Jacksonville attorney Herschel Vinyard had one nonnegotiable stipulation when Gov. Rick Scott asked him in 2010 to be the state’s environmental protection chief.
Friday night lights.
Vinyard wanted the governor’s carte blanche approval to travel from Tallahassee to watch his son, Thomas, as an offensive lineman for the Episcopal School of Jacksonville football team.
He said Scott told him, “Absolutely. That’s the right thing to do.”
Another Friday ritual — Bible study — helped Vinyard land his new gig as counsel with the international law firm Foley & Lardner.
It was during the longstanding, weekly small-group worship session that Kevin Hyde, managing partner of Foley’s Jacksonville office, broached the idea of Vinyard returning to Jacksonville to practice law.
As DEP chief, Vinyard’s duties included regulating environmental permitting, water rights and real estate development. That experience and Vinyard’s business and government relations background were an ideal fit for the firm’s government, public policy and environmental regulation practices, Hyde said.
“Anything development-wise in the state of Florida is dependent upon environmental concerns,” Hyde said. “Who’d be better than the most recent state Department of Environmental Protection secretary to speak directly to those concerns? Herschel truly is the most recent subject matter expert on environmental protection.”
Hyde said during the recruitment effort, he invited Vinyard and his wife, Sharon, to informal gatherings with the firm’s attorneys and their spouses.
“We just talked about sports and movies and kids and stuff,” Hyde said. “We wanted to make sure he and Sharon were comfortable with this group we were trying to get them to join.”
Vinyard resigned his state post in December after four years on the job. He began working for Foley on Feb. 2.
He said the highlights of his Tallahassee stint were Florida being designated as having the best park system in the nation; the DEP establishing a science-based nutrient reduction program for the state’s waterways; and ending a lengthy legal quarrel over the Everglades’ restoration.
“I served an entire term while my family stayed in Jacksonville. It was important for me to start sleeping in my own bed again,” he said.
A Texas native, Vinyard met his wife while both were students at Louisiana State University, where he received undergraduate and law degrees. They moved to Jacksonville in 1990.
Before serving as DEP secretary, Vinyard was director of business operations at Jacksonville’s BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards. He also is a former chair of the Shipbuilders Council of America and co-chair of the First Coast Manufacturers Association.
Vinyard was vice president of Atlantic Marine Holding Co. before it was bought by BAE, which followed nearly 10 years of Vinyard working as an attorney and shareholder with Jacksonville’s Smith, Hulsey and Busey.
At Foley, Vinyard counsels manufacturing, real estate and construction clients on economic development, land use, environmental and other regulatory matters. He also helps clients who need legislative and regulatory guidance. Already, the work frequently requires him to travel to Foley’s Tallahassee office.
Vinyard says he expects to have a leg up in steering clients toward innovative environmental solutions.
“I know what works at DEP and what doesn’t work, so I’m trying to counsel those clients in, ‘Let’s get it right the first time,’” he said.
Vinyard says his professional and political relationships should be a huge asset in his new role.
“I have been fortunate to work with some terrific folks in government … who are committed to solving problems for Florida. And, so what I am doing is connecting people with problems with the problem solvers,” he said.
Vinyard said he enjoys fishing, boating, skiing and tubing with his family on the St. Johns River, which he says “is as clean as it has been my entire life.”
“Much work has been done by a lot of folks here to improve the health and quality of the river and it is paying off,” he said.
Vinyard still travels to football games in the fall. His son now is a lineman for Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. The Vinyards’ daughter, Sarah, is a recent Louisiana State University theatre performance graduate.