Governor Rick Scott visits the Wynwood neighborhood where the Zika virus has broken out. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images Scott bashes feds over Zika funding, but slashed mosquito control money Scott, lawmakers cut programs 40 percent in 2011

MIAMI — As the Zika virus spreads in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has toured the state, talked up his administration’s commitment to fighting the mosquito-borne ailment and frequently criticized Congress and President Obama for not spending enough to help out.

But Scott is far less eager to talk about his own record of cutting mosquito-control programs over the years, including the elimination of a state-funded pesticide-testing facility that was once known as “the mosquito lab.”


“Let’s look at the success the state’s had. We have very good mosquito control efforts all around the state,” Scott said at a Miami-area press conference Thursday when asked by POLITICO about the effects of those prior cuts and whether he had any regrets about it.

“Let’s look at history,” Scott continued. “We’ve had dengue fever and chikungunya. The state’s done a very good job in dealing with those issues.”

Scott pointed out that he has freed up $26 million in state money and that the state has aggressively sprayed for bugs and warned residents in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood after the first cases of locally-transmitted Zika were documented this week.

Florida now has now documented 408 Zika infections. The fast-mutating virus, which causes feverish symptoms in adults, alarms experts because it has been linked to severe infant microcephaly. In response, Scott on Thursday called on the federal government for more help testing pregnant women. He also called out Congress and Obama for not passing a significant spending package to fight Zika. The legislation died last month after House Republicans added poison-pill language concerning the Confederate flag and Planned Parenthood.

As Scott asks for money, though, experts say he bears some blame for his tea party-inspired budget cutting that began early in his first term.

Under Scott, state-aid to mosquito control programs was reduced 40 percent, from $2.16 million to $1.29 million in 2011. Scott also ignored pleas from fellow Republicans that year when he cut a special $500,000 appropriation for the Public Health Entomology Research and Education Lab in Panama City Beach, which had been founded in 1964.

Called PHEREC, the center was simply known as “the mosquito lab.” Already wounded by budget cuts, the lab effectively closed. Its pesticide research shut down. Scientists lost their jobs, causing the state to lose half of its mosquito researchers.

“The governor had the chance to keep things going but he chose not to and at that time it seems the driving force was he was trying to show everybody how he was cutting government,” said John Smith, who worked as the director for 20 years.

“Five years later, now people are concerned and appreciative of the folks who work behind the scene to not only control mosquitoes but to conduct the research,” said Smith, who added that he played an “instrumental” role in the first discovery of the Aedes albopictus mosquito in Florida in the 1980s. He said he is confident the lab could have played a role if it were still operational.

“I have and continue to perform considerable repellent research on Aedes aegypti,” Smith said of the hard-to-kill species of urban mosquito that spreads Zika, dengue and other viruses.

Smith’s former counterpart at his former facility’s sister lab in Vero Beach, University of Florida professor Walter J. Tabachnick, said in a lengthy blog post that “2011 will be remembered as a defining moment for Florida mosquito control.”

“How does one put a price tag on lost opportunities to make progress? What is the cost of not having new information and not having new improved mosquito control strategies?” wrote Tabachnik. He added that some state mosquito aid remained, but it has “remained the same for nearly 20 years. Many times I have pointed out that this level of funding is clearly inadequate to face the challenges now confronting mosquito control.”

The following year, Scott unleashed his veto pen on Tabachnik’s facility when the governor cut $1.1 million that was, according to the language in the budget, to pay for “practical methods of control to be used by local mosquito control agencies, including research into the prevention of mosquito borne illnesses. The research shall be conducted by the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS)/Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory.”

Tabachnik didn’t return calls and emails from POLITICO, a silence that one mosquito control official anonymously chalked up to “fear” of having the center’s budget cut.

Scott, however, rejected the notion that Florida lost any ground in fighting mosquitos or infectious diseases.

“This state is known for very good mosquito control efforts. We spend the money well in this state. And we’re going to continue,” he said. “I’ve allocated $26.2 million in emergency funding for this. We’ll allocate more money if it’s needed.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director, Dr. Tom Frieden, praised the state during Thursday’s press conference, saying that “Florida has some of the best mosquito control in the world.” Frieden checked out Wynwood earlier in the day and, he said, the aerial spraying efforts seemed to have worked and he was “impressed with how intensive the work has been.”

But, Frieden cautioned, Florida should brace for more infections. He said the Aedes aegypti mosquito was hard to kill.

To the south in the Florida Keys, ground zero for a controversial proposal to test genetically modifying the bugs to control their populations without pesticides, longtime Monroe County Mosquito Control Commissioner Steve Smith said Gov. Scott deserves some credit for the state’s response once Zika infections were poised to take off. But, Smith said, Scott is reinventing some history.

For years, Smith said, mosquito control districts have asked lawmakers for more money out of a special account, the Solid Waste Management Trust Fund, which is partly funded with a $1 tax on every new tire bought in Florida. That money is supposed to be set aside for mosquito control, Smith said, but not enough has been spent for years. And indeed, year after year, Scott and the Republican-controlled Legislature have raided the trust fund to plug other holes in the budget at the same time they’ve cut taxes and fees for other programs and special interests.

“Under Rick, mosquito control hasn’t always been a high priority,” Smith said. “I can see for many reasons he’s trying to make up the impression that he’s responding to Zika.”