TALLAHASSEE --
Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio quietly slipped tough-to-spot language in a state budget plan last week that helps a friend and political money-man bid on a major fuel contract in a $265 million turnpike overhaul proposal.
This is the second year in a row that South Florida fuel distributor Max Alvarez has relied on the man he has said is ''like a son'' to push the budget language to ensure he can more easily bid for the job.

Rubio said in a written statement that he was concerned the turnpike contract paved the way for anti-competitive "monopolies," and acknowledged through spokeswoman Jill Chamberlin that his office ''had a role'' in putting the language in the budget, adding that ``others are interested in it as well.''
Republican lawmakers and staffers, including Rubio allies, told The Miami Herald that the speaker was the one who inserted the language in the budget. Chamberlin said she wasn't told.
At issue: the Florida Turnpike Enterprise's mammoth plans to combine its separate food and fuel concessions for its rest stops into one contract. But the contracts have remained split due to the budget language pushed by Alvarez, giving him a better shot at winning the fuel concession that supplied 54 million gallons of gas last year.
Senate Republican leader Dan Webster said the budget language -- which surfaced last year ''in the dark of night'' -- remains a ''bad deal'' because it would prohibit the state from even getting bids to see if a combined contract is advantageous.

.....

Turnpike officials say that more than a year of study and national road-building trends show that the state should combine the lucrative concession contracts for 30 years. That way, they say, the turnpike can lure a major corporation that could afford to spend $175 million of its own money up front to help rebuild the eight rest-area plazas and give the state the best cut on concession revenues.
But Alvarez's supporters say bigger corporations aren't always better for the public. He says any conglomerate would just siphon money by getting between the state and the fuel vendor, which would ultimately work as a subcontractor for the new mega-corporation.

.....

After Alvarez failed to sway the turnpike officials, he made good on a promise to seek help from state legislators. Alvarez, his family members and corporations have contributed at least $319,000 over the past two decades. Of that money, at least $9,000 was contributed to Rubio since 1999.
The 36-year-old West Miami Republican's relationship with Alvarez appears deeper than money. Rubio is really just ''Marquito'' and more ''like a son to me'' than a lawmaker, the affable Alvarez told a Miami Herald reporter when he flew to Tallahassee in 2005 to see Rubio designated the first Cuban-American House speaker.

In the waning days at the end of Rubio's first session in charge last year, turnpike officials and Webster noticed that the House had slipped in the one-paragraph language dividing up the contract in the state budget.

.....

Few knew who did it, and those who tried to find out at the time said they were thwarted. Webster only said House ''leadership'' was behind it.
Unable to remove the language, turnpike officials decided to wait until this budget ends June 30 to bid out the contract.
When word of the stalling plan leaked out, House leaders then tried to enshrine the language in law by tacking it as an amendment to a Senate bill over contracting. Webster had the language stricken.
Then last week, the turnpike language reappeared in the House version of the budget for 2008-09, which begins July 1.

Regardless of Alvarez, Rubio said, the turnpike's plans are bad. He said the sheer size and scope of the job makes it feasible for only a few companies to win the bid, such as the venture capital Carlyle Group or HMSHost, which currently runs the food concessions.

.....