Polopolus, Dr. Leo C.

STATE OF FLORIDA
DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS

CASE NOs. 92-3038
92-3039
92-3040

SUGAR CANE GROWERS COOPERATIVE OF
FLORIDA, INC., ROTH FARMS, INC.,
and WEDGWORTH FARMS, INC.,

and

FLORIDA SUGAR CANE LEAGUE, INC.,
UNITED STATES SUGAR CORPORATION,
and NEW HOPE SOUTH, INC.,

VOLUME I

and

FLORIDA FRUIT AND VEGETABLE
ASSOCIATION, LEWIS POPE FARMS,
W.E. SCHLECHTER & SONS, INC., and
HUNDLEY FARMS, INC.,

Petitioners,
vs.

SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT
DISTRICT,

Respondent,
and

MICCOSUKEE TRIBE OF INDIANS OF
FLORIDA, the UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF
ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION, and
FLORIDA WILDLIFE FEDERATION,

Intervenors.

_____________________________________________________________

DEPOSITION OF
DR. LEO C. POLOPOLUS

_____________________________________________________________

ACCURATE REPORTING
A/K/A
MACDONALD COURT REPORTING SERVICE
204 West University Ave., Suite 7, Gainesville FL 32601
(904) 373-1126 ù (800) 329-1133 ù FAX (904) 375-6249

Pursuant to due notice, the deposition of the above-

named witness was taken by the Respondent-Intervenor, the

United States of America, before Mary Macdonald, Court

Reporter and Notary Public, State at Large, at 204 West

University Avenue, Gainesville, Florida, on Wednesday, April

14, 1993, commencing at 9:00 a.m.

APPEARANCES:

KEITH E. SAXE, Esquire, United States Department of
Justice, Environment & Natural Resources Division, General
Litigation Section, Post Office Box 663, Washington, D.C.
20044-0663;

RICK BURGESS, Esquire, and SCOTT D. LIEBERMAN, Esquire,

Peeples, Earl & Blank, One Biscayne Tower, Suite 3636, Two
South Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida 33131;

PATRICK S. COUSINS, Esquire, Popham, Hail, Schnobrich &
Kaufman, Ltd., 4000 International Place, 100 Southeast Second
Street, Miami, Florida 33131;

CAROL RAEPPLE, Esquire, Hopping, Boyd, Green & Sams,
Post Office Box 6526, Tallahassee, Florida 32314;

ALSO PRESENT: Lonnie L. Jones, Ph.D.
Grace Johns, Ph.D.
William Boggess, Ph.D.

Thereupon,

DR. LEO C. POLOPOLUS,

being first duly sworn, testified as follows:

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Dr. Polopolus, I'm Keith Saxe, I'm an attorney with

the United States Department of Justice and I represent the

United States in the action Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of

Florida versus South Florida Water Management District.

I'll be taking your deposition for this case today

through Friday, and if necessary on some other date to be

scheduled in the future.

During this deposition I will be asking you a

series of questions. You are required to give me your

complete and honest answer to each question, unless your

attorney instructs you not to answer. If for any reason you

don't understand a question, please tell me and I'll try to

clarify it.

Dr. Polopolus, would you please state your full

name and home address for the record.

A. Yes. My name is Leo Polopolus and my address is

4741 Northwest 8th Avenue, Gainesville, Florida, 32605.

MR. SAXE: Ms. Court Reporter, would you mark

those for identification, please?

(Document entitled Memorandum, to Ms. Susan

Pacheco, from Leo Polopolus, dated August 18, 1992,

so marked as Polopolus Exhibit No. 1;

Document entitled Biological Sketch, Leo C.

Polopolus, so marked as Polopolus Exhibit No. 2;

Document entitled Leo C. Polopolus, Selected

Programs and Publications: Economics of Sugar,

Vegetables and Fruit, so marked as Polopolus

Exhibit No. 3.)

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Dr. Polopolus, I'm handing your three documents

that have been marked for identification, Exhibits 1, 2

and 3.

If you would take a look at the first document, No.

1, and identify it for the record.

A. This is a memorandum from me to Susan Pacheco of

Peeples, Earl & Blank, just a transmittal letter that

indicates enclosed are my biographic sketch and a Selected

List of Publications.

Q. And would that be the documents that have been

marked for identification as Nos. 2 and 3?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Does Document No. 2 represent a relatively complete

and current version of your Curriculum Vitae?

A. I believe it's the last one that I have prepared.

Q. Okay. And you've indicated that Document No. 3 is

a list of publications?

A. It's a selected list of publications of mine

dealing with the economics of sugar, vegetables and fruits,

completed while at the University of Florida or with the

Florida Department of Citrus.

It does not include my earlier publications in

these subject areas, while on the faculty at Louisiana State

University.

Q. And I understand that if we need to take a look at

copies of any of those omitted publications that you will

check to see if you have copies for us.

A. If they're in print I'll be happy to provide them.

Q. That's great.

Dr. Polopolus, what is your occupation?

A. I'm an agricultural economist.

Q. How long have you been an ag economist?

A. I've been an agricultural economist for thirty-

three years.

Q. Would you describe your educational background,

starting with high school?

A. Yes. I completed high school at Colton Union High

School, Colton, California. I'm a life member of the

California Scholastic Federation.

From there I went to the University of California,

Davis, where I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in

agricultural economics, with highest honors.

Then I went to the University of California at

Berkeley, and I received a Ph.D. in agricultural economics in

1960.

Q. Do you hold any other undergraduate degrees, other

than the B.S. from U.C. Davis?

A No.

Q. Any other graduate, advanced or professional

degrees, besides the Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley?

A. None.

Q. Do you specialize in any particular aspect or did

you specialize in any particular aspect of ag economics in

your education?

A. I'm fairly broadly trained in agricultural

economics and management production economics, marketing,

econometrics, policy.

The Ph.D. dissertation focus was ÄÄ which dealt

with the U.S. beet sugar industry, by the way ÄÄ had a focus

on policy, public policy, and industrial organization.

Q. Have you received any other training that relates

to the work you're doing in this case, besides the

8

educational background that you have described?

A. It depends on what you mean by training.

Q. Any formal courses, any organized seminars, things

of that nature?

A. There's been countless numbers of conferences,

seminars, experiences with organizations, with groups, and

I'll be happy to discuss them.

Q. Any that come to mind as being particular germane

to the work that you're doing in this case?

A. Yes, some of them would be. For example, I was a

member of the IFAS Water Resources Council for three years.

I was Chairman of the University of Florida Water

Research Center, which encompasses the College of

Engineering, all the academic units at the University of

Florida.

I was previously on the Aquatic Weed Resource

Council of IFAS.

IFAS stands for the Institute of Food and

Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida.

In the area of sugar, I have been involved in work

and conferences, meetings and consulting and advising,

teaching, in a variety of contexts.

Q. Are these involvements, that you have just

mentioned, listed on this Selected Programs and Publications,

that's marked as Exhibit No. 3?

