Stephanie Kopelousos

Stephanie C. Kopelousos (born January 13, 1970) is the District Administrator of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. She was previously the Director of Legislative & Intergovernment Affairs for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and a former secretary of the 7,000 employee, $8 billion Florida Department of Transportation, appointed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist. She was the first woman to serve in the position, at 37 the youngest, and unlike most of her predecessors, did not have an engineering degree. She then served as the manager of Clay County, Florida, for eight years.

Early years She was born Stavroula Constantin Kopelousos in Jacksonville in 1970, but she was always called Stephanie by her Greek family. Her grandfather George opened the popular Garden Restaurant in Starke in 1958, and her father Gus managed it until he sold it in 2008. She grew up in Clay County, attended St. Johns Country Day School until her mother died in 1984. She graduated from Bradford High School in 1988. U.S. Representative Mario Díaz-Balart honored Kopelousos on March 16, 2009, when he read a proclamation into the Congressional Record praising her FDOT work.

Billboards In early 2009, Bill Salter Advertising obtained 105 permits to remove trees blocking the view of their billboards. State law gives the Florida Department of Transportation some discretion over the applicant's submission of a mitigation plan, and the amount of fees paid to the state, which can be as much as $30,000 per billboard. There were 28 non-complying permits. The Salter permits were exempted from all requirements, potentially saving the company millions of dollars. Salter's general manager Dave McCurdy, who was not only a high school classmate, but "close friends" At the time, the House transportation committee was chaired by Evers, who claimed, "I have helped constituents that I have never met personally and constituents that I know from my community. That is my job." Kopelousos insisted, "The decision in question was made at the District Office level, and I was not involved with the apparent issuance of any permit related to this matter."

Commuter rail Part of the Florida SunRail project involved the purchase of tracks owned by CSX Transportation. The $1.2 billion bill was written by FDOT with major input from CSX, and a major issue involved liability and indemnification for incidents on Amtrak trains operating on tracks owned by SunRail. Months before the issue came to a vote, Florida Senator Paula Dockery, an opponent of the legislation, made a public records request for all emails to and from the FDOT concerning SunRail, CSX and Amtrak. The FDOT responded that no emails had the subject lines "rail," "SunRail" or "CSX". After the bill passed, the FDOT released over 8,000 pages of emails. Some emails with important documents attached had the subject "waffles" or "french toast". Critics referred to the controversy as Wafflegate, and claimed the FDOT was attempting to circumvent the Florida Sunshine Law. Kopelousos claimed that the departments first response was an honest mistake. Regarding the breakfast foods, she stated, "The reality of it is I get hundreds of E-mails in a day. Staff was trying to find an easy way that I would be able to search without getting back hundreds of responses." She was selected and began work there on March 21, 2011, at an annual salary of $177,000.

Governor's staff Shortly after his election to governor in the Fall of 2018, Ron DeSantis appointed Kopelousos as his Director of Legislative Affairs starting January 9, 2019. The job requires her to develop and maintain effective relationships with state legislators, their staff, lobbyists and other government officials. She also must convey the governor's position regarding relevant policy and legislation. In March 2021, her position was expanded to include intergovernment as well as legislative affairs.