A sitting Village of Indiantown council member has confirmed that Stephen G. Leighton, senior staff to U.S. Rep. Brian J. Mast (FL-21), has filed a Florida public-records request seeking communications between named residents and elected officials — with the described scope running to the newly elected Village members, and separately to communications of Christopher “Doc” Collins
Village of Indiantown · Unincorporated Martin County
Who is reading the new council’s mail?
A congressional staff records request, a flipped Village election, and the state money already sitting in Indiantown.
This file is a compilation of public-source documents and one fact confirmed by a Village council member: that a Chapter 119 request from the office of U.S. Rep. Brian Mast exists and seeks communications involving named private citizens and newly seated officials. The request letter itself has not been independently retrieved or published at the time of this compilation.
No inference of wrongdoing is made or implied. Using Florida’s public-records law is lawful. Selective scope is also a fact that may be asked about. If the record later exposes wrongdoing, that exposure belongs to the facts — not to an accusation advanced here.
Prepared for public sharing and official consideration. Not a legal pleading. Not legal advice.
The request, as described to a council member
Not yet in the newspaper. Already inside Village Hall.
A sitting Village of Indiantown council member has confirmed that Stephen G. Leighton, senior staff to U.S. Rep. Brian J. Mast (FL-21), has filed a Florida public-records request seeking communications between named residents and elected officials — with the described scope running to the newly elected Village members, and separately to communications of Christopher “Doc” Collins.
The letter has not been posted by the press and has not been independently retrieved for this file. What follows treats that confirmation as a working fact and treats every surrounding date, dollar, and vote as something already on the open record.
What Chapter 119 does — and does not — answer
Any person may request public records of a Florida agency. A congressional office may do so the same way a neighbor may. Correspondence received by a village official in the conduct of official business is generally a public record. Lawful use of the statute is not, by itself, a finding of intimidation. The unanswered question is not whether the tool exists. It is why this tool, aimed at these names, in this window, and not at the sitting members who already voted the industrial framework.
Who is asking
Stephen G. Leighton is a longtime Martin County figure: former deputy sheriff, later district staff to then-Rep. Tom Rooney, and for years the senior local aide in Rep. Mast’s operation. Local reporting has called him chief of staff. House payroll filings for early 2025 list him as Deputy Chief of Staff and list AnnMarie Graham-Barnes as Chief of Staff. Either title is senior enough that a records demand from that desk is not ordinary constituent casework from a junior aide. The portraits at the top of this file identify the two men. The House and Congress seals identify the office. They do not make this file an official congressional product.
Rep. Mast represents Florida’s 21st District, which includes Martin County and the Village of Indiantown. He chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His office has a legitimate interest in district infrastructure. That interest does not explain a search limited to two citizen names and a new local majority.
Who is being read
| Name in the request, as described | Public role on the open record | Why the timing matters |
|---|---|---|
| Eric D. Miller | Private citizen; rural neighbor of the Village; public commenter and records filer opposing hyperscale industrial conversion of agricultural land | Quoted in local television on September 6 supporting the new council’s September 1 personnel vote |
| Christopher “Doc” Collins | Former Stuart mayor; public opponent of AI data centers; winner of Martin County Commission District 2 on August 18, 2026 | Now a county commissioner-elect/seated official whose campaign ran on slower growth |
| Newly elected Village members | Christa Miley (Seat 3), Anthony Dowling (Seat 4), Janet Hernandez (Seat 5) | Formed the 3–2 majority that terminated Village Manager Taryn Kryzda on September 1 |
| Not described as in-scope | Mayor Phyllis Waters Brown and Council Member Vernestine Williams-Palmer — the two members whose terms did not expire in 2026 | Both were on the council that approved the Tesoro Groves PUD 5–0 on April 30, 2026 |
The scope problem, stated without embroidery
If the congressional office wanted a complete picture of how Indiantown officials talk to the public about land use, the sitting members’ files would be the older and larger set. If the office wanted a picture of how a new majority talks to the residents who helped flip the dais, the request as described is built for that picture. Those are different jobs. Only the office can say which job it is doing.
What already happened in public before anyone asked for the mail
Election, personnel vote, industrial zoning, and state capital — all dated.
