Guzzetta is a long-time business crony of the Bush family. He was a key fundraiser for President Bush and Jeb Bush. In early 2000, Guzzetta and four partners—including Pioneer Ned Siegel—sold their Boca Raton Blue Lake Corporate Center for three times what they paid for it four years earlier. The broker of the deal to sell the property to Guzzetta’s group was Jeb Bush and his partner Armando Codina, a right-wing Cuban American National Foundation leader. (When Broward Federal S&L failed in ’88, taxpayers ate $285 million in bad loans—including $4.1 million to pay off the Miami office of Jeb and Codina). A major problem with this property was that surrounding roads were already overloaded and city planners estimated that developing the site would generate another 70,000 car trips a day. Regulators conditioned the development on the owners spending $106 million for road expansion. Guzzetta instead requested a city exemption from these rules, pledging to promote mass transit as an alternative. City council members who blocked this exemption by a one-vote margin in ’99 raised concerns about giving favors to politically connected special interests. Shortly before the vote, Jeb Bush appointed Guzzetta to the Florida Transportation Commission, which has authority over state road-building guidelines and mass transit expenditures. Guzzetta’s group filed two lawsuits to try to override the council’s vote.