A. Some of them, yes.

In addition to the sugar, I should also mention, I

have been involved in, since vegetables are also an area of

interest here for this particular project, I could say the

same thing about vegetables involved in, like, for example, I

was a consultant to the National Commission on Productivity,

under President Nixon. In that respect I was involved in not

only statewide but national issues of productivity that

involved the fruit and vegetable industry.

Q. When was that?

A. That was the National Commission on Productivity

experience, was in '72, '73 ÄÄ 1972/1973 period.

Q. Your reference to the IFAS Resources Council, is

that what is listed here on Exhibit No. 3 as 3(g), the IFAS

Marketing Task Force? Is that the same thing?

A. No, not at all.

The IFAS Water Resource Council was formed in the

early ÄÄ I should say mid-1970s and was operative through, I

think, the early 1980s, to bring together all of IFAS

resources on water quality and water resource issues.

We had a special effort and my role, as Chairman of

the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the time,

was to try to muster and organize and recruit and carry out

an economics program as part of the statewide effort in water

resources.

Q. Your involvement with the resources council was

from its inception through the early '80s, or. . .

A. Pretty much from its inception until the early

'80s, yes.

Q. Are any of the particular involvements that you

have been talking about present involvements, things that

you're doing presently, or are they all things that you have

done in the past?

A. Those particular activities are things in the past

and not current.

Q. Okay.

A. I'm not currently involved in ÄÄ I'm not even aware

that there is currently an IFAS Water Resources Council. I'm

not involved if there is one.

Q. Okay. What were your duties with the Water

Resources Council?

A. Again, as I indicated, my role, as the Chair ÄÄ the

resource economist of the Department of Food and Resource

Economics and my role was to assist in carrying out the IFAS

mission in water resource economics.

Q. Were you involved in research in that capacity?

A. No, I was not directly involved in research, but in

organizing research.

Q. So would you say it was administration?

A. It was more administrative and policy than it was

in directly conducting the work.

Q. Did you review research?

A. Oh, yes, indeed, and one of the roles that I played

in IFAS, in my tenure as chairman, was to develop a teaching,

research and extension program in the natural resource and

environmental quality area. For example, I brought together

a team of people that we developed a specialization in a

teaching program, in natural resource environmental

economics; we developed, we think, one of the finest, at that

time, one of the finest extension programs in Natural

Resource and Economics in hiring Dr. Carriker, Dr. Comer, and

other people, and I'm responsible for hiring such people as

Dr. Boggess, Dr. Lini, Dr. Clouser, Dr. Mulkey, and many of

the current players in the University of Florida's Natural

Resource Team.

So, I was not the researcher, but I was very much

involved in the development of the program.

Q. Okay. Are there any other programs or affiliations

that, besides the ones that you have mentioned, that you

think have provided you experience or opportunities that are

particularly germane to your work in this case?

A. My own research experience and my continuing

interest in sugar economics, which culminated in a book I

wrote on the subject, and also a continuing interest in

vegetables and vegetable policy, which one piece of that was

my role as editing a book recently released on vegetable

trade.

Q. The sugar economics book that you're referring to,

is that listed on Exhibit No. 3?

A. Yes.

Q. Would that be 3(o) on the second page of the

document?

A. Which document, sir?

Q. Exhibit No. 3, the second page.

A. Yes.

Q. Is that the book?

A. Yes.

Q. Did the book deal with the sugar industry and

environmental problems in the Everglades?

A. The sugar book was primarily oriented to the

natural sugar and sweetener industry, which Florida was a

part. It included cane sugar, beet sugar and high fructose

corn syrup.

It, in discussing both the cane production,

domestic cane production and domestic cane milling and

domestic cane refining, it obviously dealt with Florida.

Q. Did it deal with the environmental issues of South

Florida?

A. No, it did not.

Q. Would you describe your employment history for me

in chronological order, starting with your graduation from

Berkeley?

A. Yes. My first full-time employment, except for

that at the University of California, Berkeley, when I was a

full-time research associate my last year there, but I went

to my first academic appointment at Louisiana State

University as Assistant Professor for three years and then

was promoted to Associate Professor for the next two years,

at which point ÄÄ that's the period, giving specific dates,

Assistant Professor, LSU, 1960-63; Associate Professor, LSU,

1963-65.

At that time I took an appointment with the Florida

Citrus Commission, on the campus of the University of Florida,

as a research economist for the Florida Department of Citrus.

Within less than a year the director of the

Research and Marketing Department of the Commission, located

in Lakeland, resigned and I was appointed director. We split

off the marketing from the economic research. I asked to be

maintained in my directorship in Gainesville and for the

remaining two or three years I was Director of Economics for

a state agency, a state regulatory agency, and also had other

marketing responsibilities. It was called Economic Research

Department, the Florida Citrus Commission. Subsequently it's

been changed to the Florida Department of Citrus.

Q. The distinction you described there, when you said

the Commission split between the marketing function and what

was the other one?

A. The economic -- at one time the agency had an

Economic and Marketing Department.

Q. Okay.

A. When I became the director I became the Director of

Economic Research, and Marketing Research continued to be

headquartered in Lakeland.

Q. Okay.

A. So there was sort of a bifurcation there of

responsibility.

Then I left the Florida Department of Citrus, but

remained at the University of Florida, became Professor of

Food and Resource Economics for the University of Florida in

1969, January of 1969.

Q. So you were with the Florida Citrus Commission

between '65 and '69?

A. That's correct, until December 31, 1968.

January 1, 1969, I became a Full Professor of Food

and Resource Economics at the University of Florida.

Q. Okay.

A. Within a matter of a few months I was asked by the

new dean for the graduate school, an eminent physicist,

University of Texas, to be a part-time assistant dean for the

graduate school for the University of Florida.

So in 1969, for a four-year period, I had a half-

time appointment as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School

with responsibilities across the whole campus, and Professor

of Food and Resource Economics.

In 1973 I resigned my role as assistant dean, half-

time, it was like having two full-time jobs, to becoming the

Chairman of the Department of Food and Resource Economics as

Professor of Food and Resource Economics, and I was Chairman

of that department for a ten-year period, 1973 through 1983.

In 1983 I stepped down as Chair of the department

and resumed my role as Professor of Food and Resource

Economics at the University of Florida.

Q. Okay. And you have been with the University of

Florida since 1983 in that capacity?

A. In that capacity, that is correct.

Q. Okay. During the course of your employment. . .

Well, before I move off your chronology here, I

asked you about employment after your graduation from

Berkeley and you mentioned you were a full-time research

assistant at Berkeley.

A. Yes.

Q. Was there any employment, between and during your

undergraduate and graduate years, that was related to the

subject matter of your work on the case? I don't need you to

tell me, you know, your part-time jobs at McDonald's, that

kind of thing, if any, but is there anything that comes to

mind that you worked on?

