Michael Moline
A joint House-Senate panel pulled the Department of Environmental Protection’s request for another $13 million to litigate the state’s “water wars” and sent the request to a House committee for scrutiny.
Rep. Carlos Trujillo announced that the matter had been withdrawn from the agenda during a Joint Legislative Budget Commission meeting Tuesday evening. He co-chairs the panel, which reviews agency requests to move money around, with Sen. Jack Latvala.
“We’re still receiving additional information. We should be receiving it relatively soon, and it will be reviewed by the judiciary appropriations subcommittee. I’m sure it’ll have a recommendation to the body of the whole,” Trujillo said.
He hopes to “really dive down into the bills and the action items and the cost,” he said.
“It really was a committee decision” to scrub Tuesday’s hearing, Trujillo added.
The department submitted the request so it can continue to pay for protracted litigation involving Georgia and Alabama over water flow in the Flint-Chattahoochee-Apalachicola river watershed.
House Speaker Richard Corcoran has demanded details about the department’s legal bills before he would consider approving more money. A department spokeswoman said officials would provide the information.
“I spoke with Sen. Latvala. We thought we needed additional information before we could make an informed decision. The speaker was informed,” Trujillo said.
He said he’s seen a tally of just how much money the department has spent, but didn’t want to comment without the figures in front of him. “I don’t want to be quoted as to a specific number,” Trujillo said.
“It’s a significant amount of money. The price tag is what really raises some eyebrows.”
The department was authorized to litigate the case, but “the reason they come to us is because they exceeded that authority. Now it’s up to us to review their reason for exceeding that authority.”
