The same day that the state legislature proposed cutting taxpayer funding to a Fernandina Beach mental health company’s program, the woman who runs it tried another way to get taxpayer money.
Action News Jax has been investigating Florida Psychological Associates since March.
It’s run by Dr. Catherine Drew, wife of Nassau County Tax Collector John Drew.
In April, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran called her program “a waste of taxpayer money.”
Less than a month later, Catherine Drew asked for $50,000 from the Nassau County Board of Commissioners to give mental health screenings to Nassau County inmates.
It’s something her last project was supposed to do, but didn’t deliver.
The board of commissioners has already turned down her request.
Catherine Drew is the CEO of for-profit Florida Psychological Associates and nonprofit Florida Psychological & Associated Healthcare, which has an identical staff.
The request to county commissioners was from her nonprofit.
Funding of for-profit Florida Psychological Associates’ CELPHIE mental health screening project was cut from the next state budget, which is awaiting the governor’s signature.
The company’s financials reveal it got $600,000 of its $1 million appropriation even though it had only screened about 7 percent of the students it was supposed to, and none of the inmates.
Sen. Aaron Bean helped get that $1 million appropriation for the program, after he failed to get it passed by the state legislature, by suggesting Florida State University’s president include it in the university’s budget.
Letters dated on May 23 said Bean and John Drew have probable cause hearings before the Florida Commission on Ethics in July.
Bean’s spokesperson Sarah Bascom sent Action News Jax the following statement:
Senator Bean has maintained from the very beginning that this issue was about helping a constituent with a program aimed at mental health. These allegations, lodged by a person who has a political vendetta against the Senator and is known for these types of character attacks, are unfounded and completely without merit. The Senator is confident these allegations will be dismissed and exposed for what they are - political jockeying void of all truth and merit."
County Commissioner George Spicer would not agree to an interview, but told Action News Jax the commission also rejected Catherine Drew’s request for $200,000 last year.
Action News Jax went to Catherine Drew’s home to get her side of the story, after her staff said she wasn’t in the office and her PR representative John Daigle refused to pass on our interview request.
No one came to the door.