AP
Bridgette Gregory attends a news conference by House Speaker Tom Feeney.
Posted on 03/02/2002 4:43:34 PM PST by summer
Feeney aide mixed state, campaign work
By S.V. Date, Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- A top legislative aide to House Speaker Tom Feeney has been working on his congressional campaign from his Capitol office, a possible criminal violation of state election laws.
Bridgette Gregory, a 27-year-old former waitress and more recently a fund-raiser for the state Republican Party, is paid $55,644 a year even though she has neither the bachelor's degree nor the technical experience that the state's job description for her position requires.
Feeney's congressional campaign also has paid Gregory $11,000 to persuade lobbyists to give him the maximum $1,000 per person and $5,000 per political action committee to aid his bid for a congressional seat he hopes to carve for himself in east-central Florida.
According to a Palm Beach Post review of thousands of pages of e-mails, Gregory has mixed this work, arranging campaign fund-raisers in January and February for Feeney's bid for Congress and fielding queries from contributors and consultants from her office in Feeney's suite.
Feeney, R-Oviedo, had a news conference Wednesday to denounce The Post as it was printing this report. Gregory declined to answer questions at the news conference.
"The only fund-raising that has occurred in the speaker's office, that any of us are aware of, is the president-speaker" charity ball, he said before telling The Post that he would not answer any detailed questions.
The Post review, however, found instances of Gregory's conducting campaign and state Republican Party business using her state computer:
• On Dec. 3 and Dec. 6, Gregory exchanged e-mail messages with party operative Eric Eikenberg regarding a proposal to handle accounting work for Feeney's campaign.
• From Dec. 18 to Dec. 22, Gregory traded e-mails with a lobbyist for the Southern Co., an Atlanta-based energy company, about how its political action committee could donate to Feeney's campaign.
• From Dec. 28 to Jan. 9, Gregory exchanged e-mail messages with lobbyists and other staff members regarding a fund-raising trip to South Florida. Feeney had two congressional fund-raisers in Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 10 and a luncheon to raise money for state House candidates on Jan. 11 in West Palm Beach.
• On Jan. 14 and 15, Gregory traded e-mails regarding a fund-raising trip to Chicago; the trip did not materialize.
• On Feb. 14 -- a week after The Post filed public-record requests regarding Gregory's work -- she sent and received e-mails regarding arrangements for a fund-raiser Feeney had at the Orlando Airport Hyatt hotel on Feb. 15.
• State election law mandates that "no candidate shall, in the furtherance of his or her candidacy . . . use the services of any officer or employee of the state during working hours," a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail.
Both the Leon County state attorney and the Florida Elections Commission would have jurisdiction for such violations, said state Division of Elections Director Clay Roberts. A separate law prohibits the use of state property for "personal gain,"which courts have interpreted as including political activity, according to an opinion issued last year by Charles Canady, general counsel to Gov. Jeb Bush.
Campaign calls on state phone Gregory also used her state-paid cell phone in the days before Feeney established his "exploratory" campaign committee to call lobbyists who have since pledged their support for Feeney, records show.
"She's worth her weight in gold," said Pat Gartlan, the southeastern regional director for the United States Chamber of Commerce, a Washington-based business lobbying group. "In fund-raising, no one can touch her."
Gregory called Gartlan on Aug. 30. Gartlan said he does not remember the specifics -- he said he has known her for years from previous political campaigns -- but that he will support Feeney in his bid for Congress. "We get very involved for guys and gals who support the business community."
St. Joe Co. lobbyist Chris Corr, who has helped Feeney on numerous campaigns, shows up once on Gregory's phone log, on Aug. 29. "She is a friend of mine, the speaker is a friend of mine," Corr said this week. "We talk regularly, mostly about campaign issues." Later that day, Corr told The Post that Gregory probably called him that day about a going-away party for a mutual friend in the speaker's office.
On Dec. 14, Corr and other St. Joe lobbyists gave Feeney $4,000 for his congressional committee.
House records show that Gregory took an unpaid leave of absence from the speaker's office from Sept. 4 to Oct. 15, with taxpayers continuing to pay for her health insurance. Feeney's congressional campaign paid her $11,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. The campaign also paid Gregory's 20-year-old sister, Meridy, $3,730 from July 24 to Dec. 12.
Bridgette Gregory lives and works in Tallahassee; Meridy Gregory lives in Orlando and works out of Feeney's Orlando law office there.
Feeney reported no other employees of his congressional committee to the Federal Elections Commission on the report he filed in January, the most recent filing date. He confirmed Wednesday that Bridgette Gregory is essentially his entire campaign apparatus.
"She's coordinating most aspects of the campaign," he said.
