{"id":228847,"date":"2026-04-12T18:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T18:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/228847\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T18:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T18:05:08","slug":"florida-center-for-government-accountability-director-talks-to-this-week-in-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/228847\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Center for Government Accountability director talks to This Week In South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">PEMBROKE PARK, Fla.  \u2014 While in Miami-Dade County, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier did not answer a question about whether or not he had asked the court to keep a grand jury report about $10 million in public tax dollars. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">There were allegations that $10 million from a $67 million Medicaid settlement with Centene Corporation were improperly diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity associated with Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody cares about this topic any more than the liberal media,\u201d Uthmeier said during a news conference. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Michael Barfield, the executive director of <a href=\"https:\/\/flcga.org\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/flcga.org\/\">the Florida Center for Government Accountability<\/a>, strongly disagreed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe think this is the most consequential issue in Florida for decades, in terms of the missing $10 million and how it was spent for political purposes,\u201d Barfield told Local 10 News This Week In South Florida\u2019s Glenna Milberg on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Barfield said \u201csourced material\u201d showed there was a grand jury investigation as the nonprofit organization\u2019s investigators were \u201cdancing in the dark\u201d amid the alleged secrecy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe attorney general and the governor refuse to answer the question about whether they are attempting to block it,\u201d Barfield told Milberg. \u201cI would also point out that when we moved to intervene into the proceedings that have been sealed, if there were no proceedings, I doubt the judge would have allowed us to intervene in nonexistent proceedings.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/7U24CJTHFVBD7E3N4DT6H24TYI.jpg\"  width=\"800\" height=\"450\"\/>This Week In South Florida <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Uthmeier served as Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 chief of staff before he replaced Ashley Moody, who replaced Marco Rubio as U.S. senator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Florida attorney general post will be up for election on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Uthmeier has been campaigning to run in the Republican primary election on Aug. 18 to run against Steven Leskovich, a longtime attorney.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. \u2014 While in Miami-Dade County, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier did not answer a question&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-228847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}