May 6, 2025 • 48 mins
SHOCKWAVES IN FLORIDA: Rep. Andrade Blasts Governor DeSantis and Calls for AG’s Resignation Florida Rep. Alex Andrade is pulling no punches—demanding Attorney General James Uthmeier resign for allegedly defrauding Medicaid funds for political use. He also accuses Governor Ron DeSantis of falsely labeling legislators as RINOs, calling the Governor’s claims a lie. Brace yourself for a high-velocity interview as Andrade tears into GOP leadership and peels back the party line.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Bronic Alive. And I am here with my wingman,
John Salak. And then we've got a special guest, Representative
Alex Andrade from the Florida Legislator. And you've been making
news Representative Alex all over the place, and let's just
get into it. The biggest controversy right now is the
Hope Foundation. That Governor DeSantis put ten million dollars in
(00:24):
this foundation, that his wife's kind of leading the way.
So can you explain to our leaders what this is
and why this is a concern?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Sure. So, I'm the chair of the Healthcare Budget Committee
in the Florida House, meaning I review the healthcare budget.
I'm responsible for crafting the healthcare budget for the state
in partnership with Jay Trumble, who's the chair of the
healthcare Budget in the Senate. Over the course of legislative
session this year, we found out that as part of
(00:52):
a Medicaid settlement with a large managed care company called senteen,
sixty seven million dollars was the agreed amount that sent
you oed the state. And last September, at the last minute,
the State of the Governor's office in Akka, the Agency
for Healthcare Administration said pay us less, give us fifty
seven million instead of sixty seven and send ten million
(01:12):
to the Hope Florida Foundation. The Hope Florida Foundation wasn't
told this money was going to them. The Department of
Children and Families, which is supposed to oversee this foundation,
wasn't told this money was going to the foundation. Before
the foundation even knew about this money, James Uthmeier, who
was the governor's chief of staff at the time, was
calling two dark money groups, one connected to the Florida
Chamber of Commerce called Secure Florida's Future and one called
(01:35):
Save Our Society from Drugs and told them both, hey,
the Hope Florida Foundation has ten million dollars to ask
for five million so that we can work on fighting
at the men three. Both of those organizations submitted kind
of like fake application requests for five million each. They
both immediately got awarded five million dollars, and the day
after both of those organizations got that five million wired
(01:59):
to them to sending it to James uth Myer's pack.
So in a matter of less than three weeks, this
money went from being part of a medicaid settlement with
the state and ended up in James uth Myer's pack.
So what you have is an issue with defraud in
the Hope Florida Foundation. James uth Myer's friend, Jeff Aaron,
was hired on October fourteenth as the foundation's attorney. On
(02:21):
the very first day on the job, Jeff Aaron told
the chair of the Hope Florida Foundation, Josh a, you
don't need the board to even vote on these two grants.
The Governor's office wants you to send five million dollars
each to these two groups. And literally the day after
these two groups got the money, they sent it to
James uth Myer's pack. So you cannot have medicaid money
one being taken from state coffers to go to any
(02:43):
type of charity not involved in providing medicaid services. You
certainly can't have medicaid money going to the pack of
the Governor's chief of staff and not think that that's
criminal and illegal.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, and I've seen that you are everywhere in the
news because of this, And so how did that Hope
Foundation come about? Because it's been I guess, Casey DeSantis,
our first ladies, do we call it a charity? I mean,
what do I call it?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So there's two concepts. One is Hope Florida, which the
First Lady is described as a philosophy or an idea,
and then the other is the Hope Florida Foundation, which
is statutorily created as a charity called a direct Support
Organization a DSO attached to the Department of Children and Families.
The Hope Florida program the best I can tell, because
(03:31):
even the First Lady or the Governor, no one in
state agencies can fully explain what Hope Florida really is.
But the best I can understand, it's state employees who've
had their titles changed, and they'll be told they're being
told to think outside the box to help constituents. That's
all well and good, but it's very confusing when in reality,
all it is is state employees having their titles changed,
(03:53):
being told to think outside the box to help constituents.
Great in concept, I'm not sure why it's become so
difficult for them to explain this. Hope Florida Foundation is
a five to one C three so it can accept
donations that the state couldn't directly accept, right like if
I wanted to cut a check just as a gift
to DCF. DCF couldn't accept it. DSO as a separate
(04:15):
direct support organization for the agency, they could and their
full job is to support initiatives that DCF is trying
to do. What was weird about this was it was
a separate state agency, aka the Agency for Healthcare Administration,
that directed this ten million dollars to go to the
DSO for a different state agency.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So well, my understanding real quick of the Hope concept
was its supposed to be the state working with private individuals, organizations, charities,
religious organizations to try to bring all you know, because
a lot of religious you have food pantries that are
run by religious and community organizations, and supposedly this was
supposed to bring like a focal point where you could
(04:54):
bring everybody. One person could sit there and say, hey,
these people need help. You know, you need some food,
you can go over here.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
It's like a coordination, like a central central station kind
of thing to coordinate all these all these different private
and public agency and the concept seemed to be seen
to be pretty good. I'm just curious one, I want
to kind of break this thing down. First off, you
had you had the settlement. Now the federal government is
always doing settlements like that where they you know, the
(05:22):
SECO go out there and they'll they'll settle, you know,
one hundred million dollars fine for a company and they'll say,
all right, give twenty million to this NGO and.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Then give eighty eighty million, you know, to the treasury.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I mean they do that all the time. Do you
have an issue with that particular concept. I mean it's
been around for quite a while and the government uses
it to fund a lot of a lot of quote
good good things that are not government activities.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, do you have an issue with it? Do you
have an issue with a federal agency directing money to
go to an NGA?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Actually, I do you know? Principal Stami, Principal.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Soda Governor Soda Governor DeSantis. When he was a congressman,
one of the last bill c Co sponsored was the
Stop Settlement Slash Funds Act because when he was a congressman,
that was one thing that he took an issue with.
We don't see that in state agencies because we have
different statutes than the federal government regulating our agencies. State
agencies they're supposed to do twenty of two things with
money that comes from a settlement, either put it back
(06:15):
in general revenue or apply it to the appropriate trust fund.
What we saw in this case was they AKA, the
Agency for Healthcare Administration has reported to CMS, the federal
agency the regulates Medicaid is run by doctor Oz. Now
they've reported to CMS that the state receives sixty seven
million dollars in Medicaid money, even though the state reality
(06:36):
only received fifty seven The way we know that is
when you have a settlement like this, you have to
pay back the federal government the federal share of every
Medicaid dollar you receive. So, because fifty seven percent of
every Medicaid dollar that's spent in the state of Florida
is federal money, fifty seven percent of that settlement amount
has to go back to the federal government. And ACA
(06:56):
is paying back fifty seven percent of the sixty seven
million settlement amount, not the fifty seven that actually went
to the state. So what they're actually doing is shortening
the state government general revenue fund the other amount because
they're paying more to the federal government than fifty seven
percent because they didn't get back the full sixty seven
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Is this a state a violation of state statute or
federal or.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Both well represented, Alex. I'm seeing that you know the
words theft and money laundering and you know, and then
I saw an article that the woman of the one
charity that was against pot says that you've you know,
intimidated her. And then there's been an investigation now that
(07:40):
all of a sudden it is closed because nobody wants
to testify.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
No, I'll clear up all of that.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Okay, please, I mean, I guess the normal floridium, We're like,
what's going on. We love Casey DeSantis, we love the governor,
and now there's this big divide. But clear that up
and then we'll get into all of that too.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So Amy rose Housen is the executive director for Save
Our Society from Drugs. She has a lobbyist, she a
hired lobbyist that works on her behalf on drug policy.
Her lobbyists connected me and Amy on a phone call
that her lobbyists participated in, and her lobbyist has had
to give statements to reporters in these articles saying none
of that pressure ever happened. We started the phone call
(08:19):
with me saying Miss Rosenhausen. At this point, I'm just
trying to understand what happened. I had no idea that
over the course of the phone call she was going
to disclose a criminal conspiracy the longer ten million dollars
in medicaid money. No threat was ever issued. Her lobbyist
has confirmed that to reporters she was never threatened or pressured.
I think she just didn't realize that what she was
explaining to me was a criminal conspiracy. You know, my
(08:42):
heart goes out to her, But I mean, she was
a patsy. She was tricked and duped by Jeff Aaron
and James uth Meyer to be part of this money
laundering scheme of medicaid money. And yeah, it is theft.
You cannot take medicaid money and funnel it to your
own pack. I mean, that's common sense to anyone in
the real world. I mean, in the real world, if
someone defraud her a charity or the state out of
(09:04):
ten million dollars, someone would go to prison. This should
be no different.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Why do you think, yeah, so, why why is everybody caving?
You know, I interviewed chiefest Staff when he was the
Chief of Staff, Uther Mari seemed like a very you know,
honorable man. And now he's caught up in this. Is
this because he's the attorney generally supporting desantists to the end.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
No one's no one's caving. I didn't. I didn't stop
demanding people come to my committee to testify under oath
just because for no good reason, law enforcement should be
looking into this. I've had extensive conversations with law enforcement
about this. My main concern is this is not the
normal way that a criminal investigation or prosecution occurs. You
don't have a legislator uncovering the evidence. You have law
(09:51):
enforcement doing that for very good reason. They have to
be in control of the information and be able to
establish like how they had it know in the proper course.
If I solicit testimony that's new testimony at this point,
then I run the risk of hurting any kind of
criminal investigation that might happen, I know.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Not criminal referral as a as a legislator.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Well, I going to say that the news story law enforcement,
I was going to say, the news stories are saying
you've contacted the Justice Department for help, and then the
Northern District of Florida, I guess you've contacted them to
to investigate this too.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So so is is there a new investigation open? When
you read these new stories, it seems like it's closed.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You have you ever seen that official? Have you ever
seen official federal investigations being confirmed by the Department of
Justice before they issue their indictments publicly? Occasionally I could,
And that's that's what I'm saying, just because just because
I'm not but yeah, right, just just because just because
I'm done, and I made that very clear in my statements.
(10:55):
It's the job of law enforcement now to be doing this.
I I have to give them space to do this.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So the state is a state.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Here's here's my concern. Who's our attorney general? Okay, James
got right exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So you know, if he's not getting under investigation, but.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I'm under investigation, you know, maybe he needs to recuse himself,
you know, I mean, is it is?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think he should resign. The facts in evidence, the
documentation that I have makes clear that he was that
he was led a scheme to defraud the state of
medicaid money to use for political purposes. I believe he
should resign.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So so what purposes? What was the money used for?
I guess is the question for full Iriadians Because when
you read all these articles, you get so confused.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
James James has admitted that he used it for anti
Amendment three campaign, So he used it to fund campaigns
against the Amendment three marijuana campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So you know this, and I want to go go
a little bit further into into this, but you know,
there's this whole thing with the pack money and the packs,
you know, funding each other and transferring money that it's
a dark money operation. My rule number one about politics.
