It’s been two months since a grand jury began probing how $10 million rightfully belonging to Florida’s Medicaid program was diverted to help Gov. Ron DeSantis defeat recreational marijuana and abortion rights ballot initiatives last year.
The grand jury’s silence is perplexing. Floridians deserve to see consequences for what looks to be a textbook case of money laundering and potential embezzlement. While those wheels grind slowly, it turns out the scandal is three times greater.
Journalists for the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald just reported that the DeSantis administration diverted at least $35 million from vital health care programs to advertise against two constitutional amendments and to defeat a lawsuit that aimed to stop the governor from improperly influencing ballot initiative campaigns.
The largest amounts, they reported, were $10 million previously known to have been siphoned from a contractor’s $60 million settlement for overbilling Medicaid; $4 million from Florida’s opioid settlement trust fund; $970,000 from the Health Department’s community health protection program; $4.4 million from a Department of Transportation account for buying buildings and land and $1.1 million from the Department of Children and Families budget to combat child abuse.
Our money bought TV ads
“Ads purchased with the diverted money blanketed TV, social media and radio stations in the weeks before the election,” the papers said. “They defended Florida’s six-week abortion ban and made exaggerated claims about the dangers of marijuana … Along the way, the governor’s administration bent state spending laws and obscured millions in government spending, records and interviews show.”
“Of $36.2 million in taxpayer money tapped by the administration, the analysis shows at least $21.2 million moved through an intricate web of financial transactions across five state agencies to a handful of vendors,” the Times/Herald reported.
Nearly half the money was never posted on the state online contracting database as required. The journalists found it by tracing 29-digit account codes and 6-digit object codes across three state databases.
DeSantis and the five agencies involved did not respond to the exposé — typical of the most secretive governor in Florida’s modern history.
Look closer, lawmakers
The lame-duck governor has one year left before term limits take hold, but most Florida legislators are seeking re-election. They should make him and his agencies answer for this gross abuse of the public’s trust.
The Legislature also owes the public a hard look at the office of chief financial officer, whose constitutional duty is to “settle and approve accounts against the state.”
In the past, that meant pre-auditing, being on watch for unauthorized or improper spending. Jimmy Patronis, now in Congress, was CFO when DeSantis misappropriated the money. Questioned by the Times/Herald, he replied he could say nothing because he no longer has access to the state’s accounts.
Former Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a DeSantis loyalist whom the governor appointed as CFO, had nothing to say either. His spokesperson passed the buck to the individual agencies — typical.
Decisive spending
It’s not possible to know whether DeSantis’ covert spending was decisive in defeating the amendments, although that seems likely.
Both won majorities — 55.9% for Amendment 3, adult personal use of marijuana, and 57.2% for Amendment 4, to limit government interference with abortion, which would have overturned Florida’s 2023 near-total ban on abortion after six weeks.
But the Florida Constitution requires 60% voter approval for amendments, an anti-democratic wrinkle sponsored by special interests.
Rep. Alex Andrade speaks about Hope Florida at the House Health Care Budget subcommittee in Tallahassee on Thursday, April 24, 2025.
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, who held revelatory hearings on the $10 million Medicaid money diversion and testified to the grand jury, said he’s not concerned with how long the probe is taking.
He said he expects the jury to issue a report, whether or not anyone is indicted, that exposes what went wrong and why.
DeSantis desensitizes us
That DeSantis thought he could pull this off — and he may do so yet — illustrates how desensitized Florida politics has become to gross impropriety.
Legislators in both parties were enraged when Republican Gov. Claude Kirk (1967-1971) created a slush fund he called the “Governor’s Club” to shake down state contractors for money to support his lifestyle and political ventures. It was a major scandal at the time.
Today’s Florida politicians have legalized vastly greater shakedowns through political committees exempt from regular campaign finance restrictions. DeSantis had more than $80 million in his “PC” when he began his unsuccessful campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. His defeat dried up that well, which may explain why he raided the state treasury to defeat the two amendments.
A vigorous press corps exposed Kirk’s excesses, which set in motion his 1970 defeat by Democrat Reubin Askew. Floridians can thank the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald for honoring that great tradition.
The worse government behaves, the more people need a free press — and with DeSantis, we need aggressive prosecution, too.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.