This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, S.t Petersburg, Sarasota.

Coming up, were Medicaid dollars diverted to the Hope, Florida charity and sent to groups opposing legalized recreational marijuana?

Lawmakers want to know, and students at Florida State University push back against loosening gun laws in the aftermath of a deadly shooting.

And it looks like clear skies for the next 20 years for Albert Whitted Airport in St. Pete.

Those stories and more are next on Florida This Week.

Welcome back everybody, I'm Lissette Campos joining the panel this week, we have Tom Lee, the former Florida Senate president and a Republican.

Colleen Wright is a St. Petersburg reporter for the Tampa Bay Times Jonathon Chavez is the treasurer of the Hillsborough County Young Democrats And Mike Deeson is an author and an independent journalist.

Thank you all for coming in today.

I appreciate you having you.

We begin with important developments in the scrutiny over Governor Ron DeSantis and a $10 million donation that was made to the Hope Florida Foundation.

Take a look.

The $10 million that were supposed to be returned to taxpayers were instead sent to Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit created to support First Lady Casey DeSantis signature program.

Part of that money was sent to governor DeSantis political fight against Constitutional Amendment Number Three that, if approved, would have legalized recreational marijuana According to the Tampa Bay Times, the $10 million that were diverted consisted of Medicaid dollars.

The state drew up a settlement agreement that said Florida's largest Medicaid contractor, Centene, overbilled the state by $67 million.

But instead of returning that entire amount to state and federal coffers, $10 million were sent to Hope Florida Foundation.

The money was later sent to two nonprofits that are not required to report how they spend their funds.

Those dark money groups later gave $8.5 million to a political committee overseen by DeSantis chief of staff James Othmer, to help defeat the amendment.

Othmer, who was named attorney general this year, said that he, quote, wasn't part of securing the deal that was struck, end quote, and House lawmakers ended their probe of Hope, Florida Foundation, on Thursday without hearing from the group's lawyers or the leaders But Representative Alex Andrade said on Thursday, and we quote, while I firmly am convinced that James Uthmeier and Jeff Aaron engaged in a conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud, and that several parties played a role in the misuse of $10 million in Medicaid funds.

We as legislators will not be the ones making the ultimate charging decisions.

End quote.

Tom, I'd like to start with you.

That is quite a loaded statement.

Your reaction?

What what should what could happen next?

Well, he's sending a message to federal prosecutors.

You're not going to get a real transparent review of this at the state level.

So unless the federal government gets involved, a U.S. attorney, I think that's where this may be headed.

Look, this is this was illegal.

This is not a new it's not a new problem.

In 2005, we passed a law that made it illegal to take lawsuit settlement dollars outside the General Appropriations Act or through the Legislative Budget Commission, or on consultation with presiding officers, because we had at the time, a statewide elected official who was running for governor, and there was concerns that people were getting sued and that settlement dollars were being diverted for political purposes.

This is blatantly unlawful, and whoever was involved in this needs to be held accountable.

I don't think it's the end of the world.

I just wish our government would be more candid with the public.

We can handle the truth and and move on.

But but this is not this is not this is inappropriate.

And that's before you get to where the money went and how the government put its thumb on the scales under this statewide referendum.

There are so many different layers to this story.

Um, the law firm that was working on this, the Mississippi law firm, um, going back to 2018, has stated that when they read the reports in the media in April, on April the 8th, it was the first time that they had ever seen the word donation, that it was not included in any of the documents that they submitted to the state during their negotiations with Centene.

Does that surprise you?

That's very damning.

Well, yeah, it surprises me, but but look, the end justifies the means sometimes these days in our government.

And I think that's dangerous.

But this money belongs to the taxpayers.

Plain and simple.

And it should have gone back into the state coffers to be appropriated by the legislature.

And it wasn't.

Jonathon we've talked about all the different ways that the money was categorized in the documents in the final settlement.

And I just wanted your reaction.

You were talking about it with me in the green room.

How do you feel about all of this?

I think this is the exact sort of kind of dark, swampy politics that people are really concerned about when it comes to government these days.

You know, this is a sentiment that now, president again, Donald Trump has tapped into with, you know, his drain the swamp rhetoric.

Even in the opening bit, we talked about how some of the groups that this money was channeled to already have extremely weak reporting requirements for what they're supposed to do with it, which is already an issue.

But now you see this money coming in to a charity run by Casey DeSantis.

Who is this charity?

Hope is actually not even meeting that minimum requirement.

They're not doing their required compliance.

They haven't released a mission statement or an explanation of what they do with their funds.

So they're not even meeting this already too low requirement.