A. No, except my full-time role as graduate research

assistant, or whatever the title was, at Berkeley, in my last

year there, 1959-1960, was to work on sugar policy and sugar

marketing, and I spent full-time on that, and that also

became my dissertation on the U.S. beet sugar industry and

the structure and performance of that industry under

government regulations and control.

So in that context, I very intimately became

familiar with sugar policy, as it affected both cane and beet

industries in the United States.

Q. During the course of your professional and academic

involvements, have you worked on any project that involved

either economic or socioeconomic impact analyses of resource

management actions that are proposed to remedy environmental

problems?

A. With the construction of that question, as I

understand it, and with some difficulty in scanning over

thirty-three years of effort, when you add the word

environmental problems, then I would have to say no to the

question.

Q. All right. Let's work ÄÄ rather than going to

fully qualified, let me work back from the basic end.

Have you worked on any projects that involved

economic or socioeconomic impact analyses, period?

A.    Yes.

Q.    Would you list them for me?

A.    Well, there was a period of time in that period of

time at LSU when my role was a regional economist and I had

federal grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce and had a

group of graduate students and others as staff members, and

the concern there was ÄÄ if you recall, the economy, the U.S.

economy, in the early '60s, was one of high unemployment rate

and low economic development, and the Economic Development

Administration in Washington and in state areas were trying

to develop ways to deal with problems of unemployment and

promote growth, economic growth, and in that capacity, in my

role, both in teaching, graduate teaching, and in research, I

carried out research for the area of Redevelopment

Administration on how agribusiness or agriculture could be

used to value added activities to promote the economy of a

particular region, and that particular application happened

to be south/central Louisiana, and how one could take

agricultural production in that area and generate employment

and income and growth.

So I have a number of publications and other work

that related to that effort.

So that is one application of that.

Q. So, if I understand your testimony, this project to

promote economic growth involved proposals, developmental

proposals, some involving agribusiness and other agricultural

undertakings.

A. It involved proposals, it involved theses work,

dissertation research, publications, chapters in books, it

involved theoretical pieces, it involved a whole series of

effort that would be under my supervision and with some joint

authorships and so forth.

Q. Did it involve any economic impact assessment

projects, strictly called?

MR. BURGESS: Object to the form.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Do you understand the question?

A. Not well.

Q. Okay. Did the work involve any projects

quantifying economic impacts of a particular proposal?

A. It involved the economic impact of creating or

adding value to agriculture product. It involved primarily

investment feasibility: would it be feasible, economically

feasible, to expand into the use of new technology?

Let me give you an example of what was involved.

Q. Okay.

A. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was developing

new technology and the development of new products. One

product was sweet potato flakes. Okay. Brand new

technology, wasn't applied, we took the research of the U.S.

Department of Agricultures' Food Utilization Lab in New

Orleans, where they developed a technical feasibility for

utilizing the processes of manufacturing sweet potato flakes,

and we applied that technical feasibility to whether or not

that was economically feasible to actually produce sweet

potato flakes and recover the investment of that facility by

using locally grown sweet potatoes.

Now, what's involved there is the determination of

quasi-rents, total revenue streams, total operating costs,

and so forth.

Q. Is there a difference between economic feasibility

assessment or analysis, and an economic impact analysis?

A. There could be.

Q. What I'm looking for here is whether or not, in

your role in this particular project or set of projects, you

quantified the economic impacts in terms of changes in sales,

income or employment of any of the proposed actions.

The one you mentioned is applying sweet potato

flake technology to develop that product, using local

potatoes.

A. Yes.

Q. My question is, did you undertake to assess the

20

economic impact of such a project?

A. Not in the sense that maybe you're leading to.

That particular project did not then take that

result and use multiplier analysis to determine what the

community impact, let's say, would be. We were looking at

the economic feasibility.

But at about the same time we were looking at other

projects in the Caddo-Bossier Parish to develop ÄÄ we

developed a proposal and began the research to actually

estimate employment and sales multipliers through original

research and at teaching the graduate level at Louisiana

State University I taught Leontief multiplier analysis and we

did develop a research proposal that was funded by the Caddo-

Bossier Parish Agribusiness Council, if I recall, and we had

the cooperation of industry, broadly speaking, to undertake

this kind of analysis.

The problem with that was that in order to do and

develop primary employment and income multipliers it became

an accounting nightmare for many of the respondents and so we

never got an adequate completion of that.

I may say, in connection with economic impact, and

I guess that the gist of your question is whether I had

experience in doing economic impact analyses, and maybe a

better way of characterizing that would be the work that I

did with the Florida Department of Citrus. Where there is a

state agency it has regulatory advertising and marketing

research responsibility and as chief economist, in going

before a state regulatory authority on numerous occasions, I

presented the results of my work on what you might call an

economic impact statement.

What would be the economic impact of changing a

regulation, with respect to a school lunch program? A

diversionary program. What would be the economic impact of

permitting importation of more foreign orange juice

concentrate? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So in that context I did conduct, or under my

supervision had conducted studies of that nature.

Q. So in your involvement in the Florida Department of

Citrus then you did quantify the economic impacts in terms of

changes in sales, income and/or job employment, the proposal,

concerning the school lunch program?

A. We did not look at the employment implications, but

we looked at the sales implications.

Q. How about with respect to importing the frozen

citrus?

A. Again, we usually did not, other than to ÄÄ you

know, the question there was what would changes in tariff

policy do to production levels, which then would have an

impact on employment, and at that time we had employment

multipliers in the citrus processing industry and they were

estimated to be about. . .

(Short interruption)

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Dr. Polopolus, in your understanding of the terms,

would you call the analyses that you did at the Florida

Department of Citrus, that you just mentioned, economic

impact analyses?

A. Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how you define

economic impact analyses.

Q. I guess what I'm asking is, given the way you would

define economic impact analysis, would you call those

analyses economic impact analyses?

A. Well, the question is whether we're talking about

economic analyses, economic impact analyses. Certainly

they're economic analyses.

Q. Okay. I'm asking about economic impact analyses.

A. They may or may not be.

I think the more standard definition would include

or could include employment implications.

Q. When you say the definition could include

employment implications, would you consider an economic

impact analysis, done in the circumstances of this case, to

be an adequate one if it did not include employment impacts?

A. I think with respect to, say, the economic impact

analysis, as I understand it under state law and under state

regulations, and so forth, those analyses can be rather

cursory and not too analytical and not, you know, not much

research based on it, but in the context of this particular

application that we would say economic impact would more

appropriately include employment impact.

Q. Okay. So then would it be fair to say that the

analyses that you did at the Florida Department of Citrus

were not appropriate economic impact analyses?

A. No, I'm not saying that, that they're not

appropriate. I'm saying in the context of what the

application there ÄÄ for example, what is the impact of

having a diversionary program, which sets aside X percent of

the crop or X percent of the process product into a reserve

pool, which is the secondary market; what is the economic

impact of that? And there we use what we call price

discrimination analysis and where we establish marginal

revenues, we set the net marginal revenues equal to zero, we

determine the impact of what that would be on lower revenue,

we then turn around and look at that impact on consumers and

what would that do to prices, and so on and so forth.

