In Ron DeSantis' office, the buck stops with someone else

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Dec 07, 2025

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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.

Ron DeSantis may have set a new record last week for passing the buck.

During a press conference in Tampa, Florida’s Republican governor was asked about an outrageous land deal in which his administration agreed to spend more than $80 million of taxpayer money on four acres of vacant beachfront land in the Panhandle — buying it from a landowner who just happened to be a major Ron DeSantis donor.

The governor responded to the question with a rambling answer in which his sole goal seemed to be avoiding any personal responsibility for a transaction that one longtime conservation leader called “a sham.” DeSantis blamed Florida lawmakers for forcing him to make the deal — not once, not twice, but six times in three minutes.

“The Legislature put it in the budget,” the governor said at the beginning of his answer, which you can watch starting around 37:30 of this video.

“They put language in the budget that said, ‘You gotta do this one first before you do the others,’” he repeated a moment later.

“The state senator from that area put it in, said, ‘Do it,’” DeSantis added after a bit.

“This was not something we just dreamt up. This was something that was put in there,” he said again, in case there was any confusion.

“This was put in by the Florida Legislature in this year’s budget,” he said again, in case anyone had forgotten.

“That was something the Legislature directed,” the governor finally concluded. “And had they not directed it, would it have happened? Probably not.”

The answer was a little funny, and a lot pathetic. It was also utterly ridiculous.

Because of the governor of Florida owns this scandal as much as anyone in the entire sordid story.

It is true that Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature snuck language into the state budget making this deal possible. The specific culprit was Jay Trumbull, a Republican from Destin who is in line to become Senate president after the 2028 elections — and who took the language directly from a lobbyist hired by the landowner looking to sell, according to records obtained by Seeking Rents.

But DeSantis himself helped make it happen. The records show that the governor’s staff signed off on the proposal before it was slipped into the budget, via the Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency that oversees the land-acquisition program that was hijacked for this deal.

“We sent this over to DEP and they are good with how it reads,” a lobbyist for the landowner wrote in a mid-session email to Jay Trumbull’s aide.

This was a transaction involving a Republican megadonor who once gave $250,000 to Ron DeSantis — and who was about to sell his land to the state for more than 10 times the price that he and his partners had paid less than a decade ago. If you think some agency staffer signed off on that unilaterally, then you’re exactly the kind of mark that Ron DeSantis hopes you are.

The governor also could have stopped this after the Legislature acted —if he’d wanted to, of course.

DeSantis has a line-item veto he can use to strike earmarks from the state budget and a bully pulpit he can use to call out recalcitrant lawmakers. He could have demanded an independent appraisal of the land — rather than trusting an appraisal commissioned by the seller that priced the property at more than $20 million an acre.

Or he and the Florida Cabinet — where the governor personally appointed two of the three current members — could have rejected the deal instead of voting unanimously to approve it.

Then again, this was probably to be expected. Ducking responsibility has been a defining hallmark of DeSantis’ tenure as governor.

In June 2019, just a few months after he took office, DeSantis erased references to LGBTQ+ and Hispanic victims from a proclamation marking three years since the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. When that drew a furious response from central Florida residents, DeSantis responded by blaming his staff.

Six years later, after the governor set off a similar uproar by sending crews to Orlando in the middle of the night to paint over a rainbow memorial at the Pulse site, he falsely claimed that the Florida Legislature made him do it.

When Ron DeSantis’ government tried to trade away 600 acres of conservation land near St. Augustine — only to quickly back down amid public blowback — the governor pointed the finger at a private landowner (though he also made sure to hide the landowner’s identity).

When Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign made a sizzle reel infused with neo-Nazi imagery, DeSantis scapegoated a campaign aide.

Remember the DeSantis administration’s failed attempt in 2024 to build golf courses, lodges and pickleball courts in state parks across Florida? The statewide backlash was so strong that the Florida Legislature passed a new law this year intended to make sure the idea can never happen.

A whistleblower has since revealed that the plan “came directly from the governor’s office.” Calendar entries show that both DeSantis and his then-chief of staff met personally with the group that wanted to develop the main golf course. And emails show another senior DeSantis aide sent colleagues examples of golf courses on public land in other states.

And yet, DeSantis insists he had nothing to do with it. “It was not approved by me. I never saw that,” he claimed after the controversy erupted.

Ron DeSantis has been governor of Florida for nearly seven years now.

But he apparently has yet to figure out where the buck stops in his own office.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.

Great reporting as always - we have to show up to the delegation meetings and local government meetings and to Tallahassee. If they don't see there, we are invisible. I like making comments on here but does it really take shape and form in action that benefits us? What will change policy? Well for one thing - I'm a paid subscriber to this substack because I care.

The only meaningful opposition is the Democrats - where are they?

Michael Hoffmann

Dee is "drunk on the wine of the world" and it shows in his slurred thinking and repetitious, first-person nonsense.

Who -- besides MBS -- pays over $20 million an acre for Florida waterfront?

And to think of all the relatively small state grants to volunteer organizations that Dee has vetoed over a 7-year period! (Question: How many times was Dee beaned while playing baseball?)

One good thing: More grist for state rep Andrade to hang his hook on along with Hope Florida rip-off.

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