The New Life Dream Center (NLDC), a faith-based drug rehab facility, is based in the Deer Run Farms neighborhood in southern Lee County. It's operated by Pastor Bishop Gaspar Anastasi of Word of Life Ministries.

A county zoning violation hit New Life Dream Center earlier this year, in addition to scrutiny from neighbors who believe Anastasi used his connections in the Florida legislature to run it.

WGCU's Emma Rodriguez spoke with Bob Norman, Senior Editor of the Florida Trident. His reporting detailed how Anastasi's relationships with several southwest Florida politicians aided the center's push for funding and its following legal battles.

RODRIGUEZ: Give us a rundown of New Life Dream Center and how it's come to operate.

NORMAN: New Life Dream Center has been around since 1983. It started in Long Island, New York by Gaspar Anastasi to help drug addicts, alcoholics overcome their addiction. And according to him, it's been very successful. He showed up in Fort Myers in about 2003 and started Word of Life Ministries in Fort Myers and started back up the New Life Dream Center.

RODRIGUEZ: Florida's constitution bans the use of public funds to aid religious institutions. But you reported, Bob, the center was due to receive around two million dollars from the Florida legislature before some community intervention. How did this happen?

NORMAN: Well, he utilized his political connections. One thing that Pastor Anastasi has is connections.

The former chairman of Lee Health David Klein, who just really took a huge interest in promoting New Life Dream Center in about 2022. When he went on the board of Lee Health, he actually utilized Lee Health's resources to try to help Anastasi get money for his center. Specifically, he had Nicholas Grant, then Lee Health lobbyist, go to work and start using all of his connections in the Florida Legislature to get these funding requests done. And ultimately, Anastasi was able to get a $298,000 grant from the state legislature that was sponsored by the lobbyist, Nicholas Grant's sister, which, you know, this has all kinds of interconnections in it.

And it's sort of a soup of politics that comes into this, because it wasn't just Nicholas Grant's sister, Vanessa Oliver, who was involved. You have Jenna Persons-Mulicka— she put her name on one of these funding requests that didn't go through. Adam Botana, who had a $1.85 million budgetary request for NLDC that we think may have gone through, until the public heard about it.

The neighbors who live around New Life Dream Center spoke up and [Botana] said "Okay, I didn't know that, I'm going to, you know, this is too controversial. I'm going to drop it." You mentioned the constitutional ban— it's just not enforced. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who came out in, I think March or February said, "I'm not enforcing this because I think it's unconstitutional."

RODRIGUEZ: Like you mentioned, community members that live near New Life Dream Center are pretty concerned about its operations. Why are they making those efforts to get the center shut down?

NORMAN: In about 2022. Anastasi paid, I believe, $1.5 million for a five-acre property in Deer Run Farms, which is a rural neighborhood. And it's a single family residential neighborhood. By letter of the zoning, New Life Dream Center doesn't belong there and some neighbors got very upset about this. They didn't want a drug rehab center in their neighborhood for, you know, kind of obvious reasons.

There was no attempt, it seemed, to get the proper zoning. And ultimately the neighbors complained to the county. New Life Dream Center was hit with code violations, including being an unpermitted business in a residential neighborhood. And that's where we are now.

Anastasi, he's fighting with everything he has. He's hired Jenna Persons-Mulicka as an attorney, along with Bruce Strayhorn, to try to convince the county that legally, they really are permitted to be in that neighborhood. It's being hashed out right now, so we'll find out.

Anastasi has a lot of political connections. Among them is Congressman Byron Donalds, who's the front runner to be Florida's next governor. Donalds toured the facility just a month ago, also James Oberweis, who's running for [Donalds'] old seat.

James Oberweis actually came to Anastasi's most recent sermon and while he was there— I'll try to put it in the words that he used— [Anastasi said,] "I'm going to vote for them, these two, and I think you ought to vote for them, too."

And of course, the IRS forbids 501(c)(3)s from endorsing candidates. It's just not allowed. Shortly after he made that announcement, he said, "now, don't don't tell anybody that I told you how to vote because I didn't tell you how to vote. I was telling you how I was going to vote."

So he really tried to backtrack a little bit, but again, it's indicative of the way that government and religion is mixing in this case in ways that, you know, you don't often see. Or maybe you see too much.

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