And frankly, if it was a charity run by anyone other than the governor's wife, I don't think that money would have been diverted in the first place.

I am somewhat sad to see that the state legislature is giving up its investigation.

Um, I do also hope that we would see some one else pick that up.

I think it's a little unfortunate that we live in a time where I don't necessarily know if it would be great for the federal government to pick it up, because we have already seen, as with the case with, uh, Mayor Adams in New York, that with governor DeSantis being a key ally of the federal government right now, I don't necessarily know that people can trust that the government will handle that investigation.

The federal government will handle that investigation appropriately.

Given the the intense statement by Andrade.

It certainly seems like they are pitching this and looking to federal investigators to take it to the next level.

Mike, you've been an investigative reporter for so many years.

I mean, where do you even begin to look at this?

A couple of things.

Talk about great work by the Tampa Bay Times, but the government tried to cover it up in all candor.

I've been a longtime member of the First Amendment Foundation, where we try to keep public records open, and the public records were hidden for such a long time, they slow walked it so long.

Secondly, I think four years ago, if this had happened, the legislature wouldn't hop on because DeSantis had the legislature just going and almost being bootlickers to whatever he said.

He is now a lame duck governor and he's not well liked.

DeSantis, for some reason, has not made the connections that politicians do.

And so now they're they're looking at at this the way that they should.

But I don't think this would have happened four years ago.

I think that DeSantis is in a lot of trouble politically.

Unless he gets appointed as secretary of defense following his term, he will fade into obscurity.

He had hoped that his wife's candidacy would keep him in the public eye.

I don't think she has a chance of of getting the nomination, and I don't think he has any political career past this unless, again, he gets tarnished him.

Yeah, it is a it's a rough spot.

And as Tom said, the legislature in 2005 made this absolutely illegal.

There is no question about it.

And there should be prosecution and I hope the feds step in.

The other big story that we're following, of course, are the developments in Tallahassee.

Students at Florida State University in the state capitol have come out against proposals in the legislature to roll back gun safety laws.

This in the aftermath of that campus shooting that left two people dead.

Last week's mass shooting also left six others injured and occurred just a mile away from the state capitol.

The 20 year old suspect, Phoenix Eichner, is an FSU student and the stepson of a Leon County sheriff's deputy.

He was shot by officers and taken to the hospital.

Earlier this month, the Florida House voted on a bill to lower the age limit to buy a rifle from 21 to 18 years old.

The age had been raised by lawmakers in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.

In parkland that killed 17 people.

Florida State students and Democratic lawmakers held a news conference this week opposing the rollbacks.

Additional efforts to loosen Florida's gun laws have stalled as well, including measures to repeal red flag laws and lifting the prohibition of rapid fire gun accessories, also known as bump stocks.

And a Senate committee voted down a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons on college campuses.

Jonathan, I'd like to start with you.

You were telling me that your sister is a student at FSU.

Also, you have your partner was attending parkland when that shooting occurred.

Your reaction when you see the impact of the shooting on this legislative session?

That's now the bills on gun laws have been stalled.

I'm glad to see that these laws have stalled because they would have been horrible mistakes.

I think it is totally embarrassing that that's probably the only thing that this will achieve.

And, you know, the Florida legislature might make that out as a win that, oh, we didn't roll back the protections that we were forced to put in place after Parkland.

You know, gun death and gun related crimes are the leading cause of death amongst teens and young people.

This isn't only something that happens in schools.

It happens all over the country.

And the Florida legislature could absolutely do more.

They could be proactive to do something about this.

You know, the weapon that was used in this shooting was an improperly secured weapon.

You know, the the the young man was able to get it because his mother was his stepmother.

Was the sheriff.

Right.

And even basic like common sense things such as making the very weak, safe security laws or state safe storage laws that we have now apply to more circumstances are very easy changes the Florida Legislature can make.

But rather than try to protect students or young people as a whole group who again, number one cause of death is gun violence.

They are trying to roll back those protections.

It's as if we're saying, let's have all the kids smoke again, and we're going to call it a win, that we're going to stop that.

It's embarrassing.

The response.

Tom, during your time in the Senate, you know, there are so many voices that you hear from when you're especially on an issue.

As passionate as people are about gun control and gun laws.

What are some of the things that the legislators really have to consider when they're going through the process of looking at a bill?

Well, this is a complex issue.

I had the.

Challenge of being the chair of a committee security committee when shortly after parkland took place and the the yoga incident in Tallahassee and had dinner with the father of the girl that died there and met with the parkland families.

These things are tragic.

The solutions are pretty complex.

And we convened a series