When President Barack Obama on Sunday called for BP to establish an escrow account to cover damage claims from the gulf oil spill, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum took credit.
"The media has reported today that the President plans to ask BP to establish an escrow account for Deepwater Horizon claims, an action I called for last week ..." McCollum said in the statement. "If the report is true, the President's echoing of my call for an escrow account is welcome."
The press release from his office said "Obama has followed McCollum’s lead."
But really, McCollum followed the lead of state Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat running for attorney general. In a May 5 letter to Gov. Charlie Crist, Aronberg wrote that "Florida should be insisting that an interest-bearing escrow account be established, under the control of the Cabinet or CFO, with each responsible party in this disaster committing a share to total $1 billion." (The total is smaller than the one McCollum proposed, but it was also much earlier in the crisis.)
Posted by John Frank at 10:41:55 AM on June 14, 2010
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