The DeSantis administration apparently has discovered a new medical condition: Selective Financial Amnesia (SFA).
It strikes without warning, usually when investigators begin asking questions. Its principal symptom is the inability to remember “who” authorized moving enormous amounts of taxpayer money.
In this case, $10 million.
That is quite a memory lapse. Most people remember where they parked the car. Florida officials apparently cannot remember who redirected enough public money to buy approximately 2,500,000 gallons of milk.
According to a Leon County grand jury report, the money came from a $67 million settlement with Centene, a healthcare company Florida said had overcharged the state’s Medicaid program for prescription drugs.
Then something curious happened.
A draft settlement dated Sept. 12, 2024, directed $62 million to the state and $5 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity associated with First Lady Casey DeSantis.
The next day, Florida’s share dropped to $57 million, while Hope Florida’s doubled to $10 million.
Ten million dollars. One overnight revision. No explanation in the record.
Perhaps the extra $5 million was left over from the money set aside to fly undocumented immigrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard. That was certainly Florida taxpayer money well spent.
The record, according to the grand jury, does not say.
The settlement had drifted along for roughly three years. Then, weeks before the 2024 election, it developed the speed and efficiency rarely seen in state government.
Centene sent $10 million to Hope Florida. The foundation divided it into two $5 million grants. Within days, $8.5 million from the recipient organizations went to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee chaired by James Uthmeier, then Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff and now Florida’s attorney general.
Keep Florida Clean was fighting Amendment 3, the recreational-marijuana proposal DeSantis strongly opposed. The amendment received nearly 56 percent of the vote, a majority, but short of Florida’s required 60 percent.
In less than a month, $10 million traveled from a Medicaid settlement through a charitable foundation and two nonprofit organizations before most of it arrived in politics.
A quick check confirms that ‘politics’ is not a charitable purpose.
Who knew?
If only the Department of Motor Vehicles could move paperwork that quickly.
The grand jury rejected the administration’s argument that the $10 million represented additional “bonus” settlement money that could properly be directed to Hope Florida. It concluded that the entire $67 million was reimbursement owed to Florida taxpayers.
The jurors called the diversion a “sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” and concluded that the money had been “misappropriated.”
Then came the sentence that should astonish every Florida taxpayer:
“Nobody will take responsibility.”
No witness claimed to have decided that $10 million should go to Hope Florida. No witness remembered who did.
That was the moment when SFA struck.
This was not a disputed reimbursement for coffee and doughnuts.
Settlement language had to be written and revised. Lawyers reviewed it. Officials approved it. Documents were signed. Money was wired. Grant applications were submitted and approved. Nonprofits received millions. Political organizations received millions more.
Yet when the grand jury tried to identify who made the original decision, Florida’s governmental brain trust effectively responded:
“Ten million dollars? Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Sadly, Selective Financial Amnesia rears its ugly head.
That failure left the grand jury without sufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.
“Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated,” the jurors concluded, “we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.”
Ah, the ethical damage wrought by SFA. What an extraordinarily convenient outbreak of forgetfulness.
Did the three wise monkeys testify? See nothing. Hear nothing. Remember nothing.
Nobody should turn the absence of an indictment into a conviction by a Press Club op-ed column. DeSantis insists the settlement was legal and appropriate. Uthmeier denies wrongdoing and has described the controversy as “politically motivated.”
Of that we can be sure!
Those responses belong in any fair account.
But “nobody was indicted” does not mean “nothing happened.”
It does not explain why Hope Florida’s share doubled overnight. It does not transform taxpayer reimbursement into “bonus” money. It does not explain why money from a Medicaid settlement traveled through a charity and two nonprofits before financing political activity.
Most of all, it does not explain why nobody can identify the person “who” set the machinery in motion.
Nor can the investigation be dismissed as merely a Democratic attack. Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade of Pensacola was among the first officials to investigate the settlement publicly.
That is how accountability should work. If Democrats controlled Tallahassee and millions in state settlement proceeds traveled through a foundation associated with a Democratic governor’s spouse before supporting that governor’s political agenda, Republicans would be entirely justified in demanding answers.
The names and parties can change. The standard cannot.
The grand jury recommended requiring money received by the state to be deposited in the General Revenue Fund. It also called for stronger tracking and oversight of organizations receiving taxpayer dollars.
That recommendation says plenty. Jurors who lacked enough evidence to prosecute an individual still found enough wrong with the system to recommend repairing it.
There is one final indignity.
The grand jury completed its report in January, but it remained sealed for approximately seven months. Floridians learned what it said only after CBS News Miami investigative reporter Jim DeFede obtained a copy.
Questions about grand jury secrecy may be resolved separately in court. Investigate the leak if the law requires it.
But do not let an investigation into how the public learned about the missing $10 million replace an investigation into what happened to the public’s $10 million.
The absence of an indictment answers one question: Could prosecutors prove that a particular person committed a crime?
It does not erase the grand jury’s findings. It does not make the money charitable. It does not make the political spending imaginary. And it certainly does not cure Tallahassee’s remarkable case of Selective Financial Amnesia.
Accountability does not always require somebody going to jail.
But when $10 million in taxpayer money takes a detour into politics, it should require somebody remembering who handed it the map.
Sources: The factual timeline, official responses and grand jury findings are drawn from reporting by the Associated Press and WGCU/Florida Trident.