Enron CEO, subsidiaries got access to Bush

The company's CEO conferred with the governor, but records do not show Enron got help.

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 7, 2002

It may be no surprise that Jeb Bush would have talked last year to one of the nation's most influential CEOs. But when the CEO is former Enron chief Kenneth Lay, such phone calls can be sticky.

At Lay's request, he and the governor talked by phone in April about energy deregulation, according to records released by the governor's office Wednesday.

Lay wanted to brief the governor about a pending deregulation bill in Congress and how it would affect Florida.

Meanwhile, the Florida GOP, which received $29,000 from Enron in 2000, has quietly sent a $30,000 check to a charity benefiting Enron employees. The state Democratic Party has sent $5,000 to cover their recent Enron contributions.

The governor's office records, released in response to a public records request from the St. Petersburg Times, show that Enron and its subsidiaries had access to the governor. But the records don't point to Enron's receiving any help from the Bush administration.

"Since this was the seventh-largest company in the nation, it would have been highly unlikely that he would not" agree to speak to Lay, Bush spokeswoman Katie Baur said, dismissing the significance of the phone conversation.

Bush also met in 1999 with top officials from Azurix, a major water company affiliated with Enron. Azurix had a number of business interests in Florida and had expressed interest in financing part of the massive Everglades restoration project in exchange for the right to sell some of the water.

The Bush administration initially sounded receptive to Azurix's concept, but it never went anywhere. The records show he was scheduled to meet with officials including Rebecca Mark, the head of Azurix, and that Bush wanted Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David Struhs to be present.

Enron did not accomplish its biggest goal in Florida: energy deregulation. Bush was an early advocate for deregulation, but the momentum fizzled after deregulated California began having problems. Gov. Bush has barely touched the issue lately.

As the Times reported Sunday, Bush also received an e-mail last year from former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, while Racicot was lobbying for Enron. Racicot, now head of the Republican National Committee, wanted information about pending power plant bills in the Legislature, but insisted to the Times that he was merely trying to educate himself on energy issues.

"This had absolutely nothing to do with the work I was doing for Enron," said Racicot, who wound up exchanging e-mails with a Bush staffer. "I was interested. I was interested to understand and know as much about the energy situation" as possible.

Enron, its subsidiaries and its employees dropped more than $420,000 in political contributions in Florida from 1995 and 2001, according to a Times analysis. More than 80 percent of that went to Republicans, and $10,500 went directly to Jeb Bush's campaigns.

Lay and other company executives have been longtime supporters of the Bush family, and Florida Democrats have eagerly tried to link the company to Jeb Bush. Last month, they pounded him for attending a Houston fundraiser hosted by a former Enron executive who left the company in 1996.

The newly released records provided a bit more ammunition for Democrats.

"Enron carried a lot of weight in Florida's Bush administration," party spokesman Ryan Banfill said. "When they wanted to take a meeting and when there was word of trouble, it was all hands on deck."

Baur dismissed that: "One phone call hardly a cozy relationship makes," she said.

State GOP Chairman Al Cardenas said Wednesday that he decided to donate to the Enron employee charity last week. Though the company was in good standing when it donated to the party, he thought about the plight of employees who lost jobs and life savings. He phoned Bush to tell him his plan.

"He said, 'Al, I think you're doing the right thing,' " Cardenas said.

The collapse of Enron hit Florida's state employee pension fund harder than other states' pension fund. Largely because one of the fund's money managers kept buying Enron stock as the price fell, the fund wound up losing nearly $334-million.

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