Lawmakers just slashed Ron DeSantis' budget for high-priced lawyers

Florida's new state budget will also force the DeSantis administration to disclose more details about which law firms it hires and how much it pays them.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

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After years of handing Ron DeSantis millions of dollars to spend on high-priced lawyers, Florida lawmakers are suddenly slashing the governor’s taxpayer-funded legal budget.

That’s not all: Lawmakers are also demanding more details about which law firms the DeSantis administration steers contracts to — and how much those firms bill Florida taxpayers.

The changes are buried deep inside a $115 billion budget that Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved late Monday night. And they are part of a broader effort by leaders in both the House and Senate to pull more records and information out of the state’s notoriously secretive chief executive.

The new state spending plan, which DeSantis has yet to sign, strips $4 million from the Executive Office of the Governor that had been earmarked specifically for litigation expenses. Lawmakers funded the line item last year, and DeSantis had asked for the money again this year.

Lawmakers also opted not to fund another $4 million-plus for litigation costs and outside law firms that DeSantis wanted across other parts of his administration, including the Department of Commerce, the Division of Emergency Management, and the Department of Management Services.

It’s an abrupt reversal from the last few years in the Florida Capitol. Between 2022 and 2024, Florida lawmakers gave the Governor’s Office more than $11 million specifically to spend on litigation. And records show they earmarked more than $30 million across his entire administration.

DeSantis has used much of that money defending constitutionally dubious laws and legally questionable executive actions. But he’s also spent it intimidating critics and political opponents — like when he threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired advertisements in support of an abortion-rights constitutional amendment.

The lavish legal budgets also enabled DeSantis to steer taxpayer-funded work to law firms run by friends, fundraisers and political allies. One D.C.-based firm — whose partners include DeSantis’ former roommate — has landed contracts paying up to $725 an hour from the governor’s administration.

Lawmakers have by no means completely shut off the legal-spending spigot. There remain many pots of money across state government that the governor and his aides can tap for legal services. The publication Law.com estimates that DeSantis paid at least $123 million to outside law firms during his first term alone — up from $86 million under former Gov. Rick Scott.

What’s more, House and Senate leaders agreed at the very last minute of this year’s session to give the Department of State another $2 million for litigation. The eleventh-hour decision comes as the agency, which oversees state elections, defends a controversial new law that makes it far more difficult and expensive for citizens to amend the state constitution by petition drive.

Lawmakers also agreed to let both the Department of State and the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, keep unspent money left over from a combined $5 million they got for litigation in last year’s budget.

But all that taxpayer cash now comes with strings.

That’s because the new budget will also force the administration to disclose more details about its use of outside law firms.

Specifically, the budget orders the Attorney General’s Office to submit quarterly reports to the House speaker and Senate president compiling state agency contracts with outside law firms. The reports must explain the agency’s reason for hiring private attorneys — instead of using the lawyers within the Attorney General’s Office who are already on the public payroll — as well as names of all firms hired, their billing rates, and the total amount they are paid.

The idea came out of the Florida Senate. “We do not currently have a lot of information on these costs,” said Katie Betta, a spokesperson for Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula).

Betta said there wasn’t an overarching strategy to cut litigation costs this year, and that the various spending decisions were made separately within the context of each agency’s individual budget. But she said the new law firm disclosures are part of a broader effort this year to impose stronger and more consistent reporting requirements, both through the budget and individual pieces of legislation.

And there are indeed plenty of such requirements peppered across the new spending plan.

For example, the budget requires the Agency for Health Care Administration to begin sharing detailed financial data about the state’s Medicaid program with legislative auditors. It also orders the agency to immediately notify legislative leaders of important communications with the federal government about Medicaid and KidCare, a public insurance program for children.

The requirements follow repeated confrontations between legislators and the healthcare agency — over everything from the still-unfolding scandal around “Hope Florida” to failures to follow through with a long-promised bipartisan expansion of KidCare.

Meanwhile, another budget provision holds back a chunk of funding at the Department of Management Services — until, among other things, the state procurement agency opens up viewing access to its purchasing system so that lawmakers and legislative staffers can review all state agency purchase orders, invoices, and solicitations.