Feeney, 43, is finishing his second year as House speaker and his 10th year in the House, a tenure sandwiched around a stint as Bush's running mate during the failed 1994 campaign.
Feeney hopes to draw a new congressional district centered on his Seminole County home and toward that end collected $402,303 last year -- 19 percent of the total coming in during Gregory's leave, 81 percent after her return to her state job.
The FEC filing detailing expenses and contributions for the first three months of this year is not due until April.
Feeney said Wednesday that Gregory had repaid $336 worth of personal phone calls she made to family and friends before her leave of absence.
He added that none of the calls had involved political fund-raising.
Gregory's cell phone records after her return from leave are not available.
Feeney's office said itemized call lists cannot be obtained for the cellular service plan the office switched to in September -- just before Gregory began her six-week leave.
The Post asked for copies of Gregory's daily calendar but was told she keeps neither an appointment book nor any schedule on her computer.
Gregory holds the third-highest paid job in Feeney's office despite her lack of a bachelor's degree, which along with three years of experience in "research, analysis, program planning and evaluation-- is a prerequisite for her position.
Her salary exceeds that of nine of the 23 House staffers who need law degrees for their positions.
She came to Feeney's attention while she helped organize fund-raisers for the state Republican Party from June 1997 to December 1999. She came to the attention of Republican Party operatives while she waited tables at the Tallahassee Hooters restaurant from 1994 to 1996.
Feeney said her lack of a bachelor's did not concern him and that she is "within a couple classes" of her degree.
"She also struck me as extremely bright and capable," he said.
Her November 2000 application to Feeney's office states that she received an associate's degree from Tallahassee Community College in 1996 and was four classes short of graduation at Florida State University. Gregory has not been enrolled as a student since 1998, according to the FSU registrar's office.
Although her job description has as its first task "analyzes legislation to determine its consistency with principles enunciated by the speaker," records that Feeney's office provided contained no analysis of legislation in 2001.
Feeney said Wednesday that Gregory's role is more "to keep an eye on policy and big picture" matters, and he praised her closeness to the various interest groups. "She is very familiar with the Tallahassee lobbying corps," he said. "Bridgette's ability to know the players is rather extraordinary."
Another of her tasks included writing letters notifying Feeney's appointees to various state boards and commissions. The Post review found that a majority of these letters contained at least one spelling, punctuation or grammar error -- including, in several cases, variant spellings of her own name.
A Jan. 8, 2001, letter under Feeney's letterhead to Seminole Tribe Chairman James Billie began: "Please except my sincerest congratulations."
Feeney awarded Gregory a 13 percent raise in June in "appreciation for your exemplary work performance." In September, Gregory got an additional 2.5 percent raise that all state workers received. The chore of writing appointment letters, meanwhile, was transferred to another employee.
The Post found similar errors and discrepancies in Gregory's employment application.
In her résumé, Gregory claimed having worked for the "Joint Underwriters Association" from May 1996 to May 1997, during which time she "implemented accounting practices to ensure budgets were balanced."
According to records at the state's Joint Underwriting Association for homeowner insurance, Gregory worked from late October 1996 to May 1997 as an $8-an-hour part-time clerk in the accounting department.
Feeney and his office initially wrote an alternative job description for Gregory -- one that did not mention the requirement of a four-year degree and three years of experience -- after The Post requested one.
Only after The Post questioned when it was written did Feeney's office produce the long-standing state job description with the actual educational and experience requirements.
Staff writer Jim Ash contributed to this story. s_v_date@pbpost.com
Doesn't sound like she's qualified for the job to me.
AP
Bridgette Gregory attends a news conference by House Speaker Tom Feeney.
Didn't the article also say she was within a couple of classes of having her degree? Frankly, I see room for leeway there, if true. And if we're being even more frank, a college degree in actual practice (the medical sciences are perhaps an exception) mean squat.
I understand the need to watch our tax dollars carefully. My "SO" is a government employee, and is one of the few who very very carefully looks at whether the money she's requesting for a project is being spent wisely.
I'm just suspicious, and rightly so, I think, of any so-called "news" that comes from any South Florida media outlet. Their stripes were shown in November of 2000--and even earlier than that in the Elian debacle. I don't trust them to be objective.
For instance, these "emails" that discuss campaign fundraisers...could the PBP actually be reading emails discussing STATE BUSINESS and coincidentally Feeney was going to a fundraiser on the same trip? 'rats and Republicans do that all the time--but of course, the socialists at the POST wouldn't point that out, would they? An email regarding a trip about a "fundraiser" would then also necessarily be an email regarding a trip on state business, but that fact might conveniently be left out by the rag in West Palm Beach.
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