The Florida Cabinet formally appointed Gov. Rick Scott's handpicked candidate to lead the state's Department of Environmental Protection on Wednesday, despite two Cabinet members' misgivings about his plan to lease state park land to private companies.

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and state Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater suggested DEP Secretary Jon Steverson's goal of making the state park system a self-sustainable enterprise ignores the primary role the parks play as public resources.

"They're not going to be self-sustainable, and what it would take to manage a park to be self-sustainable would be unacceptable," Putnam told Steverson during an at times tense public interview.

Steverson, who had been serving as interim DEP secretary since January, has proposed leasing 6,500 acres of land in the Myakka River State Park to cattle grazing companies, and says the Cabinet criticism hasn't changed his plan to seek public hearings on revenue-raising ventures.

"Yes, there are activities we will do along the way — like logging, that has happened in the parks for over 25 years — that will increase and enhance the bottom line," said Steverson.

Environmentalists present for Wednesday's vote say DEP has changed markedly since Gov. Scott, a former hospital executive, took office in 2011 vowing to reform state government. In the seven months since Scott began his second term, a full ten percent of the DEP workforce has left.

"People are being threatened with reprisals if they voice concerns about this trend, so the only people that are able to speak about it are former employees and citizens that are out of the reach of state government," said Jono Miller, a Sarasota County environmentalist opposed to Steverson's proposal.