Baugh apologizes. But there remain unanswered questions about Lakewood Ranch vaccine site
Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh took the stage ahead of a public meeting to apologize for her role in creating a VIP list of residents to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I want to apologize to all the residents I have disappointed, according to some news outlets,” Baugh said.
“It is true that I sent the email because I wanted to make sure certain people were on the list,” she added, echoing a statement released Wednesday that claimed she only wanted to add those residents to the overall Vaccine Standby Pool. “I did have a list of the registry with 8,000 people on it, so I may have missed some people on it.”
The Bradenton Herald reported Wednesday on emails obtained through a public records request. The records show how Baugh included herself, the developer of Lakewood Ranch and others on a list sent via email to Public Safety Director Jacob Saur.
Baugh’s list of residents to receive the vaccine came as she organized a state-run pop-up site at Premier Sports Campus in Lakewood Ranch, specifically choosing residents from two zip codes to receive shots.
Those two zip codes — 34202 and 34211 — are among the wealthiest in Manatee County. The average median income in those areas is twice as high as the county’s overall median income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Compared to other parts of the county, those zip codes have also seen far fewer confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Baugh said she has not received the vaccine, but in interviews with the Bradenton Herald, at least three others on Baugh’s list confirmed that they were called to schedule appointments. Two of them say they were actually vaccinated.
After her apology, however, Baugh still claimed that she was trying to just make sure her former neighbors were on the list. Baugh also said she didn’t want to speak for Lakewood Ranch developer Rex Jensen, but that they had spoken and he was upset that his personal information was released to the Bradenton Herald in response to a public records request. Similarly, Baugh expressed concern over her former neighbors having their information released.
As a matter of practice, the Herald usually does not publish people’s street addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers, for privacy reasons. The email in its entirety is public record and no such privacy exists, however, under Florida’s public records laws.
Baugh on Thursday did not explain why she was able to review a list of nearly 8,000 residents in those zip codes. As county staff worked with Baugh to organize the event, she overruled their suggestion to draw names at random from the county’s entire Vaccine Standby Pool.
Florida residents 65 or older are eligible to enter the Vaccine Standby Pool by visiting Vax.MyManatee.org and providing basic information.
The decision to pull certain zip codes deviated from Manatee’s previously established policy of picking names at random, no matter where a person lives or when they signed up. The system was created that way to ensure fairness and keep everyone, including under-served communities that may lack internet access, on a level playing field.
Commissioners were not informed of Baugh’s participation in planning the pop-up until Tuesday morning. They said they would have preferred to have been a part of the process, arguing that they would have liked to see the vaccine distributed randomly throughout the entire county.
DeSantis also under fire over Lakewood Ranch site
On Thursday, Baugh reiterated that she was following the governor’s directions when she picked the zip codes.
“I also want to apologize to Gov. (Ron) DeSantis. I don’t do that because I feel that I’m putting him in jeopardy because of Lakewood Ranch. I did exactly what he wanted. I am thankful and appreciate that he brought 3,000 additional doses to this county. That’s 3,000 more than we would’ve had.”
The governor’s own comments landed him in hot water Wednesday after he threatened to send additional doses to other parts of Florida if Manatee residents and officials continued to complain about exclusivity.
“If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, then we are totally fine putting this in counties that want it. We’re totally happy to do that,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Premier Sports Campus site. “Anyone that’s saying that, let us know if you want us to send it to Sarasota or Charlotte or Pasco or wherever, let us know — we’re happy to do it.”
The state’s highest-ranking Democrat, Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried, also sounded off on DeSantis’ threat in a statement released Wednesday.
“There is no reason that Governor DeSantis should be rationing vaccines based on political influence,” Fried said in a prepared statement. “This is troubling and potentially illegal. Vaccines should be distributed to counties based on need, capacity, and science.”
In an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle” on the FOX News Channel late Wednesday night, DeSantis defended himself against the criticism.
“Today’s event where we have the 3,000 seniors, that was over and above what that county had been getting. We saw that we needed to get more seniors in that particular county, so we worked with some of the local neighborhoods,” DeSantis said. “Where is there a lot of seniors? Where is it that we can go in and knock out several thousand very quickly to get those numbers up.”
