Sarasota County commissioner’s husband paid $42K by lobbyist for developers

On April 9, the developer behind Lakewood Ranch gave $10,000 to a political committee chaired by prominent Tallahassee lobbyist Dave Ramba.

About eleven weeks later, that same committee paid $12,000 to a company run by Jon Mast, the husband of Sarasota County Commissioner Teresa Mast.

In September, Mast joined her fellow commissioners in approving the developer’s request to rezone land to build more than 1,000 homes, overruling the recommendation of the Sarasota County Planning Commission.

It was not an isolated transaction.

Suncoast Searchlight found that political committees controlled by Ramba paid $42,000 to Jon Mast’s construction and consulting company between February 2025 and June 2026. Those committees received contributions from developers, contractors and other businesses with interests before the Sarasota County Commission — including some whose projects or requests came before Teresa Mast for a vote.

The findings expose the shadowy intersection of political fundraising, private consulting and public decision-making, raising questions about whether elected officials should participate in decisions involving businesses that have helped fund payments to close family members, such as a spouse.

Jon Mast told Suncoast Searchlight that the money was compensation for legitimate political consulting work he performed for Ramba, whose listed lobbying clients include Benderson Development and Neal Communities at the Florida Legislature. Yet the payments came not from Ramba’s lobbying firm, but from political committees funded by outside interests.

Among Suncoast Searchlight’s findings:

A political committee that received $60,000 from a firm seeking to redevelop the former Gulf Gate Golf Course transferred $30,000 to a Ramba-controlled committee, which subsequently paid $15,000 to Jon Mast’s company. The county is now considering buying the property from the developer.

One Stop Housing, an affordable-housing developer, contributed in April to a committee that paid Jon Mast’s company. Months later, Teresa Mast voted to approve changes to one of the developer’s projects.

Ramba, who oversees the committees that paid Jon Mast, also serves as treasurer of Teresa Mast’s political committee. Benderson Development and committees controlled by Ramba have provided more than half its funding.

Representatives of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch (SMR), the parent company of Lakewood Ranch, and Benderson Development did not respond to phone calls or emails seeking comment.

The payments were made to The Davin Group — a company operated by Jon Mast and previously run by Teresa Mast.

Florida law prohibits local elected officials from voting on measures they know would provide an economic benefit to certain relatives, including spouses. An ethics expert who reviewed the circumstances for Suncoast Searchlight said the payments to Jon Mast’s company raise questions about whether Teresa Mast should have abstained from those votes.

Whether the votes provided such a benefit is central to that question.

The Masts say they did not. Teresa Mast said neither her conduct nor her husband’s has been unethical in any way. Both told Suncoast Searchlight their finances are separate and that Teresa Mast receives no benefit from her husband’s company or consulting activity. 

“There has been complete separation since before I took office,” Teresa Mast said.

However, records show the Masts own property together in Sarasota County and for years operated The Davin Group together.

Morgan Bentley, a Sarasota attorney and former chairman of the Florida Commission on Ethics, said such a separation would not resolve the question under state ethics law. What matters, he said, is whether the votes could provide an economic benefit to her husband.

“You’re just treading on thin ice when you’re paying the spouse of a sitting commissioner,” Bentley said. “You’re all living under the same roof — the entity that benefits is the family unit.”

Any ethics inquiry, he said, would examine the circumstances surrounding the payments and whether Jon Mast stood to benefit from his wife’s vote.

“Once that check is written to a relative of a sitting commissioner who doesn’t recuse themselves, then the door is open to that question,” Bentley said. “Maybe it comes out one way, maybe it doesn’t, but the question is going to get asked.”

Donations can be muddled using political committees

Florida has nearly 2,000 political committees, many overseen by elected officials, lobbyists and political operatives. Money can pass from one committee to another before it is spent, making it difficult for the public to trace a donor’s money to its eventual recipient.

In the months before Ramba’s Strong Communities of Southwest Florida committee paid Jon Mast, it received $10,000 from SMR and $100,000 from Benderson Development, the latter of which is one of Ramba’s lobbying clients and was a major donor to Teresa Mast in 2024.

Other contributors included a committee tied to The Southern Group, the county’s lobbying firm ($17,500); Waste Pro, one of the county’s solid-waste contractors ($5,000); and One Stop Housing ($5,000).

Mark Vengroff, the owner of One Stop Housing, told Suncoast Searchlight he did not recall the circumstances of how he gave money to Ramba’s political committee, but said he was “absolutely not” aware any money that he had donated might have indirectly made its way to Jon Mast.

“I don’t donate to many PACs,” Vengroff said, “but I donated to this PAC thinking it was going to support a slew of candidates that were in alignment with the party.” 

Strong Communities of Southwest Florida also received $3,000 from JP Wiseman Construction, whose founder, John Wiseman, was appointed to the county’s Development Services Advisory Committee by commissioners, including Teresa Mast, on Sept. 8. 

