How Greenberg helped Dorworth
Pals worked behind scenes on controversial River Cross project
In October 2018, about a week after lobbyist and developer Chris Dorworth sued Seminole County for rejecting his proposed River Cross housing development, thenTax Collector Joel Greenberg sent a letter to county commissioners blasting them for fighting back against Dorworth’s lawsuit.
Dorworth’s suit had claimed that strict development limits in Seminole County’s rural areas had contributed to racial segregation. And in his letter, Greenberg warned commissioners that they were, by opposing the suit, worsening Seminole County’s “painful recent history” of racial injustice — going so far as to invoke the tragic 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Though Greenberg never mentioned his friend Dorworth by name, the lobbyist helped craft the letter, according to the document’s digital editing history. Greenberg blind copied Dorworth when he sent it.
It’s just one example of the behind-the-scenes tactics that Dorworth and his allies have employed in the three-year-long quest to build the controversial River Cross, which could add up to 1,388 new housing units on the eastern side of the Econlockhatchee River, in a part of Seminole County that has long been strictly off-limits to intense development.
From the county commission chambers in Sanford to the floor of the state House in Tallahassee,
records and interviews show Dorworth has pulled a variety of levers trying to make River Cross a reality. The effort has been unsuccessful so far — Seminole County commissioners rejected the latest attempt this past week — though Dorworth is still litigating in federal and state courts.
The now-disgraced Greenberg has been an especially willing
partner.
The former tax collector repeatedly pressured county commissioners to settle the River Cross litigation and tried to enlist others into doing the same. He suggested to at least one person that he could run for county commission himself, vote for River Cross and then resign. And he put a political ally on the payroll at the Tax Collector’s office — someone who would soon run for county commission against an antiRiver Cross incumbent — without a written contract so it wouldn’t turn up in public-records requests, according to emails.
Most seriously, authorities say, Greenberg attempted to smear an antiRiver Cross activist who had planned to run against him for Tax Collector. That alleged plot ultimately led to the first of what are now more than 30 counts in a wide-ranging indictment against Greenberg, including embezzlement and sex trafficking, and a broader federal sex-trafficking investigation that has taken aim at U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, also a friend of Dorworth’s.
Gaetz has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. There’s also no indication Dorworth has been linked by authorities to any of Greenberg’s alleged crimes.
But CNN reported Friday that Dorworth attended some parties with Gaetz that allegedly included young women, drugs and sex. The CNN report, based on unnamed sources, also said that Greenberg is providing investigators with information about the parties.
Dorworth did not respond to requests for comment.
David Johnson, Seminole County’s property appraiser, said it appeared Dorworth was working through Greenberg to pressure others to support River Cross. Johnson and others said Greenberg tried unsuccessfully to get them to sign on to his October 2018 letter criticizing commissioners for fighting the litigation.
“He wanted us all to get involved,” Johnson said. “I don’t know who wrote that letter . ... But I can assume that he was carrying Chris’s [Dorworth] water . ... It was just too polished for Joel to write it.”
A letter-writing campaign
Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma and Clerk of Courts Grant Maloy said they were also asked to sign the letter. Like Johnson, they declined.
“Whatever their [commissioners’] decisions with the [River Cross] development is not my business,” Lemma said this week. “Why in the world would I get involved with that? ... That’s not my lane.”
But another constitutional officer did weigh in: former Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel, a longtime friend of Dorworth’s.
Ertel, whose River Cross letter arrived one day before Greenberg’s, warned county commissioners of the potential costs of contesting the River Cross litigation.
Ertel said this week that he never discussed his letter with Greenberg or Dorworth and he got involved because he wanted commissioners to be aware that a lawsuit alleging racial segregation could lead to a ruling that would have a financial impact on the elections office, too.
“If he [Dorworth] is successful, there will be impacts throughout the county,” Ertel said.
But in a follow-up email to commissioners and
Seminole officials, county Attorney Bryant Applegate shot back at Ertel.
“Mike Ertel’s email is completely off the mark,” Applegate wrote in his email dated Oct. 10, 2018. “The lawsuit will not generate legal fees for the Supervisor of Elections... Mike is right about one thing — it is not his role to comment on the county’s defense of a federal lawsuit. I would be very surprised if his legal counsel gave him any advice... Mike’s statement that he reviewed the data in the lawsuit (and his opinion related thereto) is outrageous and inappropriate.”
Greenberg continued to pressure commissioners. In November 2018, records show he sent another message to county leaders criticizing the arguments that lawyers for the county were making in the River Cross suit.
“Setting aside the legal strategy, let’s state something that is painfully obvious: You have to do the right thing here, even if it isn’t popular,” Greenberg wrote, once again blind copying Dorworth on the message.