If you want to know the truth about anything, follow
the money. And of course, you know, you go on
to Secretary of State web page and you'll see these
(12:11):
packs and you can sit there and trace contributions and
you see, you know, one pack gives another one a
couple million, and it's just like this web of deceit
and trying to cover up all this money. And that's
exactly what you uncovered here.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
It was the same thing, you.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Know, very different, it's very different. None of that money
that you just talked about being able to track online
on a publicly available website was medicaid money.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I'll give you that, but I'm just saying medicaid money.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
They went to a fancy three charity that even in
the settlement document, they said essentially their intent and giving
this ten million to the Hope Florida Foundation was to
expand Hope Florida's medicaid services. And instead of actually using
that to expand Hope Florida's medicaid services, they used it
for campaign advertisements.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's frustrating because when you actually dig into the Hope Foundation,
it is for people that are trying to get on
their feet.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And to me, you know, ten million dollars. They'd only
raised two million, they'd only given out five hundred thousand,
and then all of a sudden, they get ten million dollars,
which is five times as much as they'd ever raised
ever in the history of the organization, and they immediately
cut two five million dollar checks without even a board
vote or DCF knowing it was happening. Every other grant
this foundation had ever issued, it was in the amounts
(13:22):
of like ten to fifty thousand dollars. It's like ten
thousand dollars, grands, fifty thousand dollars grants, et cetera. Every
other grant had been vetted and documented by DCF except
for these two. And it was Jeff Aaron telling the
chair of this board. Hey, no need to worry, DCF.
The Governor's office wants you to do this. You don't
even need a board vote from the foundation board. Just
cut these two five million dollar checks. I mean, if
(13:43):
you've ever watched like deeep and House of Cards, state
government in the Governor's office looks a lot more like
deep than it looks like House of Cards right now.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And who's Jeff Aaron again for clarification.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So he's an attorney that does a lot of work
for Governor Tosantis. He also happens to be the chair
of James Uthmeyer's re election pack, the committee to support
James Uthmeyer or whatever. And he was the lawyer that
was planted by James Uthmeyer to be the Hope Foundation's
lawyer when James Uthmeyer wanted this ten million to immediately
go to his pack.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So, so, how has it been for you? Because you
have definitely you're in the thick of it all. I mean,
has it been rough trying to get all of this
to light? And because really, that Hope Foundation is so
attached to Casey DeSantis, our first lady that dot dot
dot people keep saying might run for governor, So why
do you think all this is it to make prop
(14:35):
heer up. I mean, you're in Tallahassee.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Oh, I don't see her actual hands in any of this.
It looks like like she had an idea a long
time ago, like let's get state employees to try and
direct people to charities instead of state and government services,
and then like all this stuff kind of just happened.
So it's it's I mean, I don't care if she
runs for governor, but if she's running for governor claiming
(14:59):
hope Laura is a success, I think she's going to
have a rough time of it. Like if I were
the de Stints as I try to get as far
away from this hopeful of stuff as possible.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Do we go ahead?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Do you see do you see the the packs? And
it is just more of a general question. You know,
I've seen them. I see them as a corrupting influence
in Tallahassee. And it's like everybody's got a pack over there,
everybody right, And it's it's like, you know, and you know,
I was I was a member of the Publican Party
executive committee for twelve years. I know how this stuff
works over there. Okay, you know it's like, hey, give me,
(15:32):
you know, give my campaign ten thousand dollars here, but
you know, give give one hundred thousand to my pack,
you know, and they're using it to skirt a lot
of out of the laws, you know, on the ability
to raise money. And then you know, of course you
have the families and stuff, you know, being involved in
the packs and.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Getting paid by them.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You have the pack, the pack webs of money crossing,
and we saw that here in our recent election from
the mayor where we had Tallahassee packs being funded by
other Tallahassee pats. And we're trying to you know, we're
finding these democrats race right right. You know, you can
kind of put two and two together and you can
see that, well, this pat gave five thousand here and
here the next day there's a twenty thousand dollars contribution
(16:12):
to another pack. You know, to me, it's money laundering
that's going on on a massive scale in Tallahassee. And
you know, we have we've documented just talking to other
other senators in Tallahassee looking into their backgrounds, they're multi millionaires.
Now they started out with nothing and now now as
a result of politics, they are multimillionaires. Through the day packs.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
John, John, you got to you gotta stop thinking that
the State of Florida legislature is like DC. We don't
have insider trading knowledge to be able to trade on
the sec We don't. We don't have that same type
of ability. My net worth has gone up since I've
been in the state House. I was twenty eight when
I started in the state House. I've paid off my
student loan debt, and both my wife and I have
(16:53):
day jobs. My net worth better be going up if
that's the case. Right. Political committees in Florida, the main
purpose of these political committees is to allow people to
donate more than the thousand dollars you're only allowed to
give one thousand dollars to a campaign, to allow people
to give more than one thousand dollars. But even my
political committee is regulated, it could be regulated more. I
(17:14):
think one of the issues that happens is while you're
not supposed to funnel money between packs to hide who's
actually funding an AD, that happens, but funneling money between
packs to hide the identity of the person that's funding
an AD is not nearly as egregious as like funneling
money around to try and pay somebody out of a pack,
(17:36):
like I've never gotten money from a pack. I've never
been paid out of a pack, and most folks can't
or don't. It's not the same as DC in that way.
And we're only in session for about sixty days. We're
only supposed to be in session for about sixty days,
and we don't have the same like insider trading knowledge
that folks in DC might have. That's definitely happening in DC.
But one of the traps people keep falling into is
(17:56):
thinking that every single legislature, no matter what level of government,
is as sophisticated or capable of doing those things. Like, yeah,
there are problems at the state level, but it's not
the same as DC.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You don't see the corrosive influence of the packs on
the political system and.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Decision never in my life changed my vote based on
a donation. Interesting, and the people that are trusted in
leadership positions don't.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I talked Allan Benz one time about that, you know,
after he had finished you know, his his his time
as a Speaker of the House, and and you know
he was always talking about you know, he had his
five principles that he always stuck to, you know, for
deciding whether to support a piece of legislation.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I had five principles that had.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
To meet, And he said after he was done with
his speakership, and he looked back and he took some
time to reflect, and he saw the corrosive soft corruption
that the money and the packs and the lobbyist had
had twisted those ideas to where he was doing things
that he probably thought he would have never done, but
he ended up doing them.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Any ways.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Well, there's always the beteter of the of hindsight. But
like I said, like when a nurse a nurse organization
is having a fight with the hospital organization and they
both contribute to thousands of my campaign account, which one
of them bought my vote.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
They're seeking against That's why they gave you, That's why
they want no.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Absolutely, the folks that support my campaign are doing that
to try and build a relationship, to have access. But again,
I have to own every single vote I've ever cast,
and I do like that. That's the big difference. There
are weak minded people that probably do change their vote
based on a donation, but they're not put in leadership
positions because they've been identified as weak minded people like
That's that's one of the biggest things that like I
(19:33):
hold against people is if I think they've done something
like that. You you don't want people that are that
easily influenced because that's a simple minded method of influencing somebody.
You don't want people that are that easily influenced in
positions of positions of authority or positions of trust.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And you don't think there are a lot of legislators
that are like that until they're just opportunities.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Again, I'm sure that there are, but they're not trusted
in leadership positions for that very reason.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So Alex, what do you want to happen? And now,
I mean, because you know that everybody's held accountable because
like you know, I was looking today and like Christina Pushwa,
I can ever say her last name, like came out
and like you know, Attorney General uthmar is such a
great honorable man. You know, I hate this division. I mean,
are we going to get to the bottom of this?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's up to law enforcement at this point, Like like
I keep telling everybody, I mean again, there was no
endgame for me other than finding out what happened, right,
I found out enough to confirm definitively to be comfortable
saying publicly the James uth Meyer committed money laundering and
wire fraud, and I've turned it over to law enforcement.
Now at this point, like the only things for me
(20:41):
to do are work on creating legislation next session to
fight public corruption, to make sure this never happens again,
to make you know, stronger criminal statutes on point related
to the public corruption we saw, and then to go
figure out how to get these state agencies to start
acting in good faith. A lot of state agencies that
I've asked for documents, they've compiled them for weeks and
(21:02):
they've just refused to produce them. When we go back
in about a week to go crafter our budget, I'm
going to be proposing language to withhold salaries of these
agency executives who were refusing to produce documents related to
this issue.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
If you can't do your job, if you refuse to
do your job, and part of your job as an
agency secretary and executive employee at these agencies is to
provide information and be transparent with the legislature so we
can do our job. You can't do your job, you
don't deserve to get paid.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So do you feel I mean, it feels like the
Republican there's everybody's divided. And then you know, I interviewed
doctor Rudman, who's the former representative that ran for the
Congressman Gates got defeated by CFO Patronas, and you all
had a little sparring on my ex and a little
civil war.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
He has me blocked, so cosne blocked, so we don't
we can't spark.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, you definitely sparred back. Well.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I took issue with some of the bs he was saying.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
It, well because he's totally on Governor DeSantis' team. Now
I don't understand, you know, because I thought we had
this super majority America. You know, Governor, I've traveled. I've
been in a couple bunch of foreign countries the last
few months, Greece in the fall, and then I was
in the Netherlands. Everybody knows who governed the America. You know,
one of America's number one governors is is Governor DeSantis.
(22:22):
And I hate that this that that that you know,
it seems like he might be a lame duck. Now,
so so am I on? Is that right? And then
I'm so frustrated, Alex and you can tell us as
a representative. I don't know why he didn't take Senator
Rubio seat and gave it up to Ashley Moody. That
still shocks me. And is it because his wife's running again?
(22:43):
And I don't think.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I think that he probably does regret not appointing himself
to be US senator because there's pretty much his future.
His options in the future are dwindling. Keep in mind,
Governor DeSantis. I mean, if you want to about folks
who've net worth has quintupled since taking office. His net
worth went from three hundred thousand to one point six
(23:07):
million since taking office, which is far quicker than mine has.
He doesn't own a house, His paycheck has always come
from a government entity, and he's his options after this
they are dwindling. He now has three kids and a
wife to support, and so if he wants to stand
in politics, his opportunities are diminishing over time, and I
(23:28):
think that that is framing and hurting his judgment. He
did not have to fight us on immigration. We passed
a very strong immigration policy bill that had five hundred
million dollars behind it to support anti immigration, anti league
immigration efforts in the state. The compromise that we ultimately
had to help him save face still gave the person
he was reeling against full veto authority over immigration policy.