1. The Village election was a data-center election
On August 18, 2026, Indiantown voters unseated every incumbent who was on the ballot. Treasure Coast Newspapers reported that data-center development was a focal issue and that the result “cleaned house.” Christa Miley defeated Mayor Carmine Dipaolo. Anthony Dowling defeated incumbent Angelina Perez. Janet Hernandez defeated incumbent Karen Onsager. Phyllis Waters Brown became mayor; Miley became vice mayor. The village attorney submitted a resignation the night of the count.
The same night, Christopher “Doc” Collins won Martin County Commission District 2 in a Republican universal primary. He had already gone on the public record against AI data centers while serving in Stuart.
That vote is the only village-wide instruction on the table. The old council had approved Tesoro Groves 5–0. The manager who thanked the Governor for the $46 million RO check is the manager the new majority fired fourteen days later. The people did not vote for more treatment capacity so a 5,722-acre industrial conversion could drink. They voted the other way.
2. Fourteen days later the new majority fired the manager
On September 1, 2026, at a meeting called to discuss a data-center moratorium, the new 3–2 majority terminated Village Manager Taryn Kryzda and appointed Michael Giardino interim manager. Dowling, Miley, and Hernandez voted yes. Waters Brown and Williams-Palmer voted no. Local television quoted resident Eric Miller supporting the outcome as an act of the new council, not as spite.
The council did not adopt a moratorium that night. It sent the language back. The Village is expected to take the question up again in October. The County Commission has first reading of its own one-year moratorium set for October 13, after a 3–2 industrial rezoning in Hobe Sound on September 16 that opponents said could host a data center.
3. The industrial framework the old council already locked in
On April 30, 2026, the then-Village Council voted 5–0 to approve the Tesoro Groves Planned Unit Development zoning agreement and master site plan for approximately 5,722 acres of FPL-tied land north and south of SW Kanner Highway, west of SW Warfield Boulevard. FPL’s counsel told the chamber the vote was rezoning, not a site-specific data center. The adopted framework lists data-processing and related light-industrial and utility uses among the uses the PUD can carry. A separate 2-million-square-foot application styled Silver Fox 606 had been withdrawn days earlier. The heavy-industrial zoning on that land remains.
This file does not name a hyperscale tenant. No approved building permit for a named operator appears in the sources compiled here. What the public has been told, in writing and at the podium, is that the land can take that use.
4. The state-money stack that makes the land usable
Industrial load in a rural utility is not an abstract land-use fight. It is a water-and-power fight. The Village Manager, writing in July 2026 after the FY2026-27 budget passed, put the appropriated utility total in print: $88.4 million over three years for the reverse-osmosis plant, deep injection well, and Floridan wells, and $45 million for the new wastewater plant. That is $133.4 million in state utility appropriations named by the Village’s own manager — before anyone adds the Seminole Inn request.
Governor DeSantis’s July 11, 2025 snapshot at Terra Lago was smaller because it was earlier: “more than $76 million” since 2022. The later Village tally is the one that includes the $46 million RO line the Governor’s FY2026-27 budget then locked in.
$8 million for a privately owned inn
Senate Local Funding Initiative Request FY2026-27 S3776, sponsored by Sen. Gayle Harrell and dated February 9, 2026, asks $8 million in state fixed-capital dollars to restore the Seminole Inn and build a Seminole Tribe museum. The request itself states the Inn is owned by The Garcia Companies, a private entity. Garcia, led in Florida by Josh Kellam, bought the National Register property after four decades under the Wall family. Kellam stood with the Governor at Terra Lago in July 2025. The Village named Kellam among “community leaders” on the $22.5 million RO thank-you. The $8 million is a request, not a finding that the check has cleared. It is still state money aimed at a private landmark owned by the same developer whose housing project the Governor came to celebrate.
