Whistleblower Who Raised Alarm About Florida State Parks Fired By State Agency

On Saturday afternoon, James Gaddis had just returned home when he found a termination letter on his doorstep.

The former two-year employee of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection told the Tampa Bay Times that he was the one who leaked information about the state’s plans to build golf courses, 350-room hotels, pickleball courts and more at nine state parks, including two in the Tampa Bay area.

Now, according to a copy of the letter shared with The Times, the agency appears to be firing him.

Gaddis, 41, who is employed by the agency as a cartographer, said his actions were not political and that there were two main reasons he chose to speak out: the hasty secrecy behind the park plans and the enormous environmental destruction that would be caused if they were completed.

“It was the absolute and flagrant disregard for critical and globally endangered habitat in these parks,” Gaddis said in an interview Tuesday morning. Gaddis said he was tasked with creating proposed land-use concept maps depicting golf courses and other developments. Two proposals stood out to him: the Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf course and the 350-room Anastasia State Park hotel.

“This would have been a complete clearing of all that habitat,” Gaddis said. He recalls his hand, hovering over a computer mouse, shaking with anger and frustration as he was ordered to rush his maps by senior leaders. “The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should behave this way.”

According to Gaddis’s timeline, he was ordered in a Microsoft Teams meeting to begin working on the rushed proposals the week of July 29. The first map document he created was marked with a creation date of August 1. As tensions mounted within the Office of Park Planning, Gaddis began drafting a document outlining all the park plans by the weekend of August 17.

“The office has been directed to abandon/suspend other duties and settle these amendments as expeditiously as possible,” Gaddis wrote in his anonymous memo. He warned in his memo, correctly, that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection was planning to schedule eight nearly simultaneous public meetings for August 27. days later, on August 19, the document Gaddis claims to have written, along with other documents, were shared with reporters at the Tampa Bay Times, who reported the proposed development the next day.

Gaddis said the directive came directly from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office and that the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, was the liaison between senior leadership at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the governor’s office. Farrill and a spokesperson for DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment.

“The Department recently became aware that you have knowingly released unauthorized and inaccurate information to the public,” the termination letter reads. “At least one document was created, written, and distributed by you without direction or permission.”

Gaddis is adamant that he worked alone and that no one else helped him. “I took sole responsibility for this,” he said.

He said the agency was able to trace the source of his document and told a Florida Department of Environmental Protection attorney last week that he had drafted the document on a work laptop. He also told the Times that he had drafted the document while at home, at his dining room table, outside of work hours. Gaddis said he was still working to find a lawyer Tuesday morning.

A state government personnel database showed that Gaddis was first hired as a full-time state employee in 2012. Gaddis said he began working with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration that year but switched to the environmental agency in 2022. State data shows his full-time salary is about $49,300.

The state is firing Gaddis for “conduct unbecoming a public servant, violation of law or department rules, negligence and misconduct,” according to the termination letter. The letter cites Florida state employment statutes.

At a press conference Wednesday, DeSantis said the Florida Department of Environmental Protection would be “going back to the drawing board” on the state park plans and that nothing else would happen for the rest of the year.

In his leaked memo, Gaddis said his office would have to submit all the paperwork to an appointed group that votes on land changes, the Acquisition and Restoration Council, in time for its expected approval in September. The agenda for the group’s Sept. 12 meeting does not show that state parks issues will be discussed. The agenda also makes no mention of a secret land swap, first reported by the Times, that would exchange more than 300 acres of state forest land for a Hernando County golf course company. The deal still needs approval from the council.

Gaddis, a single father of an 11-year-old daughter, started a GoFundMe fundraiser while he searches for a new job. As of Tuesday morning, the campaign had raised more than $26,000.

The termination letter given to Gaddis said the information provided to the public was inaccurate. But not only had Gaddis correctly predicted that his agency would seek to expedite public meetings, he had also correctly outlined proposed changes at nine state parks that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection would later confirm in social media posts several days later.

While DeSantis has sought to distance himself from the plans, saying they were “crafty,” his spokespeople have defended the proposals to reporters and online. Spokesman Jeremy Redfern previously told the Times that it was “time to make public lands more accessible to the public,” and spokesperson Bryan Griffin wrote on social media that it was an “exciting new initiative.”

Additionally, Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Alex Kuchta defended the plans in an email to the Times and said the agency’s social media posts were “highlighting flaws” in this newspaper’s “narrative.” (Those posts were the first official confirmation of the Times’s account hours earlier.)

Regarding Gaddis’s firing, Kuchta said in a statement Monday night that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection does not comment on personnel matters. The termination letter was signed by Mara Gambineri, deputy secretary of the agency’s Land and Recreation department.

In a letter dated Sept. 2 and shared on social media Tuesday, Democratic state Reps. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, and Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, asked Florida Department of Environmental Protection Chief Shawn Hamilton and DeSantis’ office to “make public all communications with any person or organization involved in this state park plan.” The reps said in their letter that Floridians deserved an explanation for how the proposals were formulated.

Online, Gaddis is revered as a hero by state park lovers and environmentalists, while links to his donation campaign circulate across the Internet.

“Thank you sir, for putting our state parks and all the incredible species and habitats before yourself and your financial security,” wrote Jessica Namath, former environmental chair of the Tequesta Environmental Advisory Committee and a leader in the online fight against golf course construction at Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

He continued: “For me you are a legend.”