And $13,000 came from the Barrington Group, whose vice president, Ryan Lieberman, is the president of the Suncoast Builders Association, of which Jon Mast is CEO. Teresa Mast unsuccessfully attempted to appoint Lieberman to the county Planning Commission; she was outvoted by her fellow commissioners.

Neither Lieberman nor Wiseman responded to voicemails or emails from Suncoast Searchlight on Thursday.

Another series of transactions involving Jon Mast’s company further illustrates the flow of money.

In January 2025, the political committee Citizens for Integrity received $60,000 from 13th Floor Investments, which is seeking to redevelop the shuttered Gulf Gate Golf Course into a 106-home project. 

Days later, Citizens for Integrity gave $30,000 to a political fund chaired by Ramba called The Committee for Justice, Transportation and Business.

That committee then paid $15,000 to Jon Mast’s company.

The Sarasota County Commission is considering buying the former golf course from 13th Floor Investments. The company has valued the property at $14.6 million, nearly five times what it paid in 2022.

Teresa Mast told Suncoast Searchlight she had resigned as president of The Davin Group before taking office in 2024 and does not know who her husband’s clients are.

“I go based on what is in front of me,” Teresa Mast said. “I have never accepted a bribe, a payoff, an innuendo, under the table — anything like that.”

The Davin Group was formed in 2015, according to state records, with Teresa Mast as president and Jon Mast as vice president. Those titles remained until January 2025, when Teresa Mast was removed from the company’s filings and Jon Mast became president.

Jon Mast, who also runs the Suncoast Builders Association, said his wife has not financially benefited from his political consulting. He said it is common for political consultants to be paid through political committees.

“My wife did not get any financial gain from The Davin Group,” Jon Mast said. “Period.”

He described the company’s business as “contracting and consulting” on a 2024 financial disclosure form filed for his service on the Florida PACE Funding Agency board.

Public-facing information continues to connect Teresa Mast to the company.

As of Thursday evening, The Davin Group’s Facebook page listed “teresa@davingroupinc.com” and the commissioner’s personal cellphone as the company’s primary business contact.

When a reporter called Teresa Mast’s personal cellphone in September, her voicemail identified her as being “with The Davin Group.” 

Jon Mast first told a reporter his wife probably did not think to update the recording. Minutes later, he called back and said the voicemail did not mention The Davin Group and that the reporter must have misheard it.

Method of payment raises ethics questions

Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan research institute that monitors government ethics, said even if the arrangement does not violate state ethics law, it could erode public confidence in government.

“I’m not an attorney, but I think that goes against the spirit of the law. I don’t think it looks good to the public,” Wilcox said. “My concern is when they just use ‘consulting’ as a justification. In the past, when I’ve seen consulting as a reason for an expense — that’s been questionable.”

The Florida Commission on Ethics declined to comment on the specifics of the Masts’ circumstances. 

Ramba told Suncoast Searchlight he pays Jon Mast to monitor political activity in Sarasota and Manatee counties. 

“He is my boots on the ground,” Ramba said.

Ramba’s connections to Teresa Mast extend beyond his business relationship with her husband. He is the treasurer of Friends of Teresa Mast, a political committee that raised more than $193,000 during her 2024 campaign for county commission.

Political committees controlled by Ramba contributed more than $84,000 to Friends of Teresa Mast. Another $30,000 came from Benderson Development and $10,000 from SMR.

This situation is not the couple’s first brush with public scrutiny; during Teresa Mast’s first year in office she had recused herself from a vote involving her husband.

In September 2024, before Teresa Mast was elected, the Sarasota County Commission voted to give the Building Industry Institute — of which Jon Mast is CEO — $7.5 million in federal hurricane recovery funds to build a trade school. The commission was chaired by Mike Moran, who is now the Sarasota County Tax Collector. Jon Mast sat on the board of the Florida PACE Funding Agency, which Moran ran as executive director. 

The following April, the Florida Trident reported that Jon Mast had later been “photographed at a party, cigar in mouth, beer in hand, donning a custom t-shirt that read: $7.5 Million.”

The day that story was published, the Sarasota County Commission revoked the grant. Teresa Mast recused herself from the vote.

Caroline Klancke, an attorney and the founder and executive director of the Florida Ethics Institute, said in an email it would take an investigation by state authorities to determine if anything done by the Masts was legally improper. 

Klancke said any inference of what state law refers to as “special private gain or loss” would be speculative, given the available information and the Masts’ claims of separate finances.

“I think that the close proximity of lobbyists and political committees to important public officials such as county commissioners is reason for concern,” Klancke said. “However, I suspect that the mere presence of the business relationships alone would not give rise to a prohibited conflict — absent additional facts obtained by the Florida Commission on Ethics via an investigation.”

Christian Casale covers government and politics for Suncoast Searchlight. Email him at christian@suncoastsearchlight.org