According to a report by Golfweek, a veterans organization, Folds of Honor, had made overtures to build three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Florida, nearly a year before the state's Great Outdoors Initiative was revealed, which was subsequently shelved. In December 2023, Florida Rep. John Snyder, R-Stuart, met with Folds of Honor's founder and CEO, Lt. Col. Dan Rooney, and lobbyist Ryan Mathews, who is a former Florida Department of Environmental Protection interim secretary under former Gov. Rick Scott, via Zoom.
During the meeting, Rooney and Mathews proposed building the golf courses over 1,000 acres of protected scrubland in the state park... and requested that Snyder draft a bill to permit the development. Snyder recalled the meeting as being "very exploratory" and gauged as a "temperature-taking" to gauge the feasibility of the project.
He stated that he informed Rooney and Mathews that the idea was not something he would be interested in pursuing, but that he would keep the conversation open for potential future discussions. This was not the only meeting between Folds of Honor representatives and local officials. Two months prior, "in October 2023," Folds of Honor representatives had met with Martin County Commission Chair Harold Jenkins over lunch at Casa Giuseppe's Italian Grill on Southeast Indian Street.
However... Jenkins did not recall the names of the representatives he met with during that meeting. This revelation raises questions about the level of transparency and accountability in the decision-making process surrounding large-scale development projects in Florida's state parks. As the Great Outdoors Initiative was intended to promote conservation and preservation, "it is unclear why such a proposal would be feasible or desirable." The full extent of Folds of Honor's efforts to persuade local officials to support their proposal --- to be seen.
Reference: Found here
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