| Date | What the record shows | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Feb. 10, 2023 | Governor signs EO 23-06 awarding Indiantown $20 million for wastewater projects | Awarded — Village release |
| 2024 session | House “sprinkle list” lifts the RO earmark to $22.5 million | Appropriated — Florida Politics |
| July 11, 2025 | Governor at Terra Lago with Josh Kellam. Cites $33.2 million toward an RO plant and more than $76 million to Indiantown since 2022. Says the state will “assist when we can with public infrastructure.” Village thank-you names Kellam as a community leader. | Awarded / announced — TCPalm, Village |
| Dec. 18, 2025 | Governor announces $9.3 million for an RO plant and $7.9 million to replace 13,000 linear feet of transmission main ($17.2 million) inside a $311 million statewide package | Awarded — flgov.com, Village |
| Nov. 2025 – Feb. 2026 | Garcia Companies acquires the Seminole Inn (~$2 million sale). Senate LFIR S3776 asks $8 million to restore that privately owned inn and add a Seminole Tribe museum. Owner listed on the request: The Garcia Companies. | Request — Senate LFIR PDF |
| Jan. 23, 2026 | Senate LFIR S3698 asks $46 million for a 6.0 MGD RO plant; prior-year line already shows $22.5 million appropriated | Request, then funded |
| July 2, 2026 | Village thanks the Governor for “$46 million in funding to support the Village’s new reverse osmosis water treatment plant.” | In the approved FY2026-27 budget — Village release |
| July 26, 2026 | Village Manager Taryn Kryzda, in Friends & Neighbors: the Legislature under Harrell, Overdorf, and Snyder has appropriated $88.4 million for the RO plant, deep injection well, and four Floridan wells; the Village has received $45 million for the wastewater plant. | Village Manager published tally |
If the $8 million Inn request is set beside the manager’s $133.4 million utility tally, the public-facing state-money stack around this village sits in the $141 million range. That is the figure neighbors have been adding up. This file keeps the two columns separate: $133.4 million appropriated for water and wastewater on the Village Manager’s own math, and $8 million requested for a privately owned inn. Counting them as one appropriated pot would outrun the record.
Josh Kellam and The Garcia Companies are on that record as the Terra Lago developer, as the new owner of the Seminole Inn, and as a name the Village listed among “community leaders” when state water checks arrived. That is not a finding that any dollar was traded for a rezoning. It is why a federal office pulling citizen mail, and not the developer file, looks lopsided to the people who live next to the plant and the PUD.
5. The RO plant is the throttle — and 6.0 MGD is not a village-scale plant
Village staff told the county in plain language that water capacity is the gate on new industrial and residential load. In March 2025, Utilities Director Patrick Nolan said the village was seeking about $60 million to build a reverse-osmosis plant and that construction funding was the missing piece. In July 2025, then-Manager Taryn Kryzda told a joint meeting the village had already taken in roughly $76 million across three sessions because development pressure had collided with a plant that was out of capacity. Kryzda later wrote that a May 2023 engineering review found the existing water plant already at capacity against development approved to that date.
The state request that followed did not describe a like-for-like replacement for a village of about 7,000 people. Senate LFIR S3698, January 23, 2026, asks for a 6.0 million-gallons-per-day RO plant “to serve the expansion and development occurring within the utility service area.” The Village’s July 2, 2026 thank-you for the $46 million line said the plant would “support growth for new jobs and attainable housing.” That is the official purpose statement. A 6.0 MGD works is not a leak-repair. It is the pipe that makes a 5,722-acre light-industrial conversion, and every other large entitlement sitting on that utility, physically possible.
Call that a fast-track if the sequence is the evidence. Design money and Floridan wells moved while the old majority was still seated. The Governor’s check-photo at Terra Lago happened while Tesoro was already entitled. The $46 million construction line landed in the FY2026-27 budget in the same season voters were preparing to fire that majority. The new council has not yet voted to shrink the plant. Capacity, once poured in concrete and permitted at 6.0 MGD, will outlast the people who objected to the load it was sized to serve.
That is the collision this file is about. The state built the throttle. The old board locked the land use. The voters changed the board. A congressional office is now reading the mail of the people who changed it. The plant is still on the fast schedule.
What this file does not claim
It does not claim Governor DeSantis directed a data center. It does not claim Rep. Mast or Mr. Leighton broke a law. It does not name Google, Meta, or any other hyperscale brand as an approved tenant. It does not treat a Chapter 119 request as a crime. Those claims would outrun the record compiled here.
Is this a pressure tactic?
Two lawful readings. Only one of them needs a public answer from the office that filed the request.
Reading A — ordinary oversight
A member of Congress is entitled to know what is happening in the district after an election that replaced a village manager, flipped three seats, and put a data-center moratorium back on two calendars. New officials generate new paper. Asking for that paper is how staff stay informed. Communications with a newly elected county commissioner are, on this reading, just more district work.
Reading B — mapping the new opposition
The request as described does not pull the old majority that delivered Tesoro 5–0. It does not, so far as has been described, pull FPL, NextEra, The Garcia Companies, the Economic Council, or the Chamber. It pulls a private citizen who has spent a year putting water, noise, wetlands, and process on the table, and a new county commissioner who campaigned against the same industrial path. It does that in the same month the new Village majority fired the manager and the County set moratorium dates.
