursued policies like testing state workers and welfare recipients for drugs, switching Medicaid patients to private HMOs and shrinking public health clinics. All these changes could benefit that $62 million investment, but Scott sees no legal conflict between his public role and private investments.
And, experts say, under Florida law he is correct.
A few days before he took office in January, Scott moved his shares in Solantic Corp., a chain of 32 urgent care centers, to the Frances Annette Scott Revocable Trust. Scott co-founded Solantic in 2001 and was involved in its operation until last year. His wife's trust now holds enough stock in the private company to control it.
By transferring the Solantic shares to his wife's trust, which is represented on the Solantic board by one of his former business associates, Scott maintains he is free from any possible conflicts.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/gov-rick-scott-solantic-and-conflict-of-interest-whats-the-deal/1161158
This first article says that the wife's trust is revocable, therefore NOT a blind trust as the article below claims. Maybe the Scotts changed the nature of the trust before Solantis got its state contract but that still doesn't make it any cleaner.
Rick Scott’s Drug Law Isn’t Saving Florida Much Money
By Travis Waldron
Aug 24, 2011
<SNIP>
While the state will save little, if any, money on the drug testing racket, Scott’s family could stand to gain financially. A former health care executive, Scott founded Solantic Corp., a chain of walk-in health care clinics that provides, among other services, drug tests. Scott maintains that he has no involvement in the company, but he does have $62 million worth of the company’s shares contained in a blind trust under his wife’s name. Though there is no conflict under Florida law unless the company deals with the governor’s office directly, the company, and thus Scott’s investment, could benefit from the increased traffic from drug tests.
<SNIP>
https://thinkprogress.org/rick-scotts-drug-law-isn-t-saving-florida-much-money-104e05dc4fc0#.o88vdy5z0
The Sham Of Drug Testing For Benefits: Walker, Scott And Political Pandering
Judy Stone
Feb 17, 2015
<SNIP>
For example, Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and of Medscape, has decried the cost of such testing, given the absence of evidence to support it. At a cost of ~$45 per drug screen, it would cost ~$5,431,995,000 to screen all 120,711,000 full-time employees. As Dr. Lundberg stated, “This is terrific for the laboratory industry and all the attorneys who will argue these cases . . . but should we spend that kind of money?’ He wrote. ‘In fact, we have not found one proper cost-benefit analysis of this process’ in the medical literature.” Dr. Lundberg, among others, has expressed outrage at “chemical McCarthyism.”
Conveniently, Rick Scott pushed mandatory drug testing—provided, in part, by his wife’s company, Solantic.
Scott transferred his $62 million stake in the company to his wife only a few months before mandating drug testing for state employees and welfare recipients. Many companies provide drug testing, including Quest, LabCorps, Roche, and Mobile Diagnostic Testing. There are programs by DATIA and others on how to start your own testing business or become a contractor.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2015/02/17/the-sham-of-drug-testing-walker-scott-and-political-pandering/#65beb6423470
= new reply since forum marked as read
