Gov. Ron DeSantis already abuses so many of his powers that he should not be given any more. But naturally, that’s what Florida’s eager-to-please Legislature plans to do.
The Florida State Guard, reactivated last year despite concerns that it would become DeSantis’ private army, is to become larger, more powerful and costlier, at an increase to taxpayers of $98 million.
Its authorized strength would swell from 400 to 1,500. The adjutant general who runs the National Guard would no longer have authority over the State Guard, though it would still be housed in his department for bureaucratic reasons.
Part of it would become a police agency, with the same arrest powers as any local force that it might be assigned to assist. The budget for this volunteer, unsalaried army would swell from $10 million this budget year to $107.5 million in the next.
Where the money goes
That includes $17.3 million for training, travel, lodging and compensation for the volunteers. So much for the no-salary notion.
But that’s not the staggering part.
There’s also $49.4 million in the proposed House budget for one “large” airplane, four helicopters and all their accoutrements, and $3.9 million for vehicles and six boats.
That is mission creep morphed into a stampede — all courtesy of supposedly small government conservatives in Tallahassee.
The Florida National Guard, some 12,000 strong, isn’t having as many foreign deployments as during the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The fact that it was stretched thin last year was the pretext for reactivating the State Guard, which had last been active in 1947.
The National Guard has all the equipment and more that the Legislature wants to duplicate. It was able to provide soldiers to augment security in Florida’s understaffed prisons when DeSantis ordered that last year, and to go to the Texas border to control migrants at his command. There’s no legitimate public safety function for which it isn’t ready, willing and able, and no good reason to expand the State Guard.
The authorizing legislation, House Bill 1285, is ready for floor debate in the House. There is no companion bill in the Senate, but that means nothing because the money is in the House’s appropriation bill, which would make it an end-of-session bargaining chip.
The legislation exempts the State Guard’s rules from review under the Administrative Procedures Act, giving its director too free a hand. The jurisdiction would be overbroad: “To protect and defend the people of Florida from all threats to public safety and to augment all existing state and local agencies.”
The Adjutant General, normally a career military officer, would no longer have any authority over the State Guard whose director — presently a captain in the Navy Reserve — would need only five years’ military experience at any rank.
All members of the specialized unit would be authorized to carry weapons and to arrest people, but that provision is ambiguous in light of another that says that only members with law enforcement training and certification would have the same powers as agencies they are assisting.
The bill is so broad that the State Guard’s potential assignments are essentially unlimited. That is too much power to invest in a governor who has shown scant regard for civil liberties. Where the pretext last year was to have the State Guard assist in natural disasters, it now has the potential to break up any demonstration that displeases the governor.
No oversight but DeSantis’
Notably, it would operate not only independently of the National Guard but also of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which is nominally and jointly controlled by the three elected Cabinet members and governor.
The appropriations bill also earmarks $750,000 for a “Digital Forensic Center of Excellence,” which the Tampa Bay Times reports is meant for an Israeli company, Cellebrite, that helps police agencies break into iPhones. According to the Times, that is meant to target human trafficking, drug and child exploitation crimes. But those areas are already within the jurisdiction of the FDLE, a professional police agency, and it is alarming to contemplate them in the hands of a paramilitary unit. The FDLE and the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles already contract with Cellebrite, the newspaper said. It is absolutely wrong for budget language to steer a contract to a specific vendor.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said what other legislators should be saying about the State Guard expansion.
“It’s really gross, it does not make anyone more safe, and it’s just all about DeSantis silencing dissent and trying to out-Trump Trump,” said Eskamani, who voted against the legislation in the House State Affairs Committee. It was approved there 14-5, and by a 21-7 vote in the Appropriations Committee.
These would be dubious powers even in the hands of a governor who could be trusted not to abuse them. To contemplate them in DeSantis’ grip is fearsome.
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The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Page Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com .
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