U.S. Overvalued Florida Land Rights, Report Says

The U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general concluded that the Bush administration offered in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family for oil and gas rights on Everglades land, according to people familiar with the matter.

“This is a sweetheart deal for one of the richest landowners in America”
that would have been financed by taxpayers, said Keith Ashdown, who has tracked the case for three years as vice president of tax policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes government waste.