Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly accused Pinellas County of locking up its main dump over the weekendphoton game, requiring state troopers to open its gate by force during the frantic effort to clear debris ahead of Hurricane Milton.
That’s an incomplete picture, according to the county.
The site’s main entrance was open. The state workers had gone to a secondary entrance, a county spokesperson said. And the site was under state control at the time.
The county’s response adds context to a story DeSantis has repeated during at least six news conferences and television appearances since Sunday.
During one of those news conferences, he said that “one of the gates was locked.” In the other instances, he gave the impression that the entire landfill was locked and that the county was violating an executive order he issued Saturday requiring all landfills and dump sites to be open 24 hours.
“We actually had to pry open one of the landfills in Pinellas County because it wasn’t operating 24/7 as my executive order did,” DeSantis said on Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
On Sunday morning, he said, “There’s a bunch of state assets that had a lot of debris to dump off, and it was locked and there was no one there manning it, and so they basically opened it.”
On Monday, his administration gave footage of the incident to one of its favored conservative news outlets, Florida’s Voice.
The video showed a closed sliding chain-link gate being pried open by a Florida Highway Patrol pickup truck latched on to it.
The site is the county’s main dump, the Pinellas County Solid Waste Disposal Complex near Interstate 275 and Gateway Expressway.
When DeSantis issued his executive order Saturday, the state “took over the landfill facility and started commandeering it,” Pinellas County communications director Barbra Hernandez said when asked about DeSantis’ allegations during a Monday news conference.
The facility was operational and its main gate was open, she said. A second entrance was not open and not manned.
“Our understanding is that overnight at the facility, they needed access to a second gate to be able to allow for additional debris to be transported, and so they broke that gate to get in,” she said.
In follow-up questions, Hernandez said she wasn’t aware of anyone with the state asking the county to open it. DeSantis said Sunday that Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie “was in contact with the county folks.”
The county’s version of events doesn’t dispute what the governor has been saying, DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern wrote in an email.
“It wasn’t operating if it the gate wasn’t manned and was closed,” Redfern wrote.
“The site is under the responsibility of Pinellas,” he continued, “and it was their responsibility to keep it open 24/7, per the governor’s executive order. Since they didn’t man that gate, FHP (Florida Highway Patrol) forced it open.”
Redfern referenced the Florida’s Voice video of the incident, which was reposted on X by multiple DeSantis staffers.
“You are looking more and more ridiculous the more you try to reach for this narrative,” Redfern wrote. “Stop wasting my time.”
Times staff writer Jack Evans contributed to this report.
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