The finances of Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a wealthy multimillionaire, are coming under renewed scrutiny just weeks before his bid for re-election.
George Sheldon, a Democrat running for attorney general, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday that contends that Scott may have underreported his actual wealth by as much as $200 million. The lawsuit, which Scott's campaign derided as "mudslinging," asks a judge to declare that Scott is breaking the state's financial disclosure law.
Scott argues he's gone out of his way to be transparent. Scott's re-election campaign says he's in "full compliance" with laws requiring him to report his investments.
Sheldon's lawsuit, handled by an attorney who is a top donor to former Gov. Charlie Crist, also calls on a judge to force him to "immediately and accurately" disclose all assets he controls or owns.
"What's he hiding? That's what I really don't understand," said Sheldon. "At least, to the average citizen in Florida, it appears like an effort to obscure and hide."
The lawsuit follows a Miami Herald report that Scott is listed in federal records as controlling trust accounts that aren't listed in financial disclosure documents he is required to file each year with the state.
"The people of Florida don't really care whether Gov. Scott is worth $3 million or $300 million," said Sheldon. "What they care about is being able to determine whether he has a personal financial stake in the decisions he makes as a public official. What they care about is that their public officials tell them the truth, the whole truth, about everything but certainly about their financial interests."
During his first run for public office in 2010, Scott released three years of tax returns and a lengthy list of business holdings. But shortly after he took office, he received permission from the state's ethics commission to set up a blind trust to remove direct control over his finances. The trust is managed by a company that includes a long-time associate of Scott who managed his portfolio before he became governor. Scott did not disclose the individual assets included contained within the trust.
Florida legislators passed a law last year that authorized blind trusts, but it said that public officials who set them up must disclose the initial assets placed in the account. Scott last summer disclosed assets included in the account as of 2011 but at the time declined to reveal any information about more recent holdings.
When Scott qualified for re-election, he briefly dissolved the trust and released information about his individual holdings, including releasing additional tax returns but not the one due this year. That information gave a much broader picture of Scott's finances because the joint tax returns include financial information about his wife, Ann Scott. The tax returns showed that the Scott family earns millions more than the governor reported he earned individually.
Sheldon maintains that Scott is flouting the new law because filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that he had substantially larger holdings in several companies than what he reported to the state.
Greg Blair, a spokesman for the Scott campaign, called the lawsuit an effort by Crist to "distract" from his own record.
"This is just more mudslinging from his smear machine," said Blair.
Blair maintained that Scott had been transparent in his finances, but did not explain why Scott did not have to give a "full" disclosure of all the trusts that he controls. The Scott campaign has also called on Crist to release his wife's tax returns even though the Crists file separate returns.
This isn't the first lawsuit involving Scott's trust. This summer a lawsuit was filed that challenged the new law that allows elected officials to place their assets in a blind trust instead of reporting each investment publicly. The lawsuit from Jim Apthorp said that violated the state's constitutional requirement that elected officials disclose their finances.
Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled in late July that the law is reasonable. The decision has been appealed.