Ron DeSantis offered to cut funding for roads to pay for his state militia
Emails offer a glimpse at the backroom horse-trading that goes into Florida's state budget — and the lengths Gov. Ron DeSantis will go to fund his new military force.
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It was getting late, and Ron DeSantis was getting desperate.
The Republican governor wanted more taxpayer funding for the Florida State Guard — the state military force that DeSantis personally commands. His administration had just signed off on plans for the recently resurrected militia to begin buying airplanes, helicopters and drones, but DeSantis still needed money for people to actually fly them.
But Florida lawmakers were about to conclude negotiations on a new state budget. And they had so far only agreed to give the governor a tiny fraction of his ask.
So just after 9 p.m. on the final Sunday of this year’s legislative session, DeSantis made a suggestion: To pay for his pilots, lawmakers should cut funding for Florida roads.
Specifically, records show, DeSantis’ budget director proposed that lawmakers take $10 million out of a program called “Moving Florida Forward” — a program created to speed up construction of key highway and transit projects around the state — and spend that money on the Florida State Guard instead.
“We are offering an additional reduction to Moving Florida Forward of $10 million to assist with this request,” Chris Spencer, DeSantis’ director of policy and budget, wrote in a March 3 email to senior staffers in the Florida House of Representatives.
Lawmakers seemed to have listened. The final budget, which legislative leaders agreed to less than 24 hours later, lowered funding for Moving Florida Forward — and bumped up the state guard budget — just as the Governor’s Office had proposed.
The episode provides more than just a glimpse at the backroom horse-trading that happens every time the House, Senate and governor negotiate a new state spending plan. It’s also a window into what the Florida’s governor really cares about — and what he fights for behind the scenes.
And there have been few issues more important to DeSantis recently than the Florida State Guard, which the once-and-future presidential candidate has turned into a political tool to boost his national profile.
Once a World War II-era relic, DeSantis got the Florida Legislature to resurrect the state guard in 2022, initially selling it as a supplemental force that would support emergency response to hurricanes and other natural disasters. But the mission has rapidly morphed, with DeSantis now using his troops a kind of publicity-seeking border patrol — from dispatching guard members to the Texas-Mexico border to using them to intercept Haitian refugees fleeing violence in their home country.
And if the price of all that posturing is a little less money for roads and sidewalks, then so be it.
Admittedly, $10 million isn’t much in the context of Florida’s $16 billion transportation budget. It’s not even all that much in the context of Moving Florida Forward specifically, which lawmakers ultimately funded this year at $370 million.
But the thing is, $10 million is still a lot of money. It’s enough to pay for 17 miles of bike lanes, 33 miles of sidewalk, or 40 signalized crosswalks.
What would you rather have: A safe place to cross a busy street or a drone pilot in the state guard?
It’s the kind of question-of-priorities that’ll be worth remembering when DeSantis finally signs the state budget sometime next month — and when he reveals which projects and programs he’s chosen to veto and which ones he’s decided to spare.
The negotiations over the state guard budget also illustrate just how diminished Ron DeSantis has become in Tallahassee since he was run out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination by former President Donald Trump.
A year ago, DeSantis demanded nearly $100 million for his military force — which included funding for three planes, three helicopters and 15 drones. Lawmakers gave him all of it, and then some.
The governor began this year’s session looking for nearly $60 million more — including money to buy a 40-foot patrol boat, half a dozen jon boats, seven F350 twin cab trucks (with towing packages), 26 utility terrain vehicles, a pair of Fat Truck offroad vehicles, rifles, pistols, and more.
But by the end of session — when he was willing to trade road funding for military money — DeSantis had whittled his ask down to less than $20 million, mostly to staff and operate the state guard’s new aviation unit and to carry on with a pair of already-scheduled bootcamps.
And while DeSantis ultimately got the Legislature to fund the slimmed-down state guard request, even that money came with a bunch of new strings.
Yet nobody is protesting outside the mansion (including myself) as we should be. We are all so use to this abuse we just accept it as Politics. Sad sad spineless Country.
Anyone who agreed to this, may potholes plague you.