By that point, Greenberg and Dorworth were widely seen as close friends and political allies in Seminole County politics.
In fact, when rumors were circulating in early 2019 that a retiring Seminole
County administrator was thinking about running for tax collector against Greenberg, that administrator sought out Dorworth to reassure him that it wasn’t true.
In a deposition taken as part of the federal River Cross lawsuit, former Deputy County Manager Bruce McMenemy said he met Dorworth for drinks at a FishBones in Sanford and asked him to pass the message along to Greenberg.
“‘You probably need to let Joel Greenberg know that I’m not, you know, running for any office, period,’ ” McMenemy said. “And Chris said, he says, ‘No problem at all. You know, I’ll call him right now if you want and tell him.’ ”
Leverage in the Legislature
It wasn’t just Greenberg and other local Seminole County figures trying to help Dorworth and River Cross.
In March 2018 — during the final week of the year’s legislative session and about one month before Dorworth first filed his River Cross plans to Seminole County — an amendment surfaced on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives. It would have, among other things, eliminated rural development restrictions on land within three miles of a university.
That amendment would have been a boon for River Cross, which is within three miles of the University of Central Florida campus.
Former Republican Rep. Matt Caldwell, who served with Dorworth in the Legislature and is now the property appraiser in Lee County, sponsored the amendment. Caldwell said this week that Dorworth was one of the people who encouraged him to do it.
All three Seminole County members of the state House at the time — including now-state Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Sanford), Rep. Scott Plakon (R-Longwood) and former Rep. Bob Cortes (R-Altamonte Springs) — voted for the amendment, attaching it to a broader bill dealing with local government issues.
After the amendment was successfully added, all three turned around and cast votes against the final bill, which ultimately died in the Senate.
Brodeur has declined to explain why he voted for the amendment. Plakon said he didn’t recall why he voted for the amendment. And Cortes said he misunderstood what was in the amendment.
But all three have stressed that they ultimately voted no on the final bill, and all three later said during the 2020 elections that they were committed to protecting Seminole County’s rural boundary.
Caldwell said he supported the idea because the state has an interest in fostering development around its universities.
“UCF is not the only case where the surrounding community and land-use decisions were perhaps not well thought out in terms of their compatibility on day one,” Caldwell said. “When you’re making multimillion-dollar investments in a university facility, you’re going to want to see the investments pay off.”
The GOP-controlled Florida Legislature almost helped River Cross again last year, when it inserted a provision into a sweeping growth management bill that could have allowed the development to bypass Seminole County’s rural protections by annexing into a city like Oviedo.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed that bill amid heavy criticism from environmentalists.
Clashing on the campaign trail
The River Cross power dynamics played out on the campaign trail, too.
At one point, Greenberg himself was apparently thinking about running — solely to help pass Dorworth’s project.
Seminole County Commissioner Amy Lockhart received a text message from Greenberg in 2019 which stated he was bored with his position and considering a political run for a commission seat.
“I would vote yes on river cross [sic] and then resign,” Greenberg said in the message.
Lockhart responded: “Of course, you would!” with a laughing emoji.
“I thought he was joking and being funny,” said Lockhart this week in recalling the text conversation. “I thought he was being typical, outrageous Joel. He would say things for effect.”
Greenberg ultimately decided against running for commission himself. But he hired somebody who did: Matt Morgan, the Longwood city commissioner and former professional wrestler who unsuccessfully challenged Commissioner Bob Dallari in 2020.
Greenberg’s office ultimate paid Morgan $40,500, apparently to do some social media work for the tax collector’s office. But the two never had a written contract — in what appears to be a deliberate effort to keep the deal hidden from the public.
Greenberg “opted out for no contract with Morgan so that public records requests could not ask for it,” Sandy Sumner, the Tax Collector’s Office chief financial officer, wrote in October 2020 to an auditor who asked for a copy of Greenberg’s agreement with Morgan.
Morgan did not respond to requests for comment.
River Cross ultimately became the defining issue of the Dallari-Morgan race. It was also central to the race between incumbent Commissioner Lee Constantine and Ben Paris, a former Longwood commissioner who had been hired in early 2019 by the Seminole County Chamber of Commerce, which is run by Brodeur.
The family that owns the River Cross land and consultants working on the River Cross development plans donated to both Morgan and Paris.
A business owned by Dorworth, meanwhile, put $150,000 into a political committee run by the same strategists that ran another committee that was paying for ads attacking both Constantine and Dallari — including one ad that depicted Constantine’s head emerging from a toilet.
Constantine and Dallari were both reelected.
But Morgan and Paris remained in local politics, too: Morgan was later reelected to the Longwood City Commission while Paris, who still works for the Seminole chamber, is now the chairman of the Seminole County Republican Party.