By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org, Special to SouthFloridaReporter.com, Aug 19, 2015 – Governor Rick Scott keeps his $127.8 million stock portfolio in a blind trust intended, by law, to prevent him from having knowledge or control of his investments and to eliminate conflicts between the governor’s public responsibilities and his private interests.
But Florida’s qualified blind trust statute, a little-noticed part of the large 2013 ethics reform bill signed into law by Scott himself, isn’t doing its job. While veiling the governor’s assets from the public, the blind trust fails to keep him blind to his investments.
There are two reasons why: disclosure requirements in federal securities law that can undercut blind trust secrecy, and weak conflict-of-interest rules in Florida that don’t require public officers like the governor to disclose assets they own or control when held in their spouse’s name.