But Manatee County’s own drive-thru vaccination site was praised by the governor last month, for its efficiency. At the time, DeSantis hinted that he might increase Manatee’s vaccine allotment.
Between the Tom Bennett Park drive-thru site and the site set-up at the county’s public safety complex, the county and local health department have the capacity to vaccinate 3,000 people a day. The county is currently only allotted 6,100 vaccines a week. MCR Health uses 1,000 of those vaccines to target minority communities facing higher-than-average infection rates.
“I was so embarrassed that Manatee County, that Lakewood Ranch was brought up in that interview,” Baugh said Thursday, referring to the FOX News Channel interview. “If any commissioner sitting here isn’t embarrassed that that happened, then you’ve got an issue that is far more than wanting to serve the people of Manatee County because they didn’t deserve that — the people didn’t.”
“Have I been upset over this? Yes. Do I feel terrible? Yes. Do I feel terrible over this VIP list, which it wasn’t? Yes, I do, but I stand by our governor,” she continued. “I thank him from the bottom of my heart for bringing in the vaccines that he did and I just hope that he’ll do it again.”
Manatee County again made national headlines with Baugh’s apology airing on CNN Right Now on Thursday afternoon. Robert Powell, president of Manatee County NAACP, responded to how DeSantis and Baugh have defended their actions.
“It is unfortunate because the Black and brown communities suffered here the most, and for them to do it that way and to just limit to that zip code really just blew my mind,” Powell told CNN anchor Brianna Keilar.
Like many, Powell was happy to see more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine arrive in Manatee County but thought it should have been made available to the entire county.
“That troubled me. That troubled my community,” Powell said. “One of the things that they are most upset about was the fact that nobody else goes out there.”
He pointed out that has not been the case at other vaccine sites or events in the county.
“We had one in our Black community, and actually, like 66 percent of the people that came were white,” Powell said, referring to MCR Health’s vaccine event on Saturday at the 13th Avenue Dream Center in Bradenton. “If they had opened it up to everyone, I don’t think it would have been a big deal. But to limit it to that area and just that zip and saying no one else can go there, that was tough because so many people in our area need it as opposed to out there.”
The criticism went all the way to Washington, D.C., where White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked to weigh in on DeSantis’ retribution threat during a press briefing on Thursday.
“Our effort to vaccinate, to get 100 million shots in the arms of Americans in the first 100 days, and exceed that goal, is not through a political prism, and we certainly would not support any effort to have the people of Florida or any state, Democrat or Republican, blue or red, impacted by the decisions of their leadership,” she said. “So no, I would not see us taking action along those lines.”
Manatee officials say Baugh’s actions ‘erode trust’
In response to Baugh’s comments, other commissioners said they were pleased to see her take responsibility but continued to criticize what they called her lack of judgment and an erosion of trust.
“Thank you to Gov. DeSantis for bringing the pop-up to Manatee County. The only rub I have is that the district commissioner chose the winners and the losers — who would get the vaccine and who wouldn’t,” said Commissioner Misty Servia. “I don’t think he knew about that.”
“You are a friend and I love you, but I think you’ve made a terrible mistake here,” Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge added, pointing to an appearance of favoritism in the process of vaccinating residents. “I’ve been running around telling people the system is fair. This erodes that system.”
Despite Baugh’s statement, Commissioner Carol Whitmore said she believed her fellow commissioner’s true intent was to cut ahead in line. Whitmore, a nurse who was offered the vaccine after she volunteered at the county’s drive-thru site, previously told the Bradenton Herald that she declined that offer “because of the optics,” opting instead to wait her turn.
“What we saw this week was a lack of judgment from our chair,” Whitmore said. “The intent of that list was to get shots and Commissioner Baugh was on it.”
“The intent was to get the vaccine and it wasn’t fair to the citizens of Manatee County,” Whitmore added.
Moving forward, the board said they would prefer to see any additional vaccine appointments be randomly selected, continuing with the county’s established practice.
County Administrator Cheri Coryea also informed the board that an additional 200 shots have been sent to the Lakewood Ranch vaccination site. Those 200 appointments will be randomly pulled from the entire Vaccine Standby Pool.
McClatchy White House correspondent Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 10:01 AM.
