Spending and secrecy: As conservatives keep challenging DeSantis, Florida wins | Opinion

We’re barely two weeks into the annual meeting of lawmakers in Tallahassee but it’s clear the Florida Legislature is continuing its pushback against Gov. Ron DeSantis, a healthy development for democracy in a state where the legislative branch was in lockstep with the governor for far too long.

One notable bill, Senate Bill 1726, sponsored by Miami Republican Sen. Alexis Calatayud, would repeal a law signed by DeSantis in 2022 that plunged university presidential searches into secrecy by making the identities of presidential candidates confidential well into the final stages of a search. Under SB 1726, such searches would once again be conducted in the sunshine.

The problems with that law were apparent from the get-go, when presidential searches quickly became a fixed game, with DeSantis pushing his political allies to leadership posts at Florida’s higher education institutions and only one candidate being forwarded to trustee boards. It was so bad that former state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, who helped sponsor the bill, said in 2023 that the legislation had been “perverted” by those who sought to control the outcome of the searches.

For example, when the University of Florida president was chosen in 2022, only one name emerged from the shadows of the secret process, former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. There was also only one finalist put forth in 2023 for South Florida State College, former state Rep. Fred Hawkins, a St. Cloud Republican.

Calatayud’s bill, which has a House companion bill, HB 1321, filed by Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Cantonment, would put this situation to rights. It would remove the public records and open meetings exemption for presidential applicants at public colleges and universities in Florida. The selections of presidents of public institutions of higher learning would be made in the open once again.

That’s especially fitting as we mark Sunshine Week, March 16-22, the annual celebration of Florida’s open records laws, once lauded as the best in the nation for transparency and accountability in government.

Florida taxpayers deserve no less than full transparency on presidential searches. But what makes this bill and others even more notable is that they are being filed by conservatives — often in the name of fiscal responsibility — not the Democrats who have been fighting DeSantis for the past six years.

A proposal by Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, adopted on Monday by a Senate committee, is an even more direct challenge to the governor.

Bradley successfully amended a Senate bill dealing with ballot initiatives to ban the state from using taxpayer dollars to advocate for or against constitutional amendments.

Last year, DeSantis used state resources to campaign against Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 to legalize abortion rights (both proposals failed to get the required 60% voter approval). Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which reports to the governor, even launched a website in opposition to Amendment 4.

“This amendment makes sure that taxpayers don’t get the bill for political issue campaigns,” Bradley said, the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reported.

It’s unclear how much money the state spent fighting both amendments. That’s something the Legislature should investigate now that it has an appetite to oversee spending under the governor.

The Florida House has been especially dogged in its scrutiny of DeSantis. Under Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, the chamber has readopted its role as a a check on the executive branch. And lawmakers are doing so with very public questioning of some of the DeSantis administration’s officials.

A House committee recently grilled a Department of Management Services deputy secretary over why four of its employees did not live in Florida, including the state chief data officer, who earns $200,000 a year. The agency spent $60,000 on travel expenses for those employees, including for their trips to Tallahassee, Politico reported. Additionally, House members have criticized the agency for not being able to tell how many cars the state owns.

There’s also legislation this year that would impact one of DeSantis’ most high-profile appointees, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. House Bill 1445 — filed by Central Florida Republican Rep. Debbie Mayfield — would prohibit agency heads from living in a county different than the one where their agency is based. Ladapo has said he lives in Pinellas County, not Tallahassee, according to Politico.

A somewhat adversarial relationship between a governor and the Legislature is healthy. If the outcome is a more transparent government free of cronyism, then Florida wins.

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