In October 2018, about a week after lobbyist and developer Chris Dorworth sued Seminole County for rejecting his proposed River Cross housing development, then-Tax Collector Joel Greenberg sent a letter to county commissioners blasting them for fighting back against Dorworth’s lawsuit.
Dorworth’s suit had claimed that strict development limits in Seminole County’s rural areas had contributed to racial segregation. And in his letter, Greenberg warned commissioners that they were, by opposing the suit, worsening Seminole County’s “painful recent history” of racial injustice — going so far as to invoke the tragic 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Though Greenberg never mentioned his friend Dorworth by name, the lobbyist helped craft the letter, according to the document’s digital editing history. Greenberg blind copied Dorworth when he sent it.
It’s just one example of the behind-the-scenes tactics that Dorworth and his allies have employed in the three-year-long quest to build the controversial River Cross, which could add up to 1,388 new housing units on the eastern side of the Econlockhatchee River, in a part of Seminole County that has long been strictly off-limits to intense development.
From the county commission chambers in Sanford to the floor of the state House in Tallahassee, records and interviews show Dorworth has pulled a variety of levers trying to make River Cross a reality. The effort has been unsuccessful so far — Seminole County commissioners rejected the latest attempt this week — though Dorworth is still litigating in federal and state courts.
The now-disgraced Greenberg has been an especially willing partner.
The former tax collector repeatedly pressured county commissioners to settle the River Cross litigation and tried to enlist others into doing the same. He suggested to at least one person that he could run for county commission himself, vote for River Cross and then resign. And he put a political ally on the payroll at the Tax Collector’s office — someone who would soon run for county commission against an anti-River Cross incumbent — without a written contract so it wouldn’t turn up in public-records requests, according to emails.
Most seriously, authorities say, Greenberg attempted to smear an anti-River Cross activist who had planned to run against him for Tax Collector. That alleged plot ultimately led to the first of what are now more than 30 counts in a wide-ranging indictment against Greenberg, including embezzlement and sex trafficking, and a broader federal sex-trafficking investigation that has taken aim at U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, also a friend of Dorworth’s.
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