(23:51):
I mean, I had no problem with Wilton Simpson being
the chief Immigration officer. That used to be a role
that the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services had. We
were just reconstituting that for them. He said that was
the fox guard in the Henhouse and railed against Wilton Simpson,
our ad commissioner. And then to help him say face,
he's still agreed to let Wilton Simpson have a full
veto authority on anti immigration policy. You know, the bill
(24:12):
that we ultimately passed had half as much money behind
it to help fight illegal immigration. It was a worse
bill than the bill that the legislature initially passed. I
took issue with the fact that he used his taxpayer
funded plane to go have campaign rallies around the state
railing against us and calling us some all rhinos. I
got elected in twenty eighteen of the Florida Legislature the
same year he got elected governor. Every single bill he
(24:34):
is ever taking credit for or celebrated, I have either
sponsored myself or voted for so for him to question
my conservative credentials is just patently ridiculous. And I think
that's a lot of the reason why you see this
the legislators like myself bugging against what he's saying because
he's lying. This is the first time where we have
seen him lying. And not only is he lying, he's
lying about us. You know, the people that passed all
(24:56):
the bills that everyone gives him credit for, they had
to be passed by And I've been there.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
For a well, I will say that the last time
I interviewed you, you are on fire today. I mean
I've never I mean, you're so passionate about all of this,
you know, and I always loved you because you're a
double gator, so you've got that going for you. But
you know, where do we go from here? Representative? I mean,
I'm just so sad. And then you know, and then
also our Republican Party of Florida and Trump have pretty
(25:24):
much said Byron Donalds is our next governor, which who
I love. But you know, is that how you run
an election too.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I don't care who who runs for governor. I haven't
endorsed Byron Donalds and frankly, you know Governor DeSantis throwing
hissy fits right now, it's not a sign for a
party as a whole. I mean, I will tell you
he's run like text message campaign things during session, telling
constituents of mine by name to call me and demand something.
(25:50):
Almost entirely, over ninety percent of all the phone calls
I got in response those text messages were support people
calling me saying, hey, Governor Santis wants me to criticize you.
I'm calling you to give you some support. And he
was targeting Republicans. I think the majority of Republicans, they
don't look at one single person and say that I'm
a Republican because X. They're Republicans for the philosophical reasons
(26:12):
that Republicans have been successful in Florida. We've been a
majority Republican legislature since nineteen I was seven years old
the last time a Democrat majority existed in the Florida Legislature.
No one person is going to bring down the party
here in the state, and we're going to continue racking
up successes based on our philosophy as Republicans. So I'm
less worried about the next election and more concerned about
(26:35):
the fact that Governor DeSantis allowed a state agency to
misplace one hundred and sixty million dollars Right like this
ten million dollars that was illegally stolen and laundered. Right.
That wasn't the only issue we discovered this session. We
found out in the Department of Management Services they can't
account for thousands of state vehicles. They can't tell us
where they are. We don't know if they're stolen, if
they've been taken home, if they got correcked in a
(26:57):
car accident. DMS cannot tell us about thousands of state vehicles.
Like you want to talk about, Doge, we can talk
about that, Or like the one hundred and sixty million
dollars we gave to the Agency for Healthcare Administration to
pay a federal fine three years ago. Then instead of
using it to pay a federal fine, they put it
in the wrong bank account and used it for cash flow.
We now have to give them one hundred and sixty
million more dollars in general revenue to pay the same
(27:19):
dang fine they're supposed to pay three years ago. You know,
I find it a little hypocritical that DeSantis is running
around talking about Doze before Doze was cool when his
own agency, the entities that he's supposed to be managing himself,
are doing such a terrible job being good stewards of
the taxpayer dollar. You know, that type of hypocrisy is
(27:39):
what drives me crazy. But that's not a partisan issue.
I just want my governor, I don't care what party
they're in, to be a good manager of our state
agencies and be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar. Governor Santis,
he's been a great legislator. When he turns out, he's
welcome to run for the Florida House if you think
he can do it better. If he thinks he can
do it better, don't care. Right like, if he thinks
he can do our job better, he's welcome to run
(28:00):
to replace any of us. Right I wish he was
more focused on the day to day management of state
agencies because we're seeing more and more missteps and more
mistakes and state agencies because he has not been focused
on the day to day management of our state as
a corporation and as part of the go ahead. Oh,
I was just gonna say, the guy's just like. He
(28:20):
did not leave because of anything. Danny Perez or anyone
else in the Florida House said he left because he
was facing two more years of irrelevancy. He's a narcissist
who demands or requires attention to feel validated. He didn't
get it. He'd tried to run for Congress to feel important.
He got less than ten percent in his own district.
He got crushed by Jamie Petrouns, and now he's making
(28:43):
up more and more outlandish things to try and remain relevant.
He is not relevant. He did not achieve anything the
two years he was here. I don't understand why Governor
santces platforming him. But if Governor Santis is scraping that
deep into the barrel and his biggest ally is this
guy that got less than ten percent against Jimmy Petronis
in the Congressional That's just say something about Governor de
(29:05):
Sante's political cloud at this point more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I mean, I want him to have political cloud. But
back to one hundred and sixty million, I mean, is
that under investigation because all the stories I've been seeing
are about the Hope money.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
No, we know what happened. They put in their own
bank account and used it for cash flow. Nobody stole it.
They just mismanaged it. So I had a whole committee
about that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I haven't seen that thrown out there headlining everywhere like
this ten million though.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, because because one is state agency and competence and
the other is money laundering and theft.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Okay, so do we do audits of state agencies and
are publicly reported.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
That was the shocking thing, John. We found out that
this mishap happened because AKA, the Agency for Healthcare Administration
did not reconcile their books for their largest bank account
or Medicaid bank account more than once a year. Imagine
running a business with billions of dollars going through a
single bank account and only reconciling it once year. We've
now gotten them and the committee where I had about this,
(30:02):
we've now gotten them to agree to reconcile their books
at least once a month. But it's still shocking to
me that our largest account was not reconciled more than
once a year prior to us discovering this issue.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
So is this is this a legislative fix or is
it just mismanagement? As far as you know, the executive
side of the legiate is.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
We shouldn't have to legislate them having like doing a
better job of reconciling their books books. They've committed to it,
but we are requiring them to report more often what
their accounts say. We're trying to force them now to
reconcile their books more often so that this doesn't happen
again in the future.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Do you see this in terms of Republican politics and
the state Party? There seems to be this divergence, you know,
because you've got the group of Supports Descantists, You've got
the Trump Maga Republicans, you know, and I know, I
know Joe Bruder is very well, You've known for quite
a number of years, you know, Joe. I think Joe
kind of as you know, the Trump Maga guy. And
and you know, we just still don't have a chief
(30:59):
financial officer for or whatever reason, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
And which I've heard there's a divide with that with
Trump wants Gruder's yet DeSantis wants Blaze and Golia.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Think I think one of the biggest issues for DeSantis
is the second he appoints Blaze senator and Golia, President
Trump is going to be more angry. President Trump's going
to be more frustrated with Governor De Santis, and I
think that's one of the big reasons why you've seen
this hold up that And I think Governor Santis wanted
Senator and Golia in the Senate during this session because
he knew that would be a vote he could count on.
(31:30):
But I think the second Governor De Santis appoints Senator
in Golia, that's going to become an issue for President
Trump and he's going to take it up more aggressively.
And Governor Santis is trying to stave that off as
long as possible.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So are the rumors because you've been in tally. I mean,
do you really think his wife is going to run
for governor? Is that is that?
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You know?
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The big picture?
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I have no idea. I want our next governor to
be a good manager. Right, Governor de Santis, great legislator,
apparently a terrible manager. Everything we've seen terrible manager. I
just want our next governor to be a good manager.
Senator Scott was an incredible manager. He was an incredible executive.
Our state agencies did not miss a beat when Senator
Scott was our governor. He was a great manager. I
(32:13):
want our next governor to actually know how to run
a large corporation. Given the first lady's track record of
mismanaging a two million dollar charity, I don't think she
has the acumen to be able to manage the state
of this size. I mean, yeah, she was taking credit
for a two million dollar charity and couldn't avoid it
becoming like a conduit for ten million dollars in medicaid fraud.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I don't want I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't care who's our next governor. I'll be turned
out next year and I'll be back here in the
office that you see me in right now, at my
day job, doing my day job. I don't care who
the governor is, so long as it's a conservative Republican
and they know how to manage a state. If you
look back at governor's tanster is like big wins and everything.
His COVID policy decisions were large, the policy decisions akin
(33:02):
to a legislator right, and sometimes you know, there's been
some revisionist history on how he was with COVID. I mean,
I remember I had to sign a letter along with
other Panhanda legislators begging him to reopen condos for vacation
Reynolds again because we felt he was taking too long
to do stuff like that. There were things that he
dragged his feet on and we felt he could have
done faster. He wasn't perfect. He did a great job
(33:24):
and I supported him along the way. He did an
incredible job running the state, but he wasn't perfect, you know.
But again, all of his achievements, they've been legislative in nature,
and I think that stems from his view of government,
is from a congressman before he became governor. So I
think that's affected a lot of his decision making and
his worldview. And I think now that he doesn't have
a crisis like COVID where he can legislate through executive
(33:47):
order the same way people are seeing it more and
more often.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
What about Alex the property tax and he keeps talking
about he's going to do away with that and we
all get excited. Is that just a diversion?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I mean yes, So think about it this way. Property
taxes cannot be eliminated without a constitutional referendum that has
to go on the ballot in twenty twenty six, that
would have to get implemented in twenty twenty seven. You
want to talk about immediate relief. There's no immediate relief
with property tax being the central focus. We propose a
sales tax cut of point seventy five percent, which would
have saved every family in Florida resident family in Florida
(34:20):
about seven hundred dollars a year in perpetuity. We propose
that tax cut. And in response to us proposing that
permanent tax cut and also saying we would put it
on the ballot for twenty twenty six, the property tax reform,
he came out and said, that's a terrible idea. I
want to cut checks like Gavin Newsom does. I want
to cut individual checks, one time checks to all these
households in the state of Florida. Instead of a permanent
(34:43):
tax cut, he wanted to use sales tax money to
cut a check, a one time check to homeowners in
the state of one thousand dollars instead of a permanent
sales tax cut. That would save you and your family
seven hundred dollars a year forever.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So is the property state? Are the property tax a
dead thing? I mean that would save like I'd save
like twelve K, you know, So I was excited about that.
So is that dead?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It's going it's going on the ballot in twenty Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's going on the valid So it is going on
the ballot.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
There's no true immediate relief when you're focusing on procasts.
We can give you immediate relief of like seven hundred
dollars a year if we cut your sales tax that aggressively.
Like tourists don't buy trucks. Tours don't buy cars, tourstn't
buy refrigerators or appliings it. They don't make big purchases
here in the state like Floridians do. Floridians account for
almost eighty percent of all sales tax revenue. That's that's
accounted for.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
That's huge. Yeah, because everything you see, they're always saying
it's the tourist.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
But all right, yeah, our conservative governor is railing against
the mass. We will be the first state in the
country to permanently cut our sales tax, to permanently reduce
our sales tax. We will pass the biggest tax cut
in Florida history next week when we come back to resolvers.
I love that, But if you listen to Governor DeSantis,
we're all a bunch of rhinos that don't care about
tax payers like it's all right.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Well, you don't sound like a run I know, resentative.
