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<\/p>\nOver the last few years, Florida has basically been a giant trough for politically connected contractors eager to gorge on tax dollars.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With few checks and balances \u2014 and zero audits \u2014 Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the name of an immigration \u201cemergency.\u201d Some of it was dished out in no-bid deals. Some to companies that first made campaign donations to the governor and Republican Party.<\/p>\n
Well, we\u2019re finally starting to see who pocketed the most money off the hastily constructed, make-shift detention center in the middle of the Everglades. And some of the details stink. Literally.<\/p>\n
A report last week from the Florida Phoenix found the state spent more than $400 million in just six months \u2014 with the biggest chunk going to a single company that specializes in porta-potties.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking $92 million in checks cut to a company named \u201cDoodie Calls.\u201d<\/p>\n
I will take a timeout here to acknowledge that may be the greatest name in the history of outdoor toilets. Porta-props given.<\/p>\n
But also \u2026 92 freakin\u2019 million dollars to a porta-potty company??? That\u2019s a you-know-what-load of money. All for a company whose registered lobbyist, Brian Ballard, is a fundraiser for both DeSantis and Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Remember, we\u2019ve already read reports about \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d contracts awarded to political donors and without being competitively bid. That\u2019s a toxic combination.<\/p>\n
So was it money well spent? Who knows?<\/p>\n
Legislative leaders \u2014 who haven\u2019t demanded the audits required by law \u2014 have instinctively defended the spending, but offered few specifics.<\/p>\n
When asked about Doodie Calls\u2019 $92 million payday, Senate President Ben Albritton said people need to remember that it was tricky to handle millions of gallons of human waste in a remote, environmentally sensitive location like the Everglades.<\/p>\n
Um, yeah. That\u2019s precisely why most people thought it was a rotten idea to erect a massive detention center in the middle of a fragile ecosystem that taxpayers had already spent billions of dollars to restore and protect. But please, Mr. Senate President, tell us more about how maybe that wasn\u2019t the brightest idea.<\/p>\n
Still, for $92 million, you should get porta-potties plated in platinum. Heck, for $92 million, you could build an entire wastewater-treatment plant. (Seriously. Some communities have spent less.)<\/p>\n
Albritton said the money paid for \u201cmore than just porta-potties,\u201d according to the Seeking Rents news site. And I\u2019m sure it did. Doodie Calls, a St. Petersburg company that has been around for about eight years, also offers portable laundry facilities and showers.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing: Nobody should have to guess whether taxpayers got a fair deal. Nor does anyone want to listen to politicians prattle on about how this could\u2019ve theoretically been a good deal. Taxpayers deserve details \u2014 the kind of thing provided by actual audits.<\/p>\n
We especially need audits when the handful of watchdogs who dared to speak up about alleged spending irregularities quickly paid a price.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the state\u2019s laughingstock CFO has barnstormed the state, screaming about things like a $6,000 stipend for Orlando\u2019s poet laureate. It\u2019s performative politics for gullible fools. Scream about $6,000. Pay no attention to $400 million.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to remember that most of this spending has taken place in an unorthodox way.<\/p>\n
About four years ago, DeSantis declared a state of \u201cemergency\u201d \u2014 a move traditionally reserved for natural disasters \u2014 related to what he called the \u201cBiden border crisis.\u201d That allowed him to bypass the state\u2019s normal accountability measures, like requiring major contracts to be competitively bid.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmergency\u201d declarations are only supposed to last 60 days. But to keep the tsunami of tax dollars flowing without checks and balances, DeSantis decided to extend his 60-day \u201cemergency\u201d 20 times.<\/p>\n
Yes, the state\u2019s current 60-day emergency is now going on four years.<\/p>\n
Still, there is supposed to be an accountability measure that retroactively checks to see whether the money was properly spent \u2014 a statute that says: \u201cOnce an emergency exceeds 1 year, the Auditor General shall conduct a financial audit of all associated expenditures \u2026 during the declared emergency.\u201d The statute goes on to say the audit must be updated annually. Yet after more than three years, we\u2019ve yet to see audit No.1.<\/p>\n
Deputy Auditor General Matthew Tracy said Monday that his office is \u201ccurrently engaged\u201d with the governor\u2019s office in a review of \u201cselected emergency expenditures\u201d and that a report should be released later this year. How reassuring.<\/p>\n
To their partial credit, House Republicans recently unveiled a proposal to crack down on the governor\u2019s unchecked spending \u2014 an idea for accountability, checks and balances that DeSantis\u2019 attorney general, James Uthmeier, called \u201cmoronic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Accountability is, of course, a good, if belated, idea. A better idea would\u2019ve been for lawmakers to demand it all along.<\/p>\n
For now, though, they should end this laughable 60-day \u201cemergency\u201d that has now gone on for more than 1,000 days and demand audits immediately.<\/p>\n
If someone wants to make the case that it made sense to give $92 million to a porta-potty company \u2014 and spend millions more on everything from private jets to catered meals \u2014 then they should make that case in public and with specifics.<\/p>\n
For every expense, auditors should ask: Was it competitively bid? Could any other Florida company have done it better and cheaper? And if so, why didn\u2019t they get the chance?<\/p>\n
Only fools don\u2019t want the answer to those questions. Well, and also those who already know the truth and don\u2019t want you to know it as well.<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Orlando Sentinel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the last few years, Florida has basically been a giant trough for politically connected contractors eager to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6366,220527,220529,6367,220528,2808,95886,2819,79,2897,201],"class_list":["post-476638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alligator-alcatraz","tag-checks-and-balances","tag-dade-collier-training-and-transition-airport","tag-detention-center","tag-doodie-calls","tag-florida","tag-porta-potties","tag-ron-desantis","tag-science","tag-spending","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}