So that's an economic impact analysis, in the sense

that we're determining the impact on growers and impact on

consumers and impact on the trade.

Now, in the context in which we're talking about

this project, we may have a different definition of economic

impact, in the context of the particular problem.

Q. As a professor of agricultural economics or food

and resource economics, does economic impact analysis have

any special meaning or definition?

A. It's not in the standard textbook of agriculture

economics. I mean, if you read a textbook of agriculture

economics, in the beginning course in agriculture economics,

to my knowledge, you can take the books that I have read or

seen, economic impact analysis would not be something that

would be a chapter heading or even a major sub-heading of a

textbook. It may be included in a course, in some other kind

of course, but not in general agriculture economics. It

wouldn't have any special meaning.

Q. Are you aware of any scholarly texts, any

textbooks, within the discipline, that are either wholly or

partially devoted to the procedures for doing economic impact

analyses?

MR. BURGESS: In the discipline of agriculture

economics?

MR. SAXE: Yes.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Or food and resource economics.

A. I'm not aware of any title of a book that says

"Economic Impact Analyses", offered by, you know. . .

Q. Are you aware of any textbooks that have chapters

on economic impact analyses?

A. I'm certainly aware of books that deal with

Leontief input/output analyses.

Q. Would you spell that, please?

A. V-a-s-s-i-l-y L-e-o-n-t-i-e-f.

Q. Thank you.

A. Vassily Leontief was a guest of ours a few years

ago, he's a Nobel Laureate in economics.

Vassily is the author of what is known as

"input/output analyses". He's the father of the technique,

which shows the interdependencies of economics within an

international economic framework. He's the economist that

developed the primary concept of a multiplier and he's the

father of that.

Now, are there textbooks, chapters in textbooks,

that deal with input/output analyses, as we know it from

Leontief? There are dozens, hundreds.

Are there similar books that are titled "Economic

Impact Analyses"? I don't know of any.

Q. Okay.

26

A. Certainly there has been no Nobel Laureate, to my

knowledge, on economic impact analyses.

Q. You mentioned the Leontief multiplier analysis in the

context of what I think you called a Caddo-Bossier situation.

A. Yes.

Q. You said that, if I recall your testimony, that

although you may have been involved in an initial attempt to

do input and output analyses, in that context, that it turned

into an accounting nightmare and it wasn't completed.

A. Right.

Q. Are there any other projects that you have worked

on that have undertaken input/output analyses to quantify

economic impacts, in terms of changes in sales, job income

and employment?

A. I think the answer to that is we would all love to

do that. As scholars we would love to have the opportunity

of developing our own Leontief type input/output

coefficients. The problem is the cost and the resources that

are required to develop those original estimates.

So what university economists have tended to do is

rely on the U.S. Department of Commerce and to rely on them

to develop the basic input/output multipliers, and so what

you find is the adaptation of those multipliers for the

purpose of developing estimates of inter-industry

relationships from a set, you know, or given reference base.

We had, when I was Chairman of the Food and

Resource Economics Department, we had a major effort in this

area and our department were probably the leaders in the

State of Florida in working with the State of Florida

Department of Commerce and other university economists in

developing ÄÄ trying to develop better coefficients at a

micro level.

One of the problems that you have with the Leontief

input/output coefficients is that they tend to be very

aggregative, they tend to aggregate a two-sector SIC code as

opposed to a four-sector or five-sector ÄÄ in other words,

they tend to aggregate agriculture in general, and what we

found, those of us in agriculture economics, at least in

Florida, that have attempted to use input/output multipliers,

we have found that sometimes the federal government's

multipliers, as they apply to agriculture, do not dis-

aggregate to the level by industry or they do not dis-

aggregate to the level by county or by sub-region to the

level we would like, and we try to do the best we can with

the available data and make reasonable estimates from what is

available.

Q. Are you familiar with the Rims 2 multipliers?

A. Generally.

Q. Are those among the U.S. Department of Commerce

multipliers that you're referring to?

28

A. Yes.

Q. Have you ever used the Rims multipliers before this

case?

A. I have utilized the work of others and I don't

regard myself as presently a regional economist. So when it

comes to multipliers, and even in this case I defer the

specific estimate of multipliers to those experts who spend

much of their career in ÄÄ so I defer to those, and in this

particular application we also defer to those references of

those individuals that have developed what we think are

reasonable estimates.

Q. Let me see if I can close in on what I'm trying to

get at in my questioning here.

Have you ever developed an input/output model?

A. Yes, I did, in Caddo-Bossier Parish.

Q. That was the one you commenced the analysis, but

did not complete it?

A. And I might explain why it was not completed, give

you the reason for it.

We were trying to determine the inter-industry

relationship to agriculture, to non-agriculture, in northwest

Louisiana. One of the key industries in northwest Louisiana,

in addition to agriculture, happens to be natural gas and

petroleum.

What we were asking the natural gas and petroleum

industries, of northwest Louisiana, was to give us the data

in an accounting sense that bifurcated their data for just

those two parishes, Caddo and Bossier Parish, and their

relationship of buying inputs or selling supplies to

agribusiness components. So it didn't work out.

Also I think that I mentioned that I have taught

Leontief input/output multipliers. I have had Mr. Leontief

as my personal guest. I mean, I have listened to him in

lectures. I have been trained by Mr. Leontief. I don't feel

I'm a stranger to the analysis.

Q. And other than your work in the Caddo-Bossier case,

you have never completed an input/output analysis of economic

impacts on sales, income and employment?

A. Not directly.

Q. Okay. I asked you about Rims before and you

testified that you used the work of others concerning Rims

and you don't consider yourself a regional economist, but

have you ever used Rims multipliers to estimate indirect or

induced impacts?

A. Yes.

Q. In what?

A. In citrus.

Q. Could you tell me about that?

A. That's the application I think I mentioned with

respect to what is the employment impact of a particular

policy action in citrus and how that might impact employment

and sales, and I don't have publications on this, but I have

given papers and made presentations where, if I recall, the

coefficient was -- unemployment, I can't recall the

coefficient, but I can recall the sales coefficient on

processing of citrus to be above 2.4, and the point we made

with the industry and others, about value added agricultural

industries, is that when there is a processing activity or a

packing activity the sales and employment multipliers are

much larger than when the agricultural product is not

processed or packed locally.

Q. So the work that you have done, doing input

analyses of the impact of citrus policies, looked not only at

employment impacts, but also at sales impacts?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And I'm sorry, but did you indicate that you

had used Rims multipliers?

A. Well, those are multipliers that are basically

Rims. They are authored by other individuals. You know,

they're in publications of other individuals.

Q. Are they taken from Rims multipliers?

A. I believe they are.

Q. Okay.

A. My understanding is that they are.

Q. Have you ever estimated indirect or induced impacts

by any other techniques?