So what about the Florida DOGE because I was really
excited because Bay County was like one of the first
places it's going to arrive. And I think there was
a lot of corruption from our Hurricane Michael nightmare. I
mean lots of people.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Were some city officials. I think some city officials went
to prisoner, right, I mean, yeah, they're in emergency circumstances.
There's always some fraud that goes on. I just wish
Governor Santis had expanded DOGE to also include his own
state agencies because that's where we're seeing the most fraud, fraud, waste,
and abuse. You want to look at emergency contracts. Okay,
the state has said you cannot contract with people with
(36:35):
di policies, et cetera. But when they issue their emergency contracts,
even the state violates their own contracting requirements because they
don't have to go through the same procurements. I mean,
if we actually looked at our emergency contract awards as
a state, we would find so much fraud, waste, and abuse,
stuff that I've already identified. But for whatever reason, Governor
Santis does not want to look inward. He's not self
(36:57):
aware enough to say, hey, we should probably do this
in state agencies as well. He's pointing his you know,
guns at universities and local governments. Do them all. Why
exempt yourself? Heal myself, Like, don't be a hypocrite, do
it yourself.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
He seems he seems to be interested historically, he seems
to insulate his office, you know. And and example when
he when he fired Susie Wiles, I was like shocked
and then and not only fired her, it was actually
took revenge on her, you know, because I think she
went to Ballard Ballard Partners and then and then he
got her fired from that. And I'm like, this is
beyond the pale, you know, for for the way somebody
(37:33):
rationally should be rationally acting.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
In these situations.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And it just seems more like this, this revenge kind
of thing, and that seems to be a pattern of
behavior that that's occurred over the last six years.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
So I don't see anything new there. And to me
that I've.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Never said he was perfect, right, you know what I mean,
so so representative. How now you've been there for several years,
you know, you're one of the young whipper snappers. You're
an attorney. I mean you've been behind the curtain. Now,
I mean, is it changed you? I mean, do we
as voters need to be concerned? Who were sending? No
that you know? How how are you seeing all of this?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
No? I mean nothing I've done has changed how I vote.
Nothing I've done or experienced or seen has changed how
I think. And if anything, I'm far more conservative now
because I have a deeper understanding of the effects of
different government policies, and I'm still really against big government liberalism.
That's why I was comfortable when even Governored Santis was
talking about issuing checks. I'm like, that's what govin Newsom did.
(38:30):
That's what Joe Biden did, you know what I mean, like.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It has his name on the check, you know, so
you know it's a politically, it's a politicals.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I've just more emboldened me to do the right thing
and to be able to identify corruption when I see it. No,
we're more conservative now than we ever have been. We
disagree about property insurance. Governor decantists has property insurances a okay,
nothing else to fix? Do you feel like property insurance
is perfect right now.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
No, it's gone up a lot. And then I worry
about all the condo people. You know, I have a
lot of friends represented that are realtors, and they they
are very nervous because everybody's got their condo on the market.
You know, there's people that have moved to Florida that
have low incomes that have paid for their condo, but
they don't have extra money for all of these assessments,
(39:15):
so we don't realize the.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Structure integrity reserve assessment. So I fixed it so that
we didn't have to have full replacement value like I personally.
That was language that I worked on into the bill
a year or two ago to say that you don't
have to have full replacement value in a bank account,
like if a condo cost fifteen million dollars to build
from scratch, you shouldn't also be required of fifty million
(39:36):
dollars in your bank account. But our property churns. I
filed the bill this year to prevent property insurance from
hiding their assets when they prove up to the state
what their losses were in any given year, because I
think their rates are still inflated based on their practice
of hiding assets to try and prove a bigger loss
than they actually suffered. We've also had bills on fixing
how claims are paid and adjusted, but Governor Santis railed
(39:59):
against all of them those this year. And I'm sitting here,
like the majority of people complain about two things with
property insurance. They complained about the cost of property insurance
won and they complained about how tough it is to
get a payment out of insurance when they have a claim.
So true, and so we filed bills and we worked
on both of those issues this year. And you would
have thought that we were undoing everything in history and
(40:21):
making property insurance terrible by working on those issues again
this year.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
So are there any other bills that you're passionate about?
Because doctor Rudman was talking about that beach bill that
would put the beach in the hands of the public
versus owners of property that live there.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Let me tell you that story. So yeah, so I
ended up sponsoring that bill.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
That was me.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Okay, I don't think I don't think mister Rubbin mentioned that. No,
he didn't before he resigned. Before he resigned, he wanted
to take credit for a lot of these bills, right,
so he filed a bunch of bills. What that meant, though,
is he took them out of what's called bill drafting.
Bill drafting is like the precursor to filing a bill.
But once you pull something out of bill drafting and
(41:02):
file it, it's no longer in bill drafting. So when
you resign after filing these bills, there's nothing in bill
drafting for any other legislator to draw up from. So
instead of taking credit for this beach bill, he should
be apologizing for almost having killed the beach policy this year.
I had to pull strayings, get it after deadlines, get
it back in bill drafting, just so it could be
(41:23):
filed and actually done this year. Like he almost killed
the policy he's trying to take credit for now.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you support the beaches becoming more public than correct.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It depends on what you're talking about. That's a nuanced issue.
So what that language, all that language really did was
change who files the lawsuit when you have a property dispute.
You know, after that bill passed I think in twenty
seventeen twenty eighteen, what it said was a county commission
cannot just put their flag in the ground and declare
customary use. They had to go to a judge and
(41:53):
establish they met the legal requirements of establishing customary use
before they could declare it. Meaning each property owner didn't
have to file their own lawsuit against the county. The
county would do it, and they would be everybody would
be involved. It'd be a collaborative essentially processed. And that's
what you saw in Walton County. It's not perfect, but
when you're talking about property rights, fundamental property rights and
due process, I don't like the idea of a county
(42:16):
commission being politically motivated to take my property that I've
been paying taxes on under political pressure. I think the
Sheriff's department in Walton County, I think the county commission
itself could have done a lot of things to be
more proactive in this, Like there is a method, There
are methods for the Sheriff's department to come out there
and address these issues far more efficiently than they are
(42:36):
right now. Just no one's gotten together, put their heads
together and established bright line rules for this stuff. But no,
I mean, I don't care how wealthy of a landowner
you are. No government entity should be able to take
your land for free. You know, Walt County. Walton County
sold all of their property to the mean high water
line fifty years ago, and then they did not buy
back enough land for adequate public beach access, like if
(42:57):
most every other county does. Like in Pensacola, there's a
ton of public beach access. You don't see the same
issues here in Pensacola because our beaches are wider, they're
not as thin as in Walton County. But also we
have tons of public beach access. Walton County. If they
really wanted to have, you know, have political wins, they
need to put their money where their mouth is and
buy more public beach access. This isn't going to do
(43:20):
away with the problem. It just changes who files the lawsuit.
So now the county, outside of the properties they settled
with in the litigation they had, they could I guess
declare customer use if they really wanted to. But every
landowner could then file suit and it would still get
tied up in litigation like it has been before. It
was just each landowner would have to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Themselves, right right, I've seen the map of Want County,
and all of the mansions on the land is owned
by the owner of the mansion. So any other bills,
Representative that you're very passionate about that you want people
to know about.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
I changed the statute this year to say parents can
buy a vote at a public school converted to a charter.
That was with me and Senator Don Gates. I changed
the law also that local governments cannot prevent President Trump
from building his presidential library anywhere in the state of Florida.
I did that with Senator Jason broder Man. I've been
so focused on the health You've been busy. Yeah, I've
been so focused on the healthcare budget. But no, I
(44:13):
mean I've had six years worth of this stuff, right.
I passed the law to ban forced vaccinations here in
the state.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
You know, I love that.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I passed the law. I passed the law that banned
DEI in higher education, like I was the sponsor of that.
I was sponsored phill that carved out all of Disney's
carve out that that removed all of Disney's legislative carve
outs that exempted them from state statutes a while back. No,
I've done I've done a lot. Like I don't remember
if I was the prime co sponsor, the sponsor of
the bill that allowed people to conceal Carrie in churches
(44:44):
again that met on school bar.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
I love that. Yeah, great job.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
There's I mean, I've had so many cars. Listen. I'm
one of two legislators in the entire state of Florida.
The guy in a plus from the NRA. I'm comfortable
with my gun policy.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Yeah, we love that. Well, we've We've had you on
for almost an hour here. What do you want voters
to know in Filoridians? And is our future still going
to be bright?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Representative folks like Joe Rumman that throw accusations that don't
listen to the grifters and the creeps just don't listen
to them because they don't have their finger on the
pulse of anything and they're just out to get attention.
State government is still operating perfectly fine. I think it
was Justice Antoninscalia that said the combat and the interplay
and the tension between governmental bodies is healthy for a
(45:27):
constitutional republic. That tension is what makes us special. You
do want a strong legislative to balance out a strong executive,
and we should all be respecting the judiciary in the
same way. The separation of powers is what makes us
special acting like that conflict is somehow a harbinger of
the end times means you're not as good a student
of our constitutional republic as you might think you are. Like,
(45:50):
we want to have a good balance between legislative and
executive for sure. And yeah, we're going to have another governor.
We're going to have a legislator replace me. We're gonna
have legislator replaced a lot of us. It's next man up. This,
this whole place does not depend on any single personality
or individual. It should continue to operate. The question is
like in golf, you're not going to score holes in
ones in every single hole and make every single person
(46:12):
happy every single time, but you are striving for perfection,
so you want that struggle. You want to be striving
for perfection, but some folks might not be happy about it.
Health the state, we're growing, our party is growing. We're
doing fine.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
So the legislative session, I get, I characterize it a
little bit of a messy ending as far as you know,
accomplishing things are. Is there going to be any special
sessions that you see coming.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I don't think you'd have a special session. We extended
session by a couple of weeks to finish the budget.
We'll have a balanced budget like we always do. It's
constitutionally required. We're going to do it. We'll have a
good budget. It'll be lower than last year's budget. It'll
be lower than the budget proposed by Governor DeSantis. We're
actually getting our fiscal house in order, like we are
cutting spending and cutting taxes. We're going to deliver big
(47:00):
wins for Floridians in the next two weeks. If anything,
this legislative session should be remembered for, it should be
the fact that we will, for the first time be
the first state in the country to permanently cut sales taxes,
and we're going to permanently cut, eliminate entirely our business
rent tax. We were the only state in the country
the charge of business rent tax and will be eliminating
(47:20):
that this year. Like these are these are huge monumental
generational wins that have not been achieved in decades here
in the state. So you know, you might think that
Governor stantists run around doing these like press rallies or
on his taxpayer funded jet, is somehow a harbinger of negativity.
None of us are concerned about type potantrums. We're going
(47:41):
to deliver huge wins this legislative session. That's great the commentators.
