City Council President Nick Howland. | Image from Trib news partner News4Jax.

Riding on a billionaire developer’s private jet to a baseball game this past Sunday cost City Council President Nick Howland just $961, according to state campaign finance records.

Howland joined Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski, the founder and chief executive officer of Jacksonville-based Dream Finders Homes, for the 40-minute ride from Jacksonville to Tampa on Aug. 30 to attend a Rays game at Tropicana Field. When asked about the trip by a Florida Trib reporter, Howland said he’d made the trip to raise money for his political committee, Florida Freedom PAC but didn’t share more specifics about the fundraiser held hours southwest of Jacksonville. How much he raised is unclear.

Florida Freedom PAC’s latest campaign finance report shows that Howland made an in-kind contribution of $961 to the committee to cover the cost of the flight, food and beverages. The report doesn’t show any other contributions from donors. 

“I personally paid the full $961 value the Rays placed on my participation in the event, including transportation, in accordance with Florida law,” Howland told the Trib. An in-kind contribution is not cash but instead amounts to a contribution of goods or services.

The committee received its first monetary contribution “associated with the event” earlier this week, Howland said, more than a week after the Aug. 30 baseball game. It will be disclosed in Florida Freedom PAC’s next campaign finance filings, he said.

Florida law allows elected officials to price the seat on a private plane as an economy-class seat on a commercial airline, effectively discounting the trips by thousands of dollars, as long as there was a political purpose to the trip, like a fundraiser. 

Multiple airlines showed that a one-day, roundtrip ticket between Jacksonville and St. Petersburg scheduled this Sunday would cost a minimum of $855 and up to $1,660.

Zalupski and his company frequently do business with City Hall, employing at least six lobbyists registered with the City of Jacksonville, including former Mayor Lenny Curry. Howland, and other elected officials in Florida, are prohibited from accepting gifts valued at more than $100 from lobbyists or their employers. 

Zalupski, also appointed to the University of Florida’s Board of Trustees by Governor Ron DeSantis, was also an advocate for City Hall’s financial investment in a planned UF graduate campus in downtown, to which city officials committed millions of dollars worth of public land and $100 million in direct support. 

Molly Farrar is a Report for America corps member and The Florida Trib’s Jacksonville municipal watchdog reporter. She can be reached at molly.farrar@floridatrib.org.

Molly Farrar covers accountability and policy in the consolidated city-county government of Jacksonville for The Florida Trib. Before joining us as a Report for America corps member, Farrar worked as a staff writer for Boston.com with the Boston Globe, WHDH Channel 7, and as a freelance reporter in the Greater Boston area covering local politics. Her news and transportation reporting won regional awards, and Farrar was selected as a First Amendment Institute Fellow with the New England First Amendment Coalition. Her investigative work on criminal justice and prisons was published in GBH News and The Intercept. Her stories have also appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Boston Globe. Farrar graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism and cello performance, where she also served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper. You can reach Molly at molly.farrar@floridatrib.org.