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Citrus Board Accepts Keck's Resignation

Lakeland Ledger – August 3, 2011

HAINES CITY | The Florida Citrus Commission on Wednesday accepted the resignation of Ken Keck as the top executive at the Florida Department of Citrus effective at the end of the day.

During a 10-minute teleconference, commissioners also voted 7-0 to appoint Debra Funkhouser, the department’s chief financial officer, as the interim executive director at a $1,000 weekly salary increase from her current annual pay of $113,263.

Funkhouser accepted the job with the conditions that she would not apply for the permanent position and would not be involved in any political duties, commission Chairman Marty McKenna, a Lake Wales-based grower, said. He and the commission agreed to those terms.

The terms of Keck’s resignation agreement provide that he will stay on the department payroll as staff attorney and consultant until Nov. 1 at his current annual salary of $206,000 plus benefits. As a state employee, he also gets the opportunity to cash in 480 hours of unused vacation time at his current salary, which amounts to $47,539.

Keck, 44, previously served as the department’s lawyer from August 2002 to June 2006, when he became executive director. He did both jobs during the past five years.

The Citrus Commission will meet next at 9 a.m. Aug. 31 to discuss the search for a new executive director. McKenna asked commissioners to consider what areas of expertise, such as marketing or administration, the new person must have.

A story in Friday’s Ledger on Keck’s resignation plans and reviewing his tenure cited declining orange juice sales, citrus greening, higher taxes and state Sen. J.D. Alexander as factors leading to his resignation.

Keck said Wednesday he did not disagree that any of those were factors in his decision.

“The challenges for the Florida citrus industry are great. I wish my friends and colleagues success in finding solutions,” Keck said repeatedly when asked to elaborate on those issues.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, played a central role through successful budget legislation he sponsored earlier this year that ended Keck’s tenure and that of the former citrus commissioners on June 30. It also reduced the commission membership from 12 to nine people and made the next executive director subject to Senate confirmation.

Alexander also stated publicly he wanted “new leadership” at the Citrus Department and criticized Keck and former commissioners for supporting substantial increases in the state citrus taxes that finance most of the department’s activities.

Under Keck, the tax on juice oranges, Florida’s primary citrus crop, rose 35 percent. He defended the increases because hurricanes and citrus greening, a deadly bacterial disease, had reduced Florida’s average annual orange crop by roughly the same percentage during Keck’s tenure, shrinking the department’s tax base.

Despite the tax increases, the department under Keck had little success in reversing a 31.6 percent decline in domestic OJ sales since the 2000-01 season. Annual OJ sales rose 1 percent in the 2008-09 season but declined in every other season, including a streak of 18 consecutive months through June 11, the most recent data available.

Meanwhile, tax money to support citrus marketing programs had to compete with calls from industry leaders for an expensive research effort to control the spread of citrus greening, now in all parts of Florida’s commercial citrus-growing belt.

The Citrus Department has contributed $27 million to greening research since 2009, Funkhouser said.

Commissioners Virginia Pena and Ellis Hunt did not participate in the teleconference because of schedule conflicts.

Keck said he would be looking for a similar position in one of several new federal agriculture marketing programs created recently, such as the softwood lumber industry.

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