The Press: The Spectacular Highway

In Miami, where newspapers have campaigned against everything from bookies and police graft to female impersonators, newspaper crusades usually die as quickly as they flare up. A notable exception was a crusade by James M. Cox’s Miami Daily News (circ. 100,177). By last week it had already swept a handful of state officials out of office-and it looked as if the campaign was just really getting under way. The News started off with an investigation of the toll district in the middle of the 122-mile Overseas Highway connecting the Florida Keys with the mainland. Built 16 years ago for $3,640.000 the toll road ($1 a car, 25¢ a passenger) has long been the pride of Florida. It has the longest (seven miles) over-water bridge in the world, has been traveled by millions of tourists, many of whom agree with Florida’s boast that it is “the most spectacular highway in the U.S.”

It was the popularity of the highway as a tourist attraction (annual revenue up from $476,000 in 1946 to more than $1,000,000 last year) that started News Staffer Verne Williams, 34, on the expose. With such big earnings, wondered Williams.why should the highway still charge a toll?

A Fishy Work Boat. When Williams tried to check into the financial records at the highway’s headquarters on Pigeon Key, he was told by Toll District General Manager Brooks Bateman that “nobody’s going to see [the books].” Williams became more suspicious when he noticed that the district’s “work boat” was actually a cruiser equipped with fishing chairs, outriggers and a sportsman’s flying bridge. He also noticed a large highway-owned swimming pool, which had been “built for the benefit of the public” but never opened because officials later found that “state insurance regulations . . . prevented” them from doing so.

Williams and Reporter Don Petit, 32, who had already made a reputation in Florida exposing bookmaking and police graft (TIME, June 13, 1949), then discovered that District General Manager Bateman, whose salary was $550 a month, was building an $85,000 house for himself, complete with a private yacht basin. They also charged that he had become one of the biggest real-estate operators in the Keys by buying land that was later improved with public funds.

For official travel, Bateman and his staff had a $5,500 air-conditioned Chrysler and three other expensive cars. In the state capital at Tallahassee, the reporters dug into records, found that “food,” supposedly for a group of laborers, whose salaries totaled $44,000 a year, cost $42,000. Among the items: $1.77-a-lb. steak, squab and imported hams. The highest-paid toll collector, the News reported, was an ex-convict. Several full-time highway employees listed as “painters” actually held full-time jobs elsewhere.

An Indictment. When the News called in independent toll-highway experts, the consultants reported tolls were collected on the Overseas Highway by the “cigar-box” method, which they called the “one for the bridge, one for me system.”

The News stories brought drastic results. Acting Democratic Governor Charley E. Johns called for an independent audit of the highway’s financial records. When accountants reported “gross mismanagement,” Governor Johns had Manager Bateman fired and threw out the entire seven-man Overseas Road and Toll Bridge Commission. He impaneled a grand jury to investigate criminal aspects of the management, and removed all tolls from the highway. John S. Knight’s Miami Herald followed the News in playing up the story and, as Florida prepared to vote in the Democratic primary, both the Herald and News dug up evidence of election registration frauds in Monroe County, through which the highway runs.

Last week the News’s spade produced more pay dirt. The state indicted ex-Manager Bateman, along with a highway contractor who was a friend of Bateman’s, on charges of grand larceny of $49,727 of state money.