William March
Victor Crist, the Republican candidate for Hillsborough County Clerk of Court, has a good answer to anyone who criticizes his role in building the controversially opulent 1st District Court of Appeals courthouse in Tallahassee, nicknamed the “Taj Mahal,” in the 2000s.
In response to a question on the subject at a Tampa Tiger Bay Club forum, he blamed Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist.
“I did not construct it, I did not design it; that was Charlie Crist, (then) the Governor, and that was Marco Rubio, (then) speaker of the House,” Victor Crist said.
Crist was Chair of the Senate Justice Appropriations Committee at the time. He said he found financing for the building.
He said the building actually cost $60 million instead of the widely reported $48 million but that the financing plan he devised funded it “without a single taxpayer dollar.”
On the last day of the 2007 Session, a time when action in the state Legislature is chaotic and confusing, Crist added a last-minute amendment to a 142-page transportation bill authorizing the court system to float a $33.5 million bond issue for the building, according to reporting by the late Lucy Morgan of the Tampa Bay Times. Several legislators said they were unaware of the measure when they voted.
Morgan’s stories on the luxuries in the building – 60-inch TVs and private kitchens and bathrooms in each judge’s chambers, extensive use of mahogany siding and granite countertops, a costly dome and columned front – aroused a statewide scandal.
At the time, underfunded court systems statewide were laying off employees and dealing with deteriorating facilities, including a plague of mice in the Tampa courthouse and layoffs in the Hillsborough clerk’s office.
But two politically connected judges on the appeals court – one a former Victor Crist staffer – lobbied heavily for months for the expensive design and accouterments.
Crist said the new building provided space for records storage, for which the state had previously paid $300,000 a year in rent, which he said covered the debt service on the bonds.
At the time, Morgan reported that Crist told her he put the amendment on the bill at the request of then-Senate President Ken Pruitt. Pruitt denied that, but Morgan reported that Rubio and Pruitt had made their approval clear, and legislators could not go against the will of the two leaders.
But she also reported that judges who wanted the building listed Crist as one of several legislators who were “especially helpful” in getting money for it and that, until the scandal broke, the judges had planned to name Crist on a plaque in the building for his efforts.
