An unelected attorney general is handing lucrative contracts to favored law firms
Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.
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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.
In April, about two months after Gov. Ron DeSantis installed him as Florida’s Attorney General, James Uthmeier sued Snap Inc., accusing the owner of the vanishing-message app Snapchat of, among other things, breaking a new state law meant to keep kids off social media.
“We’re not going to let people cash in on our kids,” Uthmeier declared at a Tampa news conference announcing the suit.
The unelected attorney general is, however, happy to let high-priced lawyers cash in on Florida taxpayers.
Though Uthmeier never mentioned it, his office hired a politically plugged-in law firm to lead the suit against Snapchat — via a no-bid contract promising the firm as much as $50 million in legal fees.
It’s not the only lavish legal contract Uthmeier has handed out since assuming the office of Attorney General. The job came open after Donald Trump appointed former U.S. Senate Marco Rubio as U.S. Secretary of State and then DeSantis picked former Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill Rubio’s Senate seat.
Records show is office is also paying the firm Boies Schiller Flexner up to $875-an-hour to defend a new state law that would permit local and state cops to imprison people simply for being undocumented. A federal judge has forbidden Florida from enforcing the new law because it is likely to be ruled unconstitutional — and held Uthmeier in contempt of court for trying to ignore the order.
The nearly $900-an-hour rate for Boise Schiller — a national firm that once represented Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer convicted of sexual assault — is unusually expensive.
But the Snapchat contract stands out for a few reasons.
First, it is with Cooper & Kirk, a favored firm within the DeSantis administration, where Uthmeier served as the governor’s chief of staff before DeSantis gifted him the attorney general job.
Vendor records show the DeSantis administration has paid Cooper & Kirk — whose partners include an old roommate of DeSantis’ — more than $5 million over the past five years, at rates that have included $715 an hour and $725 an hour. And that doesn’t even count payments from agencies like the DeSantis-appointed district that oversees Walt Disney World, which hired the firm at $795 an hour.
Second, this particular contract is a contingency-fee agreement, which means that Cooper & Kirk will cover all costs up front itself and only be paid in the event the suit against Snapchat is successful.
That’s one reason the potential $50 million payout is so high — though it’s worth noting that the contract puts Florida taxpayers on the hook to pay the firm’s full fee, rather than a potentially lower negotiated amount, if the “responsible parties” aren’t made to pay the fees themselves.
And third, this is at least the third such case against Snapchat that Cooper & Kirk is orchestrating on behalf of a state. The Attorney General of Iowa, for instance, has signed a similar contingency-fee contract with the firm worth up to $50 million in fees. Cooper & Kirk is also representing at least one other state in an investigation of Snap, according to an authorization memo Uthmeier signed in April.
In that respect, the arrangement is reminiscent of another contingency-fee contract Florida signed in late 2021 to pursue overbilling claims against Centene Corp., the state’s largest Medicaid contractor.
That agreement was with a Mississippi-based law firm that, like Cooper & Kirk, had deep ties to top Florida Republicans and was spearheading claims against Centene on behalf of states across the country.
The firm helped arrange a $67 million settlement offer from Centene to the state. But Florida officials fired the firm before finalizing the agreement — and then tweaked it so that Centene paid $10 million of that $67 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity created by the DeSantis administration, rather than returning the full amount to the state treasury.
The Hope Florida Foundation immediately turned around and gave the $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits that were helping finance DeSantis’ campaign against a 2024 ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida.
The suspicious transaction chain — which may have taken $10 million meant to pay for healthcare for poor and disabled Floridians and turned it into cash for political campaign ads — has apparently triggered an as-yet unresolved criminal investigation.
And at the center of it all: James Uthmeier.
*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.
Nothing to see here
Hope Florida charity says DeSantis officials didn’t need to report gifts (Tampa Bay Times) ($)
See also: How Florida missed out on $2.2 billion in Medicaid funding for schools (Tampa Bay Times) ($)
‘DeSantis sided with local real estate interests’
State rejects Orange County’s Vision 2050 growth control plan (Orlando Sentinel) ($)
See also: ‘People Are Screaming:’ New Florida Law Sows Chaos For Local Governments Land Development (Mid Bay News)
See also: Manatee County Commission pushes back against state restrictions on planning (WSLR)
But Florida banned climate change
Tampa hits 100 degrees for 1st time in recorded weather history. Will it continue? (Tampa Bay Times) ($)
See also: Record-breaking heat wave scorches Southeast US (Associated Press)
See also: AG Uthmeier opens investigation into the ‘climate cartel’ (Florida Phoenix)
See also: DeSantis signs bill erasing the term ‘climate change’ from state law (Florida Phoenix)
An onshore Guantanamo Bay
New Detention Numbers Are Out, ICE Still Hiding Data on 'Alligator Alcatraz' (Austin Kocher)
See also: Two more people wrongfully charged under Florida’s blocked immigration law, AG says (The Tributary)
See also: A legal black hole (Popular Information)
See also: Florida has no formal hurricane plan for Alligator Alcatraz (Miami Herald) ($)
See also: DeSantis said ‘everybody’ at Alligator Alcatraz has a deportation order. Lawyers say he’s wrong. (PolitiFact)
See also: Demings says he signed ICE pact ‘under protest and extreme duress’ (Orlando Sentinel) ($)
See also: Company that rescued Floridians from strife-torn Haiti claims state hasn’t paid (Orlando Sentinel) ($)
First came the stuff cuts, then came the safety lapses
Florida nuclear plant workers were too afraid to report safety concerns, records show (The Tributary)
See also: City of St. Petersburg takes first step to study dropping Duke Energy (Tampa Bay Times) ($)
Perspectives
What Happens When Politics Rewrites Medical Education? (American Council on Science and Health)
Senate Bill 180 will have consequences… and they aren’t good. (Martin County Press)
Burdensomely Vague Intentions (Policy 68)
Until ill informed Florida voters get off their phones and see what's going on around them it won't change. Everything this administration is doing is what they blame "evil Democrats" of doing. Yet Republicans are doing it in far worse ways.....
The no bid contract practice of Uthmeirer is scary since there appears no check on his practice of doing this. As you point out, he is an unelected actor in this and has ties to these firms. I find that all disturbing. Thanks for exposing this. I hope Jose Javier Rodriguez can unseat him in the election.