Commentators can say what they.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Like about it and any breaking news. Are you going
to go work for President Trump? You're going to run
for something else? What else? A percent of Alexanderantti, Well.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
It is no plans.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Okay, Well, when you do, we want you to come
back to Veronica Live. This has been an incredible time
spent with you, getting to the bottom up all of it.
I want to thank you. It's been amazing and come
on back to Veronica Live.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
All right.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Govless
Welcome to Bronic Alive. And I am here with my wingman,
John Salak. And then we've got a special guest, Representative
Alex Andrade from the Florida Legislator. And you've been making
news Representative Alex all over the place, and let's just
get into it. The biggest controversy right now is the
Hope Foundation. That Governor DeSantis put ten million dollars in
(00:24):
this foundation, that his wife's kind of leading the way.
So can you explain to our leaders what this is
and why this is a concern?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Sure. So, I'm the chair of the Healthcare Budget Committee
in the Florida House, meaning I review the healthcare budget.
I'm responsible for crafting the healthcare budget for the state
in partnership with Jay Trumble, who's the chair of the
healthcare Budget in the Senate. Over the course of legislative
session this year, we found out that as part of
(00:52):
a Medicaid settlement with a large managed care company called senteen,
sixty seven million dollars was the agreed amount that sent
you oed the state. And last September, at the last minute,
the State of the Governor's office in Akka, the Agency
for Healthcare Administration said pay us less, give us fifty
seven million instead of sixty seven and send ten million
(01:12):
to the Hope Florida Foundation. The Hope Florida Foundation wasn't
told this money was going to them. The Department of
Children and Families, which is supposed to oversee this foundation,
wasn't told this money was going to the foundation. Before
the foundation even knew about this money, James Uthmeier, who
was the governor's chief of staff at the time, was
calling two dark money groups, one connected to the Florida
Chamber of Commerce called Secure Florida's Future and one called
(01:35):
Save Our Society from Drugs and told them both, hey,
the Hope Florida Foundation has ten million dollars to ask
for five million so that we can work on fighting
at the men three. Both of those organizations submitted kind
of like fake application requests for five million each. They
both immediately got awarded five million dollars, and the day
after both of those organizations got that five million wired
(01:59):
to them to sending it to James uth Myer's pack.
So in a matter of less than three weeks, this
money went from being part of a medicaid settlement with
the state and ended up in James uth Myer's pack.
So what you have is an issue with defraud in
the Hope Florida Foundation. James uth Myer's friend, Jeff Aaron,
was hired on October fourteenth as the foundation's attorney. On
(02:21):
the very first day on the job, Jeff Aaron told
the chair of the Hope Florida Foundation, Josh a, you
don't need the board to even vote on these two grants.
The Governor's office wants you to send five million dollars
each to these two groups. And literally the day after
these two groups got the money, they sent it to
James uth Myer's pack. So you cannot have medicaid money
one being taken from state coffers to go to any
(02:43):
type of charity not involved in providing medicaid services. You
certainly can't have medicaid money going to the pack of
the Governor's chief of staff and not think that that's
criminal and illegal.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, and I've seen that you are everywhere in the
news because of this, And so how did that Hope
Foundation come about? Because it's been I guess, Casey DeSantis,
our first ladies, do we call it a charity? I mean,
what do I call it?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So there's two concepts. One is Hope Florida, which the
First Lady is described as a philosophy or an idea,
and then the other is the Hope Florida Foundation, which
is statutorily created as a charity called a direct Support
Organization a DSO attached to the Department of Children and Families.
The Hope Florida program the best I can tell, because
(03:31):
even the First Lady or the Governor, no one in
state agencies can fully explain what Hope Florida really is.
But the best I can understand, it's state employees who've
had their titles changed, and they'll be told they're being
told to think outside the box to help constituents. That's
all well and good, but it's very confusing when in reality,
all it is is state employees having their titles changed,
(03:53):
being told to think outside the box to help constituents.
Great in concept, I'm not sure why it's become so
difficult for them to explain this. Hope Florida Foundation is
a five to one C three so it can accept
donations that the state couldn't directly accept, right like if
I wanted to cut a check just as a gift
to DCF. DCF couldn't accept it. DSO as a separate
(04:15):
direct support organization for the agency, they could and their
full job is to support initiatives that DCF is trying
to do. What was weird about this was it was
a separate state agency, aka the Agency for Healthcare Administration,
that directed this ten million dollars to go to the
DSO for a different state agency.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So well, my understanding real quick of the Hope concept
was its supposed to be the state working with private individuals, organizations, charities,
religious organizations to try to bring all you know, because
a lot of religious you have food pantries that are
run by religious and community organizations, and supposedly this was
supposed to bring like a focal point where you could
(04:54):
bring everybody. One person could sit there and say, hey,
these people need help. You know, you need some food,
you can go over here.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
It's like a coordination, like a central central station kind
of thing to coordinate all these all these different private
and public agency and the concept seemed to be seen
to be pretty good. I'm just curious one, I want
to kind of break this thing down. First off, you
had you had the settlement. Now the federal government is
always doing settlements like that where they you know, the
(05:22):
SECO go out there and they'll they'll settle, you know,
one hundred million dollars fine for a company and they'll say,
all right, give twenty million to this NGO and.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Then give eighty eighty million, you know, to the treasury.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I mean they do that all the time. Do you
have an issue with that particular concept. I mean it's
been around for quite a while and the government uses
it to fund a lot of a lot of quote
good good things that are not government activities.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, do you have an issue with it? Do you
have an issue with a federal agency directing money to
go to an NGA?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Actually, I do you know? Principal Stami, Principal.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Soda Governor Soda Governor DeSantis. When he was a congressman,
one of the last bill c Co sponsored was the
Stop Settlement Slash Funds Act because when he was a congressman,
that was one thing that he took an issue with.
We don't see that in state agencies because we have
different statutes than the federal government regulating our agencies. State
agencies they're supposed to do twenty of two things with
money that comes from a settlement, either put it back
(06:15):
in general revenue or apply it to the appropriate trust fund.
What we saw in this case was they AKA, the
Agency for Healthcare Administration has reported to CMS, the federal
agency the regulates Medicaid is run by doctor Oz. Now
they've reported to CMS that the state receives sixty seven
million dollars in Medicaid money, even though the state reality
(06:36):
only received fifty seven The way we know that is
when you have a settlement like this, you have to
pay back the federal government the federal share of every
Medicaid dollar you receive. So, because fifty seven percent of
every Medicaid dollar that's spent in the state of Florida
is federal money, fifty seven percent of that settlement amount
has to go back to the federal government. And ACA
(06:56):
is paying back fifty seven percent of the sixty seven
million settlement amount, not the fifty seven that actually went
to the state. So what they're actually doing is shortening
the state government general revenue fund the other amount because
they're paying more to the federal government than fifty seven
percent because they didn't get back the full sixty seven
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Is this a state a violation of state statute or
federal or.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Both well represented, Alex. I'm seeing that you know the
words theft and money laundering and you know, and then
I saw an article that the woman of the one
charity that was against pot says that you've you know,
intimidated her. And then there's been an investigation now that
(07:40):
all of a sudden it is closed because nobody wants
to testify.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
No, I'll clear up all of that.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Okay, please, I mean, I guess the normal floridium, We're like,
what's going on. We love Casey DeSantis, we love the governor,
and now there's this big divide. But clear that up
and then we'll get into all of that too.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So Amy rose Housen is the executive director for Save
Our Society from Drugs. She has a lobbyist, she a
hired lobbyist that works on her behalf on drug policy.
Her lobbyists connected me and Amy on a phone call
that her lobbyists participated in, and her lobbyist has had
to give statements to reporters in these articles saying none
of that pressure ever happened. We started the phone call
(08:19):
with me saying Miss Rosenhausen. At this point, I'm just
trying to understand what happened. I had no idea that
over the course of the phone call she was going
to disclose a criminal conspiracy the longer ten million dollars
in medicaid money. No threat was ever issued. Her lobbyist
has confirmed that to reporters she was never threatened or pressured.
I think she just didn't realize that what she was
explaining to me was a criminal conspiracy. You know, my
(08:42):
heart goes out to her, But I mean, she was
a patsy. She was tricked and duped by Jeff Aaron
and James uth Meyer to be part of this money
laundering scheme of medicaid money. And yeah, it is theft.
You cannot take medicaid money and funnel it to your
own pack. I mean, that's common sense to anyone in
the real world. I mean, in the real world, if
someone defraud her a charity or the state out of
(09:04):
ten million dollars, someone would go to prison. This should
be no different.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Why do you think, yeah, so, why why is everybody caving?
You know, I interviewed chiefest Staff when he was the
Chief of Staff, Uther Mari seemed like a very you know,
honorable man. And now he's caught up in this. Is
this because he's the attorney generally supporting desantists to the end.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
No one's no one's caving. I didn't. I didn't stop
demanding people come to my committee to testify under oath
just because for no good reason, law enforcement should be
looking into this. I've had extensive conversations with law enforcement
about this. My main concern is this is not the
normal way that a criminal investigation or prosecution occurs. You
don't have a legislator uncovering the evidence. You have law
(09:51):
enforcement doing that for very good reason. They have to
be in control of the information and be able to
establish like how they had it know in the proper course.
If I solicit testimony that's new testimony at this point,
then I run the risk of hurting any kind of
criminal investigation that might happen, I know.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Not criminal referral as a as a legislator.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Well, I going to say that the news story law enforcement,
I was going to say, the news stories are saying
you've contacted the Justice Department for help, and then the
Northern District of Florida, I guess you've contacted them to
to investigate this too.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So so is is there a new investigation open? When
you read these new stories, it seems like it's closed.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You have you ever seen that official? Have you ever
seen official federal investigations being confirmed by the Department of
Justice before they issue their indictments publicly? Occasionally I could,
And that's that's what I'm saying, just because just because
I'm not but yeah, right, just just because just because
I'm done, and I made that very clear in my statements.
(10:55):
It's the job of law enforcement now to be doing this.
I I have to give them space to do this.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So the state is a state.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Here's here's my concern. Who's our attorney general? Okay, James
got right exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So you know, if he's not getting under investigation, but.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I'm under investigation, you know, maybe he needs to recuse himself,
you know, I mean, is it is?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think he should resign. The facts in evidence, the
documentation that I have makes clear that he was that
he was led a scheme to defraud the state of
medicaid money to use for political purposes. I believe he
should resign.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So so what purposes? What was the money used for?
I guess is the question for full Iriadians Because when
you read all these articles, you get so confused.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
James James has admitted that he used it for anti
Amendment three campaign, So he used it to fund campaigns
against the Amendment three marijuana campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So you know this, and I want to go go
a little bit further into into this, but you know,
there's this whole thing with the pack money and the packs,
you know, funding each other and transferring money that it's
a dark money operation. My rule number one about politics.