A. Well, I have estimated economic impacts within.

Is the question in the context of Leontief

input/output analyses? Is that the question?

Q. Yes.

A. I don't recall.

Q. Okay. Moving back up to my initial question in

this colloquy, about work you might have done on economic

impact and assessment of resource management actions,

proposed to remedy environmental problems.

Your testimony so far sounds to me like it's

concerned only with developmental proposals, proposals to

stimulate economic growth or develop a particular industry;

is that a fair characterization of your testimony?

MR. BURGESS: Object to the form.

ANSWER BY DR. POLOPOLUS: Well, within the --

I'm not sure I understand the question, but it's

not a characterization, it doesn't adequately

characterize my output, all of my output.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Would you identify for me any input/output analysis

of economic impacts that you have done that pertained to

proposed actions involving environmental remedies, as opposed

to economic development?

A. Placed in the context, as I understand your

question, when you constrain it to input/output analysis, the

answer is I can't recall having done input/output analyses in

that context.

Q. Have you. . .

A. Other than what I have indicated.

Q. Which of the projects that you worked on would you

say did involved ÄÄ when you say other than what you have

indicated, I'm not recalling whether you indicated any of

your work so far dealt with environmental remedies as opposed

to. . .

A. Oh, environmental remedies, I'm sorry if that's

part of your question. . .

Q. Okay. The focus of my question is economic impact

analyses or input/output analyses of economic impacts of

proposed environmental remedies.

A. No, that's not an area ÄÄ that's not my bag.

Q. So your work, as I am attempting to characterize

your testimony before, your work involves, to the extent that

you had done input/output analyses or economic impact

analyses, it's been of economic developmental activities?

A. Economic activities, maybe.

Q. Okay. That's fine, thanks.

Are you familiar with the term benefit cost

analysis or cost benefit analysis?

A. I have heard the term.

Q. Does it have a specialized meaning in your

profession?

A. Very specialized meaning.

Q. Have you ever done any benefit cost analysis or

cost benefit analysis?

A. Again, that is in the province of natural resource

economists and I'm not prepared to testify, nor am I actively

involved in "benefit cost analyses".

Q. Okay. Dr. Polopolus, I'd like to talk a bit about

your retention as a potential expert witness in the case.

A. Yes.

Q. You have been designated by the League to give

potential expert testimony in a case on the South Florida

Water Management District's ongoing economic study and on

regional and statewide economic impacts of the SWIM Plan.

Is that consistent with your understanding of the

potential scope of your expert testimony?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Are there any additional areas you might be giving

expert testimony?

A. Would you restate what you just said?

Q. Yes. As a matter of fact, if you would like to

take a look at the League's expert witness designation, that

would be fine. . .

Let me grab that.

There you go.

A. All right.

Q. My question is, are there any areas, besides the

District's ongoing economic study and regional and statewide

economic impacts of the SWIM Plan, that you might give expert

testimony on in this case?

A. I don't intend to. I'm not aware of.

Q. What do you understand by the reference to the

District's ongoing economic study?

A. What that refers to, I believe, is the Hazen and

Sawyer contract to conduct a study of economic impact, and my

role is to evaluate that study and their results.

Q. Would that include economic benefit analysis that

Hazen and Sawyer might have been contracted to do?

A. I may have seen some of their earlier work on that,

but I'm not ÄÄ I don't believe I have been asked to be

responsible for professional critique of benefit analysis.

Q. Have you ever served as a litigation expert in a

case, other than this one?

A. Yes.

Q. Can you tell me about them, starting with your most

recent?

A. I don't do a lot of this, so I have to go back over

some time, but the most recent was in a Federal District

Court of Danville, Virginia, where I was an expert witness in

a federal case involving the Immigration Reform Act, in

particular the H-2 Program of temporary foreign workers in

tobacco industries in Virginia and North Carolina.

Q. Did your testimony involve economic impact issues?

A. Yes, it did.

Q. Could you tell me about that?

A. The issues had to do with the adverse effect wage

rate and that was the primary focus of the litigation and the

setting of the adverse effect wage rate as it might affect

the number of foreign workers that would be available, and it

had to do, therefore, with the cost of production in tobacco

and economic viability of those industries vis-…-vis

immigration policy.

Economic impact, definitely, but economic impact in

the context of the South Florida case, not really.

Q. Okay. Did you testify concerning the effects of

that policy or potential effects of the policy on sales for

the industry?

A. That was one part of it.

I was a part of a team and I was not the major

economist player in that particular effort. Dr. James Holt,

consulting labor economist, in Washington, D.C., was the

primary economist that I worked with and I worked with him as

an agricultural economist, someone familiar with agricultural

industry, agricultural economics, things of that nature.

Q. Who retained you in that case? I don't mean the

name of the person, I mean the name of the party or entity.

A. To be honest, I can't recall the exact name, but it

was an organization of tobacco growers in North Carolina and

Virginia.

Q. And what was the position of the tobacco growers in

the litigation?

Let me ask you this first. Who were the other

parties in the litigation?

A. The other party, I believe, was the U.S. Department

of Labor, but it's been about eight years and I cannot recall

the details.

Q.    So this was about '85?

A.    Something like that, '84, '85.

Q.    So it was basically a case in which the government

and the industry were on opposite sides of the controversy?

A. Right.

Q. Okay. Any other cases in which you have given

expert testimony?

A. In a ÄÄ I'm restricting this to actual courtroom

situations, right?

Q. If you would, you can broaden that to include not

only a courtroom, but also administrative hearing form, like

the one involved in these SWIM proceedings.

Are you familiar with the distinction?

A. Yes, I'm familiar with the distinction.

Q. Okay.

A. Most of the work that I have done, as an

agriculture economist, has involved legal proceedings that

never went that far. They were settled out of court or

something happened, you know, you do the work and so on and

so forth, and I can talk about a recent one that I'm involved

in or was, I don't know whether I'm still involved in it or

not, where I'm an expert for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Q. What would that one be?

A. That one involved the tax credit policy, under tax

law of the sixty cent a gallon tax credit that is available

to manufacturers of a product called ETBE, a derivative

product which oxygenates a fuel and one of the basic raw

materials of that is ethanol.

So I was retained by the U.S. Justice Department a

couple of years ago to look at the economic impact of that

regulation.

Q. Do you know the name of the attorney at the Justice

Department?

A. Stewart Gibson.

Q. Do you know the name of the case?

A. No, not really. I do know that it's an action

brought by a group of organizations, including certain

individuals, against the Justice Department.

Q. What kind of organizations?

A. I may misstate the names, but it's like the Sierra

Club and Defenders of the Environment, it goes on and on and

I'm not sure of all of them, and there are certain

individuals in Minnesota and different places that are the

plaintiffs.

Q. Would it be fair to say that the challengers or

plaintiffs in the case are suing the Federal Government,

alleging environment grievances?

A. They're alleging potential environment grievances

over the administration of this policy.

Q. And what is the nature of your proposed expert

testimony in the case?