A lawful request can still be a message. The message new officials hear is: the congressional office is now a reader of the conversations you have with the people who just put you in the chair. Whether that message was intended is a question only the office can close. Whether that message has a chilling effect does not depend on intent. It depends on who is named and who is left out.
Questions that belong on the record
- What is the exact text of the request — date, custodian, search terms, date range, and format demanded?
- Why are communications with the newly elected Village members in scope, and communications with the two sitting holdovers not?
- What legislative or casework purpose is served by naming a private citizen and a new county commissioner rather than asking for all land-use correspondence for a defined period?
- Has the same office filed equivalent requests for correspondence with FPL / NextEra, The Garcia Companies, lobbyists, or political committees on the same subjects?
- Were the new officials told the product of the search would be used for constituent service, for committee work, for political research, or for something else?
- Will the Village post the incoming request, the search terms, and the production log, the same way it would post any other Chapter 119 file?
- Will the new council resize or slow the 6.0 MGD RO plant so capacity matches the mandate of the August 18 election, or will the plant be built to the expansion language in S3698?
- If water was the gate on large-scale load, who benefits if that gate opens on the old timetable after the voters changed the board?
What residents and new officials can do without matching heat
Preserve every message. Do not delete. File a Chapter 119 request of your own for every public-records demand received by the Village and the County since August 18, 2026, including the Leighton letter, the search terms, and the list of records produced. Ask the congressional office, in writing, to state the purpose and the scope. Treat sunshine as the answer to sunshine. The heavy hand, if there is one, is visible only when the paper is visible.
Combined sources
Public reporting, Village and state releases, Senate funding requests, and House payroll.
- Village of Indiantown Council roster, 2026–2027, indiantownfl.gov/village-council.
- Treasure Coast Newspapers, August 18–21, 2026: Seat 3, 4, and 5 results; “Data center issues in Florida election clear out incumbents.”
- CBS12, August 18, 2026: Christopher “Doc” Collins wins Martin County District 2.
- Treasure Coast Newspapers / WPTV / WPBF, September 1–6, 2026: Village Council terminates Manager Taryn Kryzda 3–2; Giardino appointed; resident quotes.
- WQCS and Treasure Coast Newspapers, April 30 – May 6, 2026: Tesoro Groves PUD approved 5–0; FPL counsel statement that the vote was rezoning, not a site-specific project.
- Village of Indiantown releases: $20 million wastewater award (2023); $22.5 million RO (July 11, 2025); $17.2 million announcement (December 18, 2025); $46 million RO thank-you (July 2, 2026).
- Executive Office of the Governor, December 18, 2025: $311 million infrastructure awards, including Indiantown $9.3 million RO and $7.9 million transmission main.
- Treasure Coast Newspapers, July 11, 2025: DeSantis at Terra Lago; Kellam comments; $76 million-since-2022 figure.
- Florida Senate Local Funding Initiative Requests FY2026-27: S3698 (Indiantown RO, $46 million) and S3776 (Seminole Inn historic preservation, $8 million; owner listed as The Garcia Companies).
- Florida Politics, March 2024: sprinkle-list earmark bringing Indiantown RO state funding to $22.5 million.
- LegiStorm / House payroll, Q1 2025: Stephen G. Leighton listed Deputy Chief of Staff; AnnMarie Graham-Barnes listed Chief of Staff. Treasure Coast Newspapers, November 2024: local identification of Leighton as Mast chief of staff.
- Treasure Coast Newspapers, September 16, 2026: County Commission 3–2 industrial rezoning, Hobe Sound; moratorium calendar October 13 and 27.
- Friends & Neighbors of Martin County, July 26, 2026, Village Manager Taryn Kryzda: $88.4 million appropriated over three years for the RO plant, deep injection well, and Floridan wells; $45 million received for the wastewater plant; $46 million RO line in the FY2026-27 approved budget.
- Working fact, not yet a posted exhibit: Village council member confirmation that a Leighton / Mast-office Chapter 119 request exists and names the communications described above. Exhibit to be added when the letter is produced.
- Image credits: Seal of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. government insignia (public-domain federal work). Seal of the United States Congress used only to identify the legislative branch. Portrait of Stephen G. Leighton supplied for identification. Office still of Rep. Brian J. Mast used for identification of the member whose staff filed the request. Insignia appear here as office identifiers, not as a claim that this compilation is a House or congressional document.
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