DeSantis ignored U.S. senators’ request for info on CARES Act spending, Rick Scott says
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has ignored a request for information about how Florida has spent and allocated hundreds of millions of federal dollars from a massive coronavirus bailout package, two U.S. senators said Wednesday.
Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., wrote Tuesday to Senate colleagues that only eight states responded to a letter they and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sent on June 15 requesting information on how each state had spent money from a $150 billion coronavirus financial aid package distributed as part of the $2.9 trillion CARES Act and whether Medicaid costs had risen as a result of the coronavirus.
Scott and Johnson did not single out Florida. But the state was not among the eight states that provided information, they said.
“We are disappointed in the lack of response from 42 states,” the senators wrote in the letter to their Senate colleagues, which they both signed and released Wednesday to reporters. “Therefore, we write today to ask that you consider encouraging the remaining states to immediately share this important information, which should be readily available, if not already submitted to the federal government for oversight activities by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.”
A Scott spokesman told the Miami Herald that, as of early Wednesday afternoon, Florida had yet to provide any information.
In an email to the Miami Herald Wednesday, DeSantis’ press secretary, Cody McCloud, did not address the letter from Scott and Johnson. But McCloud wrote that the governor and state have complied with U.S. Department of Treasury reporting requirements about CARES Act spending, and submitted a first interim report that was due July 17.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor DeSantis has remained in constant communication with federal and local officials regarding how to disburse CARES Act funding in a responsible manner to ensure the needs of communities are met while safeguarding taxpayer dollars,” McCloud wrote.
Scott, a former two-term Florida governor whose own administration was at times criticized for secrecy, has on several occasions called for the DeSantis administration to provide more information about its efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic. Those criticisms began in early March, when the Florida Department of Health acknowledged for the first time that someone had died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Both DeSantis and Scott, a former two-term Florida governor, are viewed as potential presidential candidates in 2024.
Scott also wrote a letter to President Donald Trump in early February encouraging the president to be transparent about the threat posed by the coronavirus outbreak.
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 1:22 PM.