A. Well, here again, I'm working with a colleague, in

this case Professor Schmitz, Professor Andrew Schmitz,

Chairman of the Department of Agriculture and Resource

Economics, University of California at Berkeley, and he and I

are working together evaluating the likely impact of this

policy.

Q. Okay. The likely impact of the tax credit policy?

A. The tax credit policy.

Q. That would be the economic impact?

A. The economic impact, yes.

39

Q. Okay.

A. Or would it have an economic impact?

Q. Are there any other controversies, in which you had

been retained as a potential expert witness, whether or not

they went to trial, and you actually gave testimony?

A. When you have a thirty-three year history. . .

Q. You can start with the most recent. . .

A. I don't have. . .

Q. . . .ten-year period.

A. We don't write these things in our r‚sum‚s and they

don't become part of our pedigree and we don't utilize them

for tenure or promotion or anything else, so. . .

Q. So they fade from memory?

A. Yes, they fade from memory, but let me throw out a

few.

Q. Okay.

A. One of them, which was my experience, I did file an

affidavit in the Northern California Federal District Court,

about 1975, involving the private action under antitrust law,

Federal Antitrust Law, dealing with pricing policy and in

particular allegations of price fixing against a group of

sugar companies in California and Hawaii.

I say private action, because the public action ÄÄ

it's my understanding that in the public action the

defendants in this case, the sugar industries, pleaded nolo

contendere to the federal charge and then they were facing

the private charges of industry members, namely the buyers,

and the vertical structure. The buyers of sugar then filed a

trouble damage suit against the sugar companies.

Q. Do you know who the manufacturers were in the case?

A. It was a class action suit and there were literally

hundreds of plaintiffs.

Q. What was the class?

A. The class was the class of users of sugar. They

were sugar ÄÄ at that time they were still using ÄÄ this was

in the 1970s ÄÄ they were still using sugar in soft drinks,

so I think there were some soft drink manufacturers, there

were canners, a whole variety of firms, candy manufacturers,

other users of sugar, who filed this class action against

the. . .

Q. Had you been retained by the industry defendants?

A. I was, again, part of a team of economists that

were involved in looking at the economic impact and looking

at the economics of markets, sugar markets, and I was, I

guess, retained ÄÄ I guess you might say, I don't know how to

use the word retainer, but I was employed as a consultant by

the industry.

Q. By the defendants?

A. By the defendants.

Q. Okay. In the tax credit case for ETBE, I

understand you don't recall the name of the case, but do you

remember what court it's in?

A. I believe it's in a Washington, D.C. court, but I

can't say for sure.

Q. Okay.

A. It hasn't, to my knowledge, gone that far and I'm

just doing some background economic work.

Q. Okay. You're doing well with remembering these

faded cases, but you indicated a few moments ago that you

would throw a few out.

A. Yes.

Q. What are the other ones, besides the private

antitrust action?

A. Okay. Another one had to do with a case in the

federal ÄÄ a likely case in the federal court in Boston, and

that was also an antitrust action brought about by one

private party against another party, and it had to do with

cranberries and it had to do with the provision of antitrust

law that dealt with sales below cost, and one rival was

alleging to another rival that: You're driving me out of

business, because you're pricing below cost and I believe

that's a violation of the antitrust law and, therefore, I am

seeking damages and remedies and so forth.

In that particular case what became important was

the economics of cranberry marketing or cranberry packing,

cranberry harvesting, cranberry production and cranberry

juice processing.

So I began an analysis of using economic

engineering techniques to look at the economics of those

activities involved in the production, harvesting, packing or

processing of cranberries.

Q. Who were the parties in the case?

A. The parties were ÄÄ I think the plaintiff in the

case was a firm called Dekus and the defendant was Ocean

Spray Growers Cooperative.

Q. And who did you work for?

A. I worked for Ocean Spray.

Q. About when was this case?

A. This was about ÄÄ I recall it was the time of the

last presidential election, so it would have been 1988.

Q. The California sugar company private antitrust case

was about when?

A. That was '74/'75 era, in that vicinity.

Q. And the ETBE tax credit case?

A. That began about two years ago, a year and a half

ago.

Q. Are there any other cases in which you were

retained as an expert witness?

A. There was one in Gainesville, and I believe I had a

deposition in this office, and it involved transportation law

in trucking and at the time we had strict regulations on

trucking rates and that was in a state court and I was

retained for a relatively minor amount of time to testify

regarding economic impact of the regulations on freight rates

and trucking rates and restrictions and so forth.

Q.    About when was that?

A.    Oh, this has got to be fifteen years ago.

Q.    All right. So about '78?

A.    Something like that.

Q.    Okay.

A.    I remember the trucking firm or the moving

company and they have since gone out of business. I can't

recall. . .

Q. Who were the parties?

A. All I remember is the trucking company that I was

retained with.

Q. And who was that?

A. I don't remember the name of the firm, but the

individual was Wayne McKubbin.

Q. And it was a private trucking company?

A. Yes, here in Gainesville.

Q. And they were sued by a competitor or they sued?

A. They were being sued, I believe.

Q. And the competitor was another trucking company?

A. I believe.

Q. Any other retentions as a potential expert witness?

A. Yeah, there was one with AmStar Sugar in New York,

sugar refiner.

Q. And that was in?

A. That was in a potential case that never went to

trial.

All of these, except for the one on trucking and

the one in the Federal District Court in Virginia, never went

to trial.

Q. Okay.

A. The AmStar case involved, if I recall, a sugar

brokerage.

Q. What court? You said New York.

A. I believe some New York court, but it never went to

trial and. . .

Q. Who were the parties, besides AmStar Sugar

Refiners?

A.    It was another private firm, but I don't recall.

Q.    Was AmStar plaintiff or defendant?

A.    I don't recall, I really don't.

Q.    Do you remember whether they. . .

A.    I believe they were the defendant and the nature of

the case had to do with whether or not AmStar could drop a

general line broker and go ahead and develop their own

brokerage force, and it had to do with the brokerage ÄÄ the

brokering of sugar, if I recall, and my role on that was just

to look at sugar brokerage as it existed and look at

specialization in sugar brokerage versus companies' ability

to develop their own services by not retaining brokerages.

I can't remember the legal issue that was involved.

Q. So was your retention, your expertise in this case,

did it involve economic impact, per se, or more of an

economic feasibility?

A. It wasn't economic feasibility, it was economic

impact, in terms of the economics of the firm, you might say.

The economics to the firms that were involved, namely the

brokerage firms that were ÄÄ if you look at sugar brokerage

over history, from the time of the American Revolution to

today, you would find that sugar brokerage, as an industry,

was specialized sugar brokers and so forth, that industry has

waned and waned in terms of numbers and so on. So some of

the last vestiges of some aspects of that specialized

business were concerned about their economic viability.

Q. So this was microeconomics?

A. It was firm economics.

Q. Firm economics.

A. Yes. It affected the brokerage industry, but that

wasn't. . .

