Fight over Nikki Fried’s gas stickers refueled

TALLAHASSEE — Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried’s office would have to replace stickers that display her smiling face on gas pumps by mid-September under a House budget proposal.

The directive is tied to the House’s proposed $91.37 billion budget that was released Thursday. The budget also would require placing in reserves more than $19.7 million for other programs until plans are offered to replace the stickers, a process that Fried’s spokesman said is already underway.

The issue, which isn’t in the Senate’s budget outline, comes after a decision last year by the Republican-dominated Legislature to limit what could be shown on gas-pump inspection stickers posted by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Fried is the only Democrat elected statewide, and stickers placed on pumps after she took office last year included a picture of her.

The House’s new budget proposal includes a provision that says a portion of money for the department would be put in “reserve until the department submits a plan to the Legislative Budget Commission for removing stickers affixed by the department to petroleum fuel tanks.”

Fred Piccolo, a spokesman for House Speaker Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, said the House is taking the steps because Fried didn’t carry out the Legislature’s directive last year to replace the stickers that included her picture.

“The Legislature made it clear last session that the placing of a likeness of oneself on official inspection materials was unseemly, self-promoting and contrary to taxpayer interests,” Piccolo said in an email. “Commissioner [Fried] chose to ignore that directive. The House in 2020 is reiterating last year’s requirement and exercising our constitutional prerogative to decide what is and is not funded.”

But Franco Ripple, a spokesman for the Fried, called the House proposal “outrageous” and contended that shifting money to reserves over the issue would endanger a variety of consumer protections.