If you want to know the truth about anything, follow
the money. And of course, you know, you go on
to Secretary of State web page and you'll see these
(12:11):
packs and you can sit there and trace contributions and
you see, you know, one pack gives another one a
couple million, and it's just like this web of deceit
and trying to cover up all this money. And that's
exactly what you uncovered here.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
It was the same thing, you.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Know, very different, it's very different. None of that money
that you just talked about being able to track online
on a publicly available website was medicaid money.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I'll give you that, but I'm just saying medicaid money.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
They went to a fancy three charity that even in
the settlement document, they said essentially their intent and giving
this ten million to the Hope Florida Foundation was to
expand Hope Florida's medicaid services. And instead of actually using
that to expand Hope Florida's medicaid services, they used it
for campaign advertisements.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's frustrating because when you actually dig into the Hope Foundation,
it is for people that are trying to get on
their feet.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And to me, you know, ten million dollars. They'd only
raised two million, they'd only given out five hundred thousand,
and then all of a sudden, they get ten million dollars,
which is five times as much as they'd ever raised
ever in the history of the organization, and they immediately
cut two five million dollar checks without even a board
vote or DCF knowing it was happening. Every other grant
this foundation had ever issued, it was in the amounts
(13:22):
of like ten to fifty thousand dollars. It's like ten
thousand dollars, grands, fifty thousand dollars grants, et cetera. Every
other grant had been vetted and documented by DCF except
for these two. And it was Jeff Aaron telling the
chair of this board. Hey, no need to worry, DCF.
The Governor's office wants you to do this. You don't
even need a board vote from the foundation board. Just
cut these two five million dollar checks. I mean, if
(13:43):
you've ever watched like deeep and House of Cards, state
government in the Governor's office looks a lot more like
deep than it looks like House of Cards right now.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And who's Jeff Aaron again for clarification.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So he's an attorney that does a lot of work
for Governor Tosantis. He also happens to be the chair
of James Uthmeyer's re election pack, the committee to support
James Uthmeyer or whatever. And he was the lawyer that
was planted by James Uthmeyer to be the Hope Foundation's
lawyer when James Uthmeyer wanted this ten million to immediately
go to his pack.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So, so, how has it been for you? Because you
have definitely you're in the thick of it all. I mean,
has it been rough trying to get all of this
to light? And because really, that Hope Foundation is so
attached to Casey DeSantis, our first lady that dot dot
dot people keep saying might run for governor, So why
do you think all this is it to make prop
(14:35):
heer up. I mean, you're in Tallahassee.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Oh, I don't see her actual hands in any of this.
It looks like like she had an idea a long
time ago, like let's get state employees to try and
direct people to charities instead of state and government services,
and then like all this stuff kind of just happened.
So it's it's I mean, I don't care if she
runs for governor, but if she's running for governor claiming
(14:59):
hope Laura is a success, I think she's going to
have a rough time of it. Like if I were
the de Stints as I try to get as far
away from this hopeful of stuff as possible.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Do we go ahead?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Do you see do you see the the packs? And
it is just more of a general question. You know,
I've seen them. I see them as a corrupting influence
in Tallahassee. And it's like everybody's got a pack over there,
everybody right, And it's it's like, you know, and you know,
I was I was a member of the Publican Party
executive committee for twelve years. I know how this stuff
works over there. Okay, you know it's like, hey, give me,
(15:32):
you know, give my campaign ten thousand dollars here, but
you know, give give one hundred thousand to my pack,
you know, and they're using it to skirt a lot
of out of the laws, you know, on the ability
to raise money. And then you know, of course you
have the families and stuff, you know, being involved in
the packs and.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Getting paid by them.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You have the pack, the pack webs of money crossing,
and we saw that here in our recent election from
the mayor where we had Tallahassee packs being funded by
other Tallahassee pats. And we're trying to you know, we're
finding these democrats race right right. You know, you can
kind of put two and two together and you can
see that, well, this pat gave five thousand here and
here the next day there's a twenty thousand dollars contribution
(16:12):
to another pack. You know, to me, it's money laundering
that's going on on a massive scale in Tallahassee. And
you know, we have we've documented just talking to other
other senators in Tallahassee looking into their backgrounds, they're multi millionaires.
Now they started out with nothing and now now as
a result of politics, they are multimillionaires. Through the day packs.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
John, John, you got to you gotta stop thinking that
the State of Florida legislature is like DC. We don't
have insider trading knowledge to be able to trade on
the sec We don't. We don't have that same type
of ability. My net worth has gone up since I've
been in the state House. I was twenty eight when
I started in the state House. I've paid off my
student loan debt, and both my wife and I have
(16:53):
day jobs. My net worth better be going up if
that's the case. Right. Political committees in Florida, the main
purpose of these political committees is to allow people to
donate more than the thousand dollars you're only allowed to
give one thousand dollars to a campaign, to allow people
to give more than one thousand dollars. But even my
political committee is regulated, it could be regulated more. I
(17:14):
think one of the issues that happens is while you're
not supposed to funnel money between packs to hide who's
actually funding an AD, that happens, but funneling money between
packs to hide the identity of the person that's funding
an AD is not nearly as egregious as like funneling
money around to try and pay somebody out of a pack,
(17:36):
like I've never gotten money from a pack. I've never
been paid out of a pack, and most folks can't
or don't. It's not the same as DC in that way.
And we're only in session for about sixty days. We're
only supposed to be in session for about sixty days,
and we don't have the same like insider trading knowledge
that folks in DC might have. That's definitely happening in DC.
But one of the traps people keep falling into is
(17:56):
thinking that every single legislature, no matter what level of government,
is as sophisticated or capable of doing those things. Like, yeah,
there are problems at the state level, but it's not
the same as DC.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You don't see the corrosive influence of the packs on
the political system and.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Decision never in my life changed my vote based on
a donation. Interesting, and the people that are trusted in
leadership positions don't.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I talked Allan Benz one time about that, you know,
after he had finished you know, his his his time
as a Speaker of the House, and and you know
he was always talking about you know, he had his
five principles that he always stuck to, you know, for
deciding whether to support a piece of legislation.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I had five principles that had.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
To meet, And he said after he was done with
his speakership, and he looked back and he took some
time to reflect, and he saw the corrosive soft corruption
that the money and the packs and the lobbyist had
had twisted those ideas to where he was doing things
that he probably thought he would have never done, but
he ended up doing them.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Any ways.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Well, there's always the beteter of the of hindsight. But
like I said, like when a nurse a nurse organization
is having a fight with the hospital organization and they
both contribute to thousands of my campaign account, which one
of them bought my vote.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
They're seeking against That's why they gave you, That's why
they want no.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Absolutely, the folks that support my campaign are doing that
to try and build a relationship, to have access. But again,
I have to own every single vote I've ever cast,
and I do like that. That's the big difference. There
are weak minded people that probably do change their vote
based on a donation, but they're not put in leadership
positions because they've been identified as weak minded people like
That's that's one of the biggest things that like I
(19:33):
hold against people is if I think they've done something
like that. You you don't want people that are that
easily influenced because that's a simple minded method of influencing somebody.
You don't want people that are that easily influenced in
positions of positions of authority or positions of trust.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And you don't think there are a lot of legislators
that are like that until they're just opportunities.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Again, I'm sure that there are, but they're not trusted
in leadership positions for that very reason.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So Alex, what do you want to happen? And now,
I mean, because you know that everybody's held accountable because
like you know, I was looking today and like Christina Pushwa,
I can ever say her last name, like came out
and like you know, Attorney General uthmar is such a
great honorable man. You know, I hate this division. I mean,
are we going to get to the bottom of this?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's up to law enforcement at this point, Like like
I keep telling everybody, I mean again, there was no
endgame for me other than finding out what happened, right,
I found out enough to confirm definitively to be comfortable
saying publicly the James uth Meyer committed money laundering and
wire fraud, and I've turned it over to law enforcement.
Now at this point, like the only things for me
(20:41):
to do are work on creating legislation next session to
fight public corruption, to make sure this never happens again,
to make you know, stronger criminal statutes on point related
to the public corruption we saw, and then to go
figure out how to get these state agencies to start
acting in good faith. A lot of state agencies that
I've asked for documents, they've compiled them for weeks and
(21:02):
they've just refused to produce them. When we go back
in about a week to go crafter our budget, I'm
going to be proposing language to withhold salaries of these
agency executives who were refusing to produce documents related to
this issue.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
If you can't do your job, if you refuse to
do your job, and part of your job as an
agency secretary and executive employee at these agencies is to
provide information and be transparent with the legislature so we
can do our job. You can't do your job, you
don't deserve to get paid.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So do you feel I mean, it feels like the
Republican there's everybody's divided. And then you know, I interviewed
doctor Rudman, who's the former representative that ran for the
Congressman Gates got defeated by CFO Patronas, and you all
had a little sparring on my ex and a little
civil war.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
He has me blocked, so cosne blocked, so we don't
we can't spark.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, you definitely sparred back. Well.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I took issue with some of the bs he was saying.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
It, well because he's totally on Governor DeSantis' team. Now
I don't understand, you know, because I thought we had
this super majority America. You know, Governor, I've traveled. I've
been in a couple bunch of foreign countries the last
few months, Greece in the fall, and then I was
in the Netherlands. Everybody knows who governed the America. You know,
one of America's number one governors is is Governor DeSantis.
(22:22):
And I hate that this that that that you know,
it seems like he might be a lame duck. Now,
so so am I on? Is that right? And then
I'm so frustrated, Alex and you can tell us as
a representative. I don't know why he didn't take Senator
Rubio seat and gave it up to Ashley Moody. That
still shocks me. And is it because his wife's running again?
(22:43):
And I don't think.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I think that he probably does regret not appointing himself
to be US senator because there's pretty much his future.
His options in the future are dwindling. Keep in mind,
Governor DeSantis. I mean, if you want to about folks
who've net worth has quintupled since taking office. His net
worth went from three hundred thousand to one point six
(23:07):
million since taking office, which is far quicker than mine has.
He doesn't own a house, His paycheck has always come
from a government entity, and he's his options after this
they are dwindling. He now has three kids and a
wife to support, and so if he wants to stand
in politics, his opportunities are diminishing over time, and I
(23:28):
think that that is framing and hurting his judgment. He
did not have to fight us on immigration. We passed
a very strong immigration policy bill that had five hundred
million dollars behind it to support anti immigration, anti league
immigration efforts in the state. The compromise that we ultimately
had to help him save face still gave the person
he was reeling against full veto authority over immigration policy.