Q. But that wasn't the nature of your potential

testimony.

A. No, I was just called on as somebody that had some

knowledge of sugar marketing and sugar brokerage.

Q. Well, these may be faded memories for you, but

they're all interesting.

Are there any other retentions, as a potential

expert witness, that you can recall?

A. No.

Q. The two cases that you indicated went to trial, the

Gainesville trucking case and the Immigration Reform Act

case, did you testify in both of those cases?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. Moving to this case, if we can.

When were you retained as an expert in this case?

A. I think it was sometime in late May or early June

of 1992.

Q. And by whom were you retained?

A. By the League, through Peeples, Earl & Blank.

Q. Were there any other services that you were

retained to provide, besides potential expert testimony?

MR. BURGESS: Object to the form.

MR. SAXE: Grounds?

MR. BURGESS: I don't think he said he was

retained to provide potential expert testimony.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. Let me rephrase the question, Dr. Polopolus.

Were you retained to provide potential expert

testimony?

A. I think that was in the background, but I believe

the initial focus was to review the work of Hazen and Sawyer,

with the idea that there may or may not be litigation

involved.

Q. Was the nature of your retention or employment

altered at some point between the initial retention and now

to include, more explicitly, providing potential expert

testimony?

A. Well, I believe that it became clear in recent

months that my role might involve litigation.

Q. All right. So initially, it's your testimony, that

you were retained to review Hazen and Sawyer work.

Can you elaborate on what you were asked to do in

connection with that review?

A. Yeah. My role was to work as part of a team with

Dr. James Richardson, in terms of evaluating the work of

Hazen and Sawyer, where they were the primary contractor to

the District to evaluate economic impact.

Q. Were there any other individuals or entities that

you would be working with or have been working with?

A. You know, at the time that I was contacted ÄÄ I was

contacted about this maybe in March or April of 1992, and

there was a period of time there where there was some

uncertainty as to my availability and so when all of that got

clarified and we discussed seriously my involvement, I had to

indicate to Mr. Burgess, whom I was directly in contact with

in these discussions, with Peeples, Earl & Blank, that in

view of my heavy teaching, research and other commitments at

the University of Florida, that I could ÄÄ if I were to

become involved that I would have to become involved under a

particular arrangement, in terms of services and support.

Q. So the initial question, regarding your

availability, had to do with your other obligations as a

professor at the University of Florida.

A. Right. It basically ÄÄ what that meant, and what I

mean by that, is that I would not have the time to crunch a

lot of numbers and to conduct the laborious mathematical

calculations and computations, personally, that might be

involved.

Q. Okay.

A. At this point I wasn't aware of any ÄÄ at this

early point I was not aware of other economists being

directly involved. I was viewing this in terms of what my

role would be as an economist assisting the evaluation of the

work of others.

Q. Were you first asked to work on this controversy or

issue through IFAS?

A. No, IFAS never asked me to work on this.

Q. Did anyone else ask you, before you were contacted

by the League?

A. Yeah, there was a communication that I received

from one of the sugar officials in ÄÄ about the time the RFP

was issued.

I received a communication from Mr. Wedgworth,

saying: Leo, why don't you consider applying for this

particular grant and conduct the analysis for the District?

I did receive that communication.

I received from him, not the District, but from Mr.

Wedgworth, a copy of the research proposal format.

Q. Do you know Mr. Wedgworth from his dealings,

outside the context of this case?

A. I had known him by reputation, I had interviewed

him in connection with a graduate student research, but I

didn't have any long established relationship with Mr.

Wedgworth. I knew who he was.

Q. You testified that he said: Leo, why don't you

apply. . .

A. Yes. People have a hard time with Polopolus and

tend to shift quickly to Leo.

Q. Okay. Were you ever asked to work on this as an

IFAS project?

A. No.

Q. You said there was an initial question regarding

your availability and then I believe you testified that it

was resolved. You mentioned an arrangement regarding

services and support, but was there anything else that

happened that resolved the initial question about your

availability?

A. Well, I don't know how important it is to get into

the details of that, but if you would like me to describe

what happened between my initial contact from Mr. Burgess and

the time I said I would be available to be considered as an

economist for the League, I would be happy to go through the

details, if you would like those details.

Q. Well, about when did you agree? Was that May '92?

A. Yeah, it was late May, early June. It was sometime

in late May or sometime in June, but I can't recall the

precise date.

Q. Well, why don't you tell me what transpired between

when you were initially contacted by the League and when you

were retained?

A. Well, I was initially contacted by Mr. Burgess and,

I believe, a representative of Peterson Consulting came to

Gainesville, pretty much like an interview, to see me, meet

me, talk to me, so forth, about my employment, and I

indicated to Mr. Burgess at the time that I might be

available, but I would have to get the approval of my

University of Florida, IFAS and the university, before I

would commit myself to this effort, and then I had a meeting

with my department chairman and discussed this and he said

that it didn't look very promising that IFAS would approve my

involvement, but he would discuss it, without filling out all

the formal paperwork, he would discuss it with my dean, and

he meant in particular the Dean for Extension, although I

don't carry an extension appointment, all consulting of this

nature has to be approved by the Dean for Extension, in

addition to the Vice President for IFAS.

So I got another call from the department chairman:

Leo, we're going to have to talk about this, and I have this

lengthy letter from the dean saying that for a variety of

reasons your request, as you're proposing it, would not be

approved.

So I so indicated to Mr. Burgess, that it would not

be approved.

Q. Was that in March of '92?

A. That was probably in April of '92.

Q. Okay.

A. Then I began to think about that and I said: Well,

wait a minute, what is the IFAS policy with respect to

outside employment? And I started doing a lot of my own

research, collecting my own documents, trying to find what

separates an approval from a disapproval, and my own research

led me to the conclusion that IFAS did not have a coherent

policy.

At that point I retained two local attorneys and I

said: This is my problem and I'm doing this not for Leo

Polopolus but for other similarly situated.

At that time I was very concerned that one of my

colleagues, Dr. Boggess, had similarly been told that he

could not consult.

So I said: Well, I'm nearing retirement, I don't

have to worry about this employment situation, I'll take some

risks ÄÄ and I thought for the good of my colleagues.

So I retained two attorneys and I presented them

with all of the policies, all the documents and so on and so

forth.

MR. BURGESS: Leo, I want to interject, for

the record, that you have a privilege between what

you say to attorneys and what they say to you, and

you don't need to disclose either voluntarily or in

response to questions any of those communications,

if you don't desire to.

So you need to keep that in mind, vis-…-vis

your discussions with attorneys.

DR. POLOPOLUS: Thank you.

MR. SAXE: I would also interject that you

don't need to give me the substance of any

communications with counsel, but unless counsel

instructs you otherwise, I would expect you ÄÄ you

can, to the extent that you remember it, and in

response to my question, tell me about

conversations that ÄÄ or communications that took

place and identify the approximate dates and the

nature of the conversation of the subject matter.

