Florida is slow-rolling public records about migrant flights. What’s DeSantis hiding? | Opinion

Gov. Ron DeSantis must know he’s risking voter backlash over his reckless and irresponsible insistence on spending Florida taxpayers’ dollars to ferry migrants from other states around the country.

Why else would the state continue its seemingly endless delays over the release of public records on the migrant flights?

The latest round came Tuesday. DeSantis’ lawyers went to a Tallahassee appeals court to argue that the administration’s failure to provide public records about the controversial Texas-to-Massachusetts flights was because of Hurricane Ian. Oh, and the governor’s office also was backed up with more than 150 records requests, the lawyers said.

That’s nonsense. If the state was normally quick to hand over public documents, that stitched-together argument of being both too busy and occupied by hurricane recovery might hold some sway. But this foot-dragging been going on for months. And the DeSantis administration has a long track record of trying to slow-roll records requests on other issues — notably, COVID.

We pick up the tab

The state was appealing a ruling in October by Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh in a suit brought by the non-profit Florida Center for Government Accountability last year. The judge ruled that the state had improperly delayed release of some migrant flight documents, ordered the documents released and also concluded that the governor’s office redacted some documents without providing proper exemptions.

But the DeSantis administration never hesitates to use taxpayer dollars to defend its own bad decisions. This was no different. So back to court the case went, on appeal. When you have the open pocketbook of the taxpayers to pick up the costs, why not?

Many, including the Editorial Board, have characterized these flights as political stunts by a man who wants to be the Republican nominee for president. That remains a correct characterization. Florida’s governor first hit on the idea of hauling migrants around the country last year, in that initial round of flights from the Texas border to Martha’s Vineyard.

Seeing the outrage about immigration that he had stoked in the GOP, he got the Legislature to earmark $12 million for more such flights, most recently when he ordered up charter flights to carry about three dozen mostly Venezuelan migrants from New Mexico to Sacramento.

That was a jab at Gavin Newsom, the California governor and potential Democratic presidential candidate, who responded by saying the flights might be grounds for “kidnapping charges” and tweeting that DeSantis is a “small, pathetic man.”

So this is about politics. This is about DeSantis’ presidential ambitions. And yet Florida taxpayers are the ones paying — for the flights and for the court appeals.

Kept under wraps

It has been a dirty business from the start. In addition to the obvious inhumanity of using migrants as political pawns, there’s the “ick” factor of DeSantis’ public safety czar, Larry Keefe, using a private email address with the alias “Clarice Starling” (after the Jodie Foster character in the serial-killer movie “Silence of the Lambs”) to secretly communicate with Vertol Systems, his former client, the Destin vendor who won the state contract to operate the relocation program. Or that texts and emails from the governor’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier — records now being sought by the watchdog group — involved the use of an encrypted email application held on servers in Switzerland.

The public has the right to know how its money is being spent. But the DeSantis administration seems to be doing everything in its power to stop that from happening in the case of the migrant flights. We don’t buy that the delays are related to a hurricane or too many public records requests, and neither should the appellate court.

The question is, what does the administration have to hide?