Gov. Ron DeSantis regularly jets around the state.
Stops over the last month have included Coral Gables, Jacksonville and Cape Canaveral, all to sign bills passed by the Florida Legislature earlier this year.
His constituents may know DeSantis went to these three cities, but they won’t know how much it cost them. The state says such financial records are exempt from public records disclosure, citing a 2023 law geared at concealing certain information to prevent the endangerment of the governor and other officials.
A total amount for how much is spent on the governor’s travel is released every year by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but the agency recently denied a public records request from the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida seeking a detailed breakdown.
Open government advocates and others argue the new law prevents the public from clearly knowing whether personal and political trips, which shouldn’t be paid for with tax dollars, were kept separate from official travel.
“I don’t understand this inconsistency…. He was at a public event, it doesn’t make any sense to protect that,” said Michael Barfield, director of public access initiatives for the Florida Center for Government Accountability, which has filed multiple public records lawsuits against the governor. “It’s my understanding the legislation did not preclude the release of financial amounts.”
He wasn’t the only one given that impression.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, asked a sponsor of the legislation (SB 1616) about financial transparency on the House floor in early May 2023: “How do you strike the balance between ensuring that the public still knows how their money is being spent with travel?”
“None of the finances that are currently public records … or the reports that are currently available are changing,” replied Rep. Jeff Holcomb, R-Spring Hill.
In a phone interview with a reporter a year later, Eskamani said the GOP supporters of the bill should now be working to get such information out to the public.
“Based on the constant response by the bill sponsor and by others who attempted to say that this bill was all about safety and security, the impression by those in support of the bill was that this information would still be made available,” Eskamani said. “I never bought that reasoning or that excuse, but that was definitely what they were pitching to their colleagues.”
On the road again: Florida governors’ travels long a topic of interest
The travel of Florida’s governors has been a topic of intrigue and controversy for decades. Attention on DeSantis’ travel ramped up even more when he was barnstorming the nation in the months leading up to his unsuccessful presidential campaign, which formally began on May 24, 2023.
FDLE’s report, released in August, showed that it spent more than $8 million protecting and transporting the governor during the 2022-23 fiscal year. It marked a multi-million dollar increase in spending over the previous year.
The law enforcement agency denied the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s breakdown request in early May, about nine months after it was made.
The governor’s office has not responded to requests for comment, but representatives of DeSantis have previously dismissed concerns about his travel practices.
“The state does not coordinate or plan political travel, nor does the taxpayer fund political travel,” spokesperson Bryan Griffin said in an email last year.
Dana Kelly, an FDLE spokesperson, responded via email only that the annual report is “the public record of expenses.”
The law took effect on May 11, 2023, the day DeSantis signed it.
“With the security situation, how you do patterns of movements, if you’re somebody that is targeted, which unfortunately I am, and I get a lot of threats, that could be something that could be helpful for people that may not want to do good things,” DeSantis said at the time.
And that’s how the bill’s GOP champions framed the exemption, which also concealed records about who visits the governor’s mansion. The law applies not just to the governor but his immediate family, as well as the House speaker, Senate president and state Supreme Court chief justice.
“We are government in the sunshine,” said state Sen. Jonathan Martin, a bill sponsor and Fort Myers Republican, on the Senate floor. “This allows us to continue to do that in these new and interesting times that we find ourselves, where seemingly innocent information can be conglomerated to reveal very personal aspects of your life.”
And Holcomb said before the House vote, “unfortunately, this very simple bill that is truly about the safety and security of our most senior elected officials has become politicized,” responding to a slew of criticism from lawmakers on the other side of the aisle.
Eskamani wasn’t the only legislative Democrat who had doubts. All of them voted against the measure.
“If someone is running for president and they hold the governor’s office, that travel should be transparent, and those finances and all of those things and whatever they do should be transparent,” said Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg.
Holcomb and Martin didn’t respond to requests for comments.
DeSantis travel, security spending:As taxpayers pay more for DeSantis’ travel and protection, new law conceals his travel
DeSantis faces records lawsuits:Florida Governor Ron DeSantis accused of lack of transparency, sued again in Tallahassee
Transparency advocates call foul on latest records exemption
American Oversight, a government accountability watchdog that sued the governor’s office for alleged public records violations a couple of months ago, said the law doesn’t apply to expenditures. In an emailed statement, the group pointed out that the Florida Constitution requires that any exemption “shall be no broader than necessary to accomplish the stated purpose of the law.”
“That means that the exemption must be interpreted narrowly (in line with its stated purpose); otherwise, it would be unconstitutional because it would be broader than necessary to accomplish its purpose,” said Ron Fein, American Oversight’s chief counsel. “If a financial record does happen to contain security information covered by the exemption, it can be redacted.”
The legislation listed out multiple examples of exempt records; Fein says financial records don’t fall under any of them. And he says such records don’t fall under the law’s purpose to prevent records disclosures that “could endanger the protected person.”
The law shouldn’t have been passed in the first place, Fein added: “Not only is it overbroad and probably unconstitutional under the state’s Constitution, it flies in the face of Florida’s commitment to government transparency.”
Bobby Block, executive director of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, had warned lawmakers last year about how all-encompassing the exemption could be. Reading the bill, he noticed how it didn’t explicitly exclude financial records.
And, as a result, if the state chooses to consider those as exempt security records, it takes legal challenge to contest it. “The time to fight that is before it passes from the legislature,” Block said in a recent phone call. “Once it passes its law, and it’s a lot harder to push back.”
The Washington Post is pushing back. It filed a lawsuit last year in Leon County Circuit Civil court, saying the records exemption law was unconstitutional.
It’s a high-profile case that became even more noteworthy after the litigation uncovered that, as reported by The Post, top DeSantis aides prevented records on taxpayer-funded travel from being released – and retaliated against those who disagreed.
The Florida Center for Government Accountability’s Barfield said Florida’s public records system, once nationally esteemed for its transparency, was “broken at the state level.”
“The bottleneck is in the governor’s office,” he said, pointing to a News 6 story showing how DeSantis’ team reviews public records requests to state agencies.
“They know that our resources are thin to challenge the denial of access to public records, whether it’s an excessive fee or an excessive, inordinate delay. And they’re taking full advantage of that.”
Contributed: News Service of Florida. This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA TODAY Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com.
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