West Palm Beach, Florida (AP) -Florida Governor Ron Desantis defended the participation of a state agency in a charity organization founded by his wife on Thursday as “cherry about the top”, the money from a settlement between the agency and the largest Medicaid contractor in the state.
Desantis spoke after the Republicans questioned the donation to the Hope Florida initiative founded by his wife Casey Desantis this week.
The donation was part of an agreement of 67 million US dollars last autumn between the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and the Centene Corporation, in which overpayments in connection with pharmacies were involved. The state law stipulates that money is placed in the context of the legal supervision from the comparison to a trust fund or a general fund.
“If you carry out settlements, you can try to get as much money as possible, but this was in addition to what you got. This is like a cherry in which you agreed to make an additional contribution, and so we were well served by what Acha did,” said Desantis in a press conference.
Desantis described the settlement as “100% reasonable” and said that the Republican legislators (*10*) in order to think negatively about the settlement, which he said “to have nothing to do with Hope Florida”.
The Hope Florida Initiative was brought onto the market by Casey Desantis in 2021 as a conservative approach for well-being, which focused on helping people to be less dependent on services financed by the taxpayer. According to state records, the non -profit Hope Florida Foundation was founded in 2023.
Republican legislators have expressed concerns that taxpayers may have been used to support the most critical initiative of the First Lady, which could strengthen their curriculum vitae in a potential campaign for the governor in 2026. The current governor is in his second term and is called.
The spokesman for the house, Daniel Perez, defended the questions of the legislators on Wednesday and said they mostly want to know how the money was accepted, where it was going, how it was used and why.
“So far it looks like it could be illegal,” said Perez.
“These $ 10 million were state money,” said Republican MP Alex Andrade on Wednesday during a tense hearing with a state agency manager who supervised Hope Florida. “I still have no idea why this was justified. I have very strong beliefs that this was not legal.”
For weeks, Desantis has asked the legislators to say goodbye to laws in order to establish a Hope Florida office as part of the governor’s supervision, to expand the range of the program and to oblige the state authorities.
An analysis by House’s legislative personnel, which was published last week, immersed in the charity organization of the program and found that the Hope Florida Foundation comes out of compliance with several state laws.
According to the findings, the foundation did not submit an annual examination to the Auditor General of the State and did not publish any legally required information, including a brief description of its mission, a three -year financial plan, the ethics code and its tax forms. According to the analysis, Hope Florida has not provided any necessary documents.
According to state records, Casey Desantis is not listed as an officer of the non -profit organization. Website records of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, in which non -profit organizations report financial information and do not contain any documents from the Hope Florida Foundation.
___ Kate Payne contributed to this report by Tallahasee, Florida. Payne is a member of the Corps for the “Associated Press/Report” initiative for America Statehouse News. The report for America is a non -profit National Service program that reports journalists in local news editorial offices on hidden topics.