(23:51):
I mean, I had no problem with Wilton Simpson being
the chief Immigration officer. That used to be a role
that the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services had. We
were just reconstituting that for them. He said that was
the fox guard in the Henhouse and railed against Wilton Simpson,
our ad commissioner. And then to help him say face,
he's still agreed to let Wilton Simpson have a full
veto authority on anti immigration policy. You know, the bill
(24:12):
that we ultimately passed had half as much money behind
it to help fight illegal immigration. It was a worse
bill than the bill that the legislature initially passed. I
took issue with the fact that he used his taxpayer
funded plane to go have campaign rallies around the state
railing against us and calling us some all rhinos. I
got elected in twenty eighteen of the Florida Legislature the
same year he got elected governor. Every single bill he
(24:34):
is ever taking credit for or celebrated, I have either
sponsored myself or voted for so for him to question
my conservative credentials is just patently ridiculous. And I think
that's a lot of the reason why you see this
the legislators like myself bugging against what he's saying because
he's lying. This is the first time where we have
seen him lying. And not only is he lying, he's
lying about us. You know, the people that passed all
(24:56):
the bills that everyone gives him credit for, they had
to be passed by And I've been there.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
For a well, I will say that the last time
I interviewed you, you are on fire today. I mean
I've never I mean, you're so passionate about all of this,
you know, and I always loved you because you're a
double gator, so you've got that going for you. But
you know, where do we go from here? Representative? I mean,
I'm just so sad. And then you know, and then
also our Republican Party of Florida and Trump have pretty
(25:24):
much said Byron Donalds is our next governor, which who
I love. But you know, is that how you run
an election too.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I don't care who who runs for governor. I haven't
endorsed Byron Donalds and frankly, you know Governor DeSantis throwing
hissy fits right now, it's not a sign for a
party as a whole. I mean, I will tell you
he's run like text message campaign things during session, telling
constituents of mine by name to call me and demand something.
(25:50):
Almost entirely, over ninety percent of all the phone calls
I got in response those text messages were support people
calling me saying, hey, Governor Santis wants me to criticize you.
I'm calling you to give you some support. And he
was targeting Republicans. I think the majority of Republicans, they
don't look at one single person and say that I'm
a Republican because X. They're Republicans for the philosophical reasons
(26:12):
that Republicans have been successful in Florida. We've been a
majority Republican legislature since nineteen I was seven years old
the last time a Democrat majority existed in the Florida Legislature.
No one person is going to bring down the party
here in the state, and we're going to continue racking
up successes based on our philosophy as Republicans. So I'm
less worried about the next election and more concerned about
(26:35):
the fact that Governor DeSantis allowed a state agency to
misplace one hundred and sixty million dollars Right like this
ten million dollars that was illegally stolen and laundered. Right.
That wasn't the only issue we discovered this session. We
found out in the Department of Management Services they can't
account for thousands of state vehicles. They can't tell us
where they are. We don't know if they're stolen, if
they've been taken home, if they got correcked in a
(26:57):
car accident. DMS cannot tell us about thousands of state vehicles.
Like you want to talk about, Doge, we can talk
about that, Or like the one hundred and sixty million
dollars we gave to the Agency for Healthcare Administration to
pay a federal fine three years ago. Then instead of
using it to pay a federal fine, they put it
in the wrong bank account and used it for cash flow.
We now have to give them one hundred and sixty
million more dollars in general revenue to pay the same
(27:19):
dang fine they're supposed to pay three years ago. You know,
I find it a little hypocritical that DeSantis is running
around talking about Doze before Doze was cool when his
own agency, the entities that he's supposed to be managing himself,
are doing such a terrible job being good stewards of
the taxpayer dollar. You know, that type of hypocrisy is
(27:39):
what drives me crazy. But that's not a partisan issue.
I just want my governor, I don't care what party
they're in, to be a good manager of our state
agencies and be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar. Governor Santis,
he's been a great legislator. When he turns out, he's
welcome to run for the Florida House if you think
he can do it better. If he thinks he can
do it better, don't care. Right like, if he thinks
he can do our job better, he's welcome to run
(28:00):
to replace any of us. Right I wish he was
more focused on the day to day management of state
agencies because we're seeing more and more missteps and more
mistakes and state agencies because he has not been focused
on the day to day management of our state as
a corporation and as part of the go ahead. Oh,
I was just gonna say, the guy's just like. He
(28:20):
did not leave because of anything. Danny Perez or anyone
else in the Florida House said he left because he
was facing two more years of irrelevancy. He's a narcissist
who demands or requires attention to feel validated. He didn't
get it. He'd tried to run for Congress to feel important.
He got less than ten percent in his own district.
He got crushed by Jamie Petrouns, and now he's making
(28:43):
up more and more outlandish things to try and remain relevant.
He is not relevant. He did not achieve anything the
two years he was here. I don't understand why Governor
santces platforming him. But if Governor Santis is scraping that
deep into the barrel and his biggest ally is this
guy that got less than ten percent against Jimmy Petronis
in the Congressional That's just say something about Governor de
(29:05):
Sante's political cloud at this point more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I mean, I want him to have political cloud. But
back to one hundred and sixty million, I mean, is
that under investigation because all the stories I've been seeing
are about the Hope money.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
No, we know what happened. They put in their own
bank account and used it for cash flow. Nobody stole it.
They just mismanaged it. So I had a whole committee
about that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I haven't seen that thrown out there headlining everywhere like
this ten million though.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, because because one is state agency and competence and
the other is money laundering and theft.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Okay, so do we do audits of state agencies and
are publicly reported.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
That was the shocking thing, John. We found out that
this mishap happened because AKA, the Agency for Healthcare Administration
did not reconcile their books for their largest bank account
or Medicaid bank account more than once a year. Imagine
running a business with billions of dollars going through a
single bank account and only reconciling it once year. We've
now gotten them and the committee where I had about this,
(30:02):
we've now gotten them to agree to reconcile their books
at least once a month. But it's still shocking to
me that our largest account was not reconciled more than
once a year prior to us discovering this issue.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
So is this is this a legislative fix or is
it just mismanagement? As far as you know, the executive
side of the legiate is.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
We shouldn't have to legislate them having like doing a
better job of reconciling their books books. They've committed to it,
but we are requiring them to report more often what
their accounts say. We're trying to force them now to
reconcile their books more often so that this doesn't happen
again in the future.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Do you see this in terms of Republican politics and
the state Party? There seems to be this divergence, you know,
because you've got the group of Supports Descantists, You've got
the Trump Maga Republicans, you know, and I know, I
know Joe Bruder is very well, You've known for quite
a number of years, you know, Joe. I think Joe
kind of as you know, the Trump Maga guy. And
and you know, we just still don't have a chief
(30:59):
financial officer for or whatever reason, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
And which I've heard there's a divide with that with
Trump wants Gruder's yet DeSantis wants Blaze and Golia.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Think I think one of the biggest issues for DeSantis
is the second he appoints Blaze senator and Golia, President
Trump is going to be more angry. President Trump's going
to be more frustrated with Governor De Santis, and I
think that's one of the big reasons why you've seen
this hold up that And I think Governor Santis wanted
Senator and Golia in the Senate during this session because
he knew that would be a vote he could count on.
(31:30):
But I think the second Governor De Santis appoints Senator
in Golia, that's going to become an issue for President
Trump and he's going to take it up more aggressively.
And Governor Santis is trying to stave that off as
long as possible.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So are the rumors because you've been in tally. I mean,
do you really think his wife is going to run
for governor? Is that is that?
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You know?
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The big picture?
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I have no idea. I want our next governor to
be a good manager. Right, Governor de Santis, great legislator,
apparently a terrible manager. Everything we've seen terrible manager. I
just want our next governor to be a good manager.
Senator Scott was an incredible manager. He was an incredible executive.
Our state agencies did not miss a beat when Senator
Scott was our governor. He was a great manager. I
(32:13):
want our next governor to actually know how to run
a large corporation. Given the first lady's track record of
mismanaging a two million dollar charity, I don't think she
has the acumen to be able to manage the state
of this size. I mean, yeah, she was taking credit
for a two million dollar charity and couldn't avoid it
becoming like a conduit for ten million dollars in medicaid fraud.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I don't want I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't care who's our next governor. I'll be turned
out next year and I'll be back here in the
office that you see me in right now, at my
day job, doing my day job. I don't care who
the governor is, so long as it's a conservative Republican
and they know how to manage a state. If you
look back at governor's tanster is like big wins and everything.
His COVID policy decisions were large, the policy decisions akin
(33:02):
to a legislator right, and sometimes you know, there's been
some revisionist history on how he was with COVID. I mean,
I remember I had to sign a letter along with
other Panhanda legislators begging him to reopen condos for vacation
Reynolds again because we felt he was taking too long
to do stuff like that. There were things that he
dragged his feet on and we felt he could have
done faster. He wasn't perfect. He did a great job
(33:24):
and I supported him along the way. He did an
incredible job running the state, but he wasn't perfect, you know.
But again, all of his achievements, they've been legislative in nature,
and I think that stems from his view of government,
is from a congressman before he became governor. So I
think that's affected a lot of his decision making and
his worldview. And I think now that he doesn't have
a crisis like COVID where he can legislate through executive
(33:47):
order the same way people are seeing it more and
more often.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
What about Alex the property tax and he keeps talking
about he's going to do away with that and we
all get excited. Is that just a diversion?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I mean yes, So think about it this way. Property
taxes cannot be eliminated without a constitutional referendum that has
to go on the ballot in twenty twenty six, that
would have to get implemented in twenty twenty seven. You
want to talk about immediate relief. There's no immediate relief
with property tax being the central focus. We propose a
sales tax cut of point seventy five percent, which would
have saved every family in Florida resident family in Florida
(34:20):
about seven hundred dollars a year in perpetuity. We propose
that tax cut. And in response to us proposing that
permanent tax cut and also saying we would put it
on the ballot for twenty twenty six, the property tax reform,
he came out and said, that's a terrible idea. I
want to cut checks like Gavin Newsom does. I want
to cut individual checks, one time checks to all these
households in the state of Florida. Instead of a permanent
(34:43):
tax cut, he wanted to use sales tax money to
cut a check, a one time check to homeowners in
the state of one thousand dollars instead of a permanent
sales tax cut. That would save you and your family
seven hundred dollars a year forever.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So is the property state? Are the property tax a
dead thing? I mean that would save like I'd save
like twelve K, you know, So I was excited about that.
So is that dead?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It's going it's going on the ballot in twenty Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's going on the valid So it is going on
the ballot.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
There's no true immediate relief when you're focusing on procasts.
We can give you immediate relief of like seven hundred
dollars a year if we cut your sales tax that aggressively.
Like tourists don't buy trucks. Tours don't buy cars, tourstn't
buy refrigerators or appliings it. They don't make big purchases
here in the state like Floridians do. Floridians account for
almost eighty percent of all sales tax revenue. That's that's
accounted for.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
That's huge. Yeah, because everything you see, they're always saying
it's the tourist.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
But all right, yeah, our conservative governor is railing against
the mass. We will be the first state in the
country to permanently cut our sales tax, to permanently reduce
our sales tax. We will pass the biggest tax cut
in Florida history next week when we come back to resolvers.
I love that, But if you listen to Governor DeSantis,
we're all a bunch of rhinos that don't care about
tax payers like it's all right.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Well, you don't sound like a run I know, resentative.
So what about the Florida DOGE because I was really
excited because Bay County was like one of the first
places it's going to arrive. And I think there was
a lot of corruption from our Hurricane Michael nightmare. I
mean lots of people.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Were some city officials. I think some city officials went
to prisoner, right, I mean, yeah, they're in emergency circumstances.