MR. BURGESS: I disagree with Mr. Saxe.

I don't need to instruct him not to answer

concerning matters of discussion between he and

other counsel that he had employed. I'm not his

counsel for that purpose and I don't think I have

the right to instruct him not to answer, but I'm

just pointing out for his benefit that he has

privilege bestowed on him, in the State of Florida,

that he need not reveal the substance of

communications between himself and counsel, should

he decide that he does not want to do so.

MR. SAXE: And how will I know when privilege

is being invoked, counsel?

MR. BURGESS: He can invoke that privilege on

discussions he had between himself and counsel.

MR. SAXE: Well, if you're instructing Dr.

Polopolus that, rather than waiting for you to

object on grounds of privilege, that he can tell me

a conversation took place and this was the nature,

but he's not going to tell me, on the grounds of

privilege, is that your position?

MR. BURGESS: With respect to matters that he

had, he as a client had with his attorneys, in this

particular subject matter, yes, I'm advising him

that he has that privilege and he can make that

determination.

MR. SAXE: Are you referring. . .

MR. BURGESS: You're blowing this out of

proportion, Keith, it's a simple comment on my

part to him that he, as a client of an attorney, in

this state, has a privilege not to reveal

substantive communications between himself and the

attorney.

MR. SAXE: So your instructions are limited to

the retention by Dr. Polopolus of the two local

attorneys in any matters that were communicated

between them?

MR. BURGESS: Yes.

MR. SAXE: Thank you.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q.    You can go ahead, Dr. Polopolus.

A.    Okay.

Q.    You said you were nearing retirement and you had

decided. . .

A. I had decided that I would consult these attorneys,

and meanwhile I wrote a letter to the President of the

University of Florida and in that letter I basically, again,

asked for the policy and asked for the equity at a time when

it appeared that professors in some colleges were being

encouraged to consult and other colleges they were given so

many days a week, and that kind of stuff, and at a time when

our former President was on the Board of ÄÄ you know, at the

time on boards of Johnson & Johnson, and at a time when the

Chairman of the Board of Regents, without even approval by

the Board of Regents, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents,

not the head, but the Chancellor, took on a directorship with

Florida Power, so on and so on, all of this stuff going on

and on.

So I said: Wait a minute, what's going on here?

So I wrote a letter to the President and so on and

so forth.

Well, based on advice from my counsel on that

issue, I then decided that I would take certain risks,

employment risks, and say that I would be available.

Where it stands right now? The University has

asked me to resubmit that application and I have so

resubmitted that application and it's in process.

All I have asked the university to do is if they're

going to fire me over this particular issue that they give me

the opportunity to resign first. That's all I've ever asked.

Q. Okay. I don't want you to give me any of the

details of your communications with your attorneys in this

matter, but could you tell me who the two attorneys are that

you referred to?

A. Yes.

Q. What are their names?

A. Jonathan Wershow and Pamela Schneider.

Q. Are they here in Gainesville?

A. Yes.

Q. You testified that you're nearing retirement. Can

you elaborate on that for me?

A. Yes. I'm fifty-nine and a half years old and I

have had thirty-three years of service and I intend to retire

from the University of Florida, but not to retire as a

professional consultant economist, when I become sixty-two

years of age.

Q. So that would be three years from now?

A. Two and a half.

Q. Okay. I want to go into a chronology of your work

in preparing for this case, but before we move off the topic

of your retention I have a couple of things I want to get

some elaboration from you on.

When you said that you needed an arrangement or an

arrangement was necessary regarding your service and support,

because you didn't have time to crunch numbers or do

calculations, what did you mean? Can you elaborate on that?

A. Just that. That in view of my responsibilities at

the University of Florida, and the various hats and roles

that I play, and the likelihood of a large amount of data

aggregations and data calculations and so forth, that I

would, if involved, I would prefer or request that I have

assistance or support in carrying out those calculations and

the preparations of tables and adding and subtracting and

dividing and so forth.

Q. What assistance or support is being provided or

will be provided?

MR. BURGESS: Object to the form.

MR. SAXE: Compound?

MR. BURGESS: Yes, and he testified with

respect to what was provided.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. I'm sorry, Dr. Polopolus, you said you requested

assistance and support?

A.   Yes.

Q.    Did you get the response?

A.    Yes, I did.

Q.    What was the response?

A.    The response was that the support would be

provided.

Q. And what support specifically was to be provided?

A. That support was to be provided with the assistance

of Peterson Consulting.

Q. Exclusive of what Peterson was going to do in

supporting you, what did you agree to do specifically?

A. At what stage?

Q. At that point in time when this initial request was

made.

A. I agreed to evaluate the work of Hazen and Sawyer

and to become generally familiar with the issues that ÄÄ

economic issues that were extant at that time, talking about

mid-June 1992.

Q. Did you prepare or was there prepared for you a

statement of work that described what you would do?

A. There was a contract that I signed with Peeples,

Earl & Blank.

Q. Did it contain a description of the tasks that you

would perform?

A. I don't recall the terminology of that contract,

but it provided a general outline.

Q. Dr. Polopolus. . .

MR. SAXE: Rick, do you know whether a copy of

that contract has been. . .

MR. BURGESS: It will be on our privileged

list.

MR. SAXE: Okay.

MR. BURGESS: I think, except to the extent

that if it does contain a scope of work, and I

don't think it does, I think it's discoverable and

I will provide it.

MR. SAXE: Okay.

BY MR. SAXE:

Q. In the next three months, excluding June of '92,

what was the division of labor between you and the Peterson

Consulting group and Dr. Richardson in any work that you did

analyzing Hazen and Sawyer's analysis?

A. Well, in taking that time sequence from mid-June,

the very first thing that was happening was that Hazen and

Sawyer was beginning to issue reports of certain phases of

their work, sort of like preliminary papers on ÄÄ I think

they called them Task Force Reports, and my first involvement

was to review those reports and I recall ÄÄ I think my first

report was around June the 29th, 1992, where I reviewed Hazen

and Sawyer's Task Force Reports 1, 2, 3, not 4, but 5,

something like that, and then other task force numbers came

later on. So from mid-June to mid-July most of my work was

general familiarization of the issues and the work of others

and including engineers and reports and economic reports, so

on and so forth. But July 15 was a very significant date,

because that was the date that the preliminary report of

Hazen and Sawyer became publicly available.

Q. Before the July 15 date, what did you or ÄÄ you

were just doing general reading and review of the task

reports that were issued by Hazen and Sawyer?

A. Right.

Q. How did you acquire those task reports?

A. They were sent to me by Peeples, Earl & Blank, I

believe.

Q. And you did not do any other work between June and

before July 15, besides reading those task reports?

A. And commenting on them and ÄÄ I can't recall the

exact date. . .

See, in the June period, June '92 period, I was not

aware of Dr. Richardson's involvement, but I was involved in

and part of the work was, if I recall, and I do recall, Hazen

and Sawyer's initial reports discussing the FLIPSIM