There's always some fraud that goes on. I just wish
Governor Santis had expanded DOGE to also include his own
state agencies because that's where we're seeing the most fraud, fraud, waste,
and abuse. You want to look at emergency contracts. Okay,
the state has said you cannot contract with people with
(36:35):
di policies, et cetera. But when they issue their emergency contracts,
even the state violates their own contracting requirements because they
don't have to go through the same procurements. I mean,
if we actually looked at our emergency contract awards as
a state, we would find so much fraud, waste, and abuse,
stuff that I've already identified. But for whatever reason, Governor
Santis does not want to look inward. He's not self
(36:57):
aware enough to say, hey, we should probably do this
in state agencies as well. He's pointing his you know,
guns at universities and local governments. Do them all. Why
exempt yourself? Heal myself, Like, don't be a hypocrite, do
it yourself.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
He seems he seems to be interested historically, he seems
to insulate his office, you know. And and example when
he when he fired Susie Wiles, I was like shocked
and then and not only fired her, it was actually
took revenge on her, you know, because I think she
went to Ballard Ballard Partners and then and then he
got her fired from that. And I'm like, this is
beyond the pale, you know, for for the way somebody
(37:33):
rationally should be rationally acting.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
In these situations.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And it just seems more like this, this revenge kind
of thing, and that seems to be a pattern of
behavior that that's occurred over the last six years.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
So I don't see anything new there. And to me
that I've.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Never said he was perfect, right, you know what I mean,
so so representative. How now you've been there for several years,
you know, you're one of the young whipper snappers. You're
an attorney. I mean you've been behind the curtain. Now,
I mean, is it changed you? I mean, do we
as voters need to be concerned? Who were sending? No
that you know? How how are you seeing all of this?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
No? I mean nothing I've done has changed how I vote.
Nothing I've done or experienced or seen has changed how
I think. And if anything, I'm far more conservative now
because I have a deeper understanding of the effects of
different government policies, and I'm still really against big government liberalism.
That's why I was comfortable when even Governored Santis was
talking about issuing checks. I'm like, that's what govin Newsom did.
(38:30):
That's what Joe Biden did, you know what I mean, like.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It has his name on the check, you know, so
you know it's a politically, it's a politicals.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I've just more emboldened me to do the right thing
and to be able to identify corruption when I see it. No,
we're more conservative now than we ever have been. We
disagree about property insurance. Governor decantists has property insurances a okay,
nothing else to fix? Do you feel like property insurance
is perfect right now.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
No, it's gone up a lot. And then I worry
about all the condo people. You know, I have a
lot of friends represented that are realtors, and they they
are very nervous because everybody's got their condo on the market.
You know, there's people that have moved to Florida that
have low incomes that have paid for their condo, but
they don't have extra money for all of these assessments,
(39:15):
so we don't realize the.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Structure integrity reserve assessment. So I fixed it so that
we didn't have to have full replacement value like I personally.
That was language that I worked on into the bill
a year or two ago to say that you don't
have to have full replacement value in a bank account,
like if a condo cost fifteen million dollars to build
from scratch, you shouldn't also be required of fifty million
(39:36):
dollars in your bank account. But our property churns. I
filed the bill this year to prevent property insurance from
hiding their assets when they prove up to the state
what their losses were in any given year, because I
think their rates are still inflated based on their practice
of hiding assets to try and prove a bigger loss
than they actually suffered. We've also had bills on fixing
how claims are paid and adjusted, but Governor Santis railed
(39:59):
against all of them those this year. And I'm sitting here,
like the majority of people complain about two things with
property insurance. They complained about the cost of property insurance
won and they complained about how tough it is to
get a payment out of insurance when they have a claim.
So true, and so we filed bills and we worked
on both of those issues this year. And you would
have thought that we were undoing everything in history and
(40:21):
making property insurance terrible by working on those issues again
this year.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
So are there any other bills that you're passionate about?
Because doctor Rudman was talking about that beach bill that
would put the beach in the hands of the public
versus owners of property that live there.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Let me tell you that story. So yeah, so I
ended up sponsoring that bill.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
That was me.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Okay, I don't think I don't think mister Rubbin mentioned that. No,
he didn't before he resigned. Before he resigned, he wanted
to take credit for a lot of these bills, right,
so he filed a bunch of bills. What that meant, though,
is he took them out of what's called bill drafting.
Bill drafting is like the precursor to filing a bill.
But once you pull something out of bill drafting and
(41:02):
file it, it's no longer in bill drafting. So when
you resign after filing these bills, there's nothing in bill
drafting for any other legislator to draw up from. So
instead of taking credit for this beach bill, he should
be apologizing for almost having killed the beach policy this year.
I had to pull strayings, get it after deadlines, get
it back in bill drafting, just so it could be
(41:23):
filed and actually done this year. Like he almost killed
the policy he's trying to take credit for now.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you support the beaches becoming more public than correct.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It depends on what you're talking about. That's a nuanced issue.
So what that language, all that language really did was
change who files the lawsuit when you have a property dispute.
You know, after that bill passed I think in twenty
seventeen twenty eighteen, what it said was a county commission
cannot just put their flag in the ground and declare
customary use. They had to go to a judge and
(41:53):
establish they met the legal requirements of establishing customary use
before they could declare it. Meaning each property owner didn't
have to file their own lawsuit against the county. The
county would do it, and they would be everybody would
be involved. It'd be a collaborative essentially processed. And that's
what you saw in Walton County. It's not perfect, but
when you're talking about property rights, fundamental property rights and
due process, I don't like the idea of a county
(42:16):
commission being politically motivated to take my property that I've
been paying taxes on under political pressure. I think the
Sheriff's department in Walton County, I think the county commission
itself could have done a lot of things to be
more proactive in this, Like there is a method, There
are methods for the Sheriff's department to come out there
and address these issues far more efficiently than they are
(42:36):
right now. Just no one's gotten together, put their heads
together and established bright line rules for this stuff. But no,
I mean, I don't care how wealthy of a landowner
you are. No government entity should be able to take
your land for free. You know, Walt County. Walton County
sold all of their property to the mean high water
line fifty years ago, and then they did not buy
back enough land for adequate public beach access, like if
(42:57):
most every other county does. Like in Pensacola, there's a
ton of public beach access. You don't see the same
issues here in Pensacola because our beaches are wider, they're
not as thin as in Walton County. But also we
have tons of public beach access. Walton County. If they
really wanted to have, you know, have political wins, they
need to put their money where their mouth is and
buy more public beach access. This isn't going to do
(43:20):
away with the problem. It just changes who files the lawsuit.
So now the county, outside of the properties they settled
with in the litigation they had, they could I guess
declare customer use if they really wanted to. But every
landowner could then file suit and it would still get
tied up in litigation like it has been before. It
was just each landowner would have to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Themselves, right right, I've seen the map of Want County,
and all of the mansions on the land is owned
by the owner of the mansion. So any other bills,
Representative that you're very passionate about that you want people
to know about.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
I changed the statute this year to say parents can
buy a vote at a public school converted to a charter.
That was with me and Senator Don Gates. I changed
the law also that local governments cannot prevent President Trump
from building his presidential library anywhere in the state of Florida.
I did that with Senator Jason broder Man. I've been
so focused on the health You've been busy. Yeah, I've
been so focused on the healthcare budget. But no, I
(44:13):
mean I've had six years worth of this stuff, right.
I passed the law to ban forced vaccinations here in
the state.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
You know, I love that.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I passed the law. I passed the law that banned
DEI in higher education, like I was the sponsor of that.
I was sponsored phill that carved out all of Disney's
carve out that that removed all of Disney's legislative carve
outs that exempted them from state statutes a while back. No,
I've done I've done a lot. Like I don't remember
if I was the prime co sponsor, the sponsor of
the bill that allowed people to conceal Carrie in churches
(44:44):
again that met on school bar.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
I love that. Yeah, great job.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
There's I mean, I've had so many cars. Listen. I'm
one of two legislators in the entire state of Florida.
The guy in a plus from the NRA. I'm comfortable
with my gun policy.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Yeah, we love that. Well, we've We've had you on
for almost an hour here. What do you want voters
to know in Filoridians? And is our future still going
to be bright?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Representative folks like Joe Rumman that throw accusations that don't
listen to the grifters and the creeps just don't listen
to them because they don't have their finger on the
pulse of anything and they're just out to get attention.
State government is still operating perfectly fine. I think it
was Justice Antoninscalia that said the combat and the interplay
and the tension between governmental bodies is healthy for a
(45:27):
constitutional republic. That tension is what makes us special. You
do want a strong legislative to balance out a strong executive,
and we should all be respecting the judiciary in the
same way. The separation of powers is what makes us
special acting like that conflict is somehow a harbinger of
the end times means you're not as good a student
of our constitutional republic as you might think you are. Like,
(45:50):
we want to have a good balance between legislative and
executive for sure. And yeah, we're going to have another governor.
We're going to have a legislator replace me. We're gonna
have legislator replaced a lot of us. It's next man up. This,
this whole place does not depend on any single personality
or individual. It should continue to operate. The question is
like in golf, you're not going to score holes in
ones in every single hole and make every single person
(46:12):
happy every single time, but you are striving for perfection,
so you want that struggle. You want to be striving
for perfection, but some folks might not be happy about it.
Health the state, we're growing, our party is growing. We're
doing fine.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
So the legislative session, I get, I characterize it a
little bit of a messy ending as far as you know,
accomplishing things are. Is there going to be any special
sessions that you see coming.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I don't think you'd have a special session. We extended
session by a couple of weeks to finish the budget.
We'll have a balanced budget like we always do. It's
constitutionally required. We're going to do it. We'll have a
good budget. It'll be lower than last year's budget. It'll
be lower than the budget proposed by Governor DeSantis. We're
actually getting our fiscal house in order, like we are
cutting spending and cutting taxes. We're going to deliver big
(47:00):
wins for Floridians in the next two weeks. If anything,
this legislative session should be remembered for, it should be
the fact that we will, for the first time be
the first state in the country to permanently cut sales taxes,
and we're going to permanently cut, eliminate entirely our business
rent tax. We were the only state in the country
the charge of business rent tax and will be eliminating
(47:20):
that this year. Like these are these are huge monumental
generational wins that have not been achieved in decades here
in the state. So you know, you might think that
Governor stantists run around doing these like press rallies or
on his taxpayer funded jet, is somehow a harbinger of negativity.
None of us are concerned about type potantrums. We're going
(47:41):
to deliver huge wins this legislative session. That's great the commentators.
Commentators can say what they.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Like about it and any breaking news. Are you going
to go work for President Trump? You're going to run
for something else? What else? A percent of Alexanderantti, Well.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
It is no plans.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Okay, Well, when you do, we want you to come
back to Veronica Live. This has been an incredible time
spent with you, getting to the bottom up all of it.
I want to thank you. It's been amazing and come
on back to Veronica Live.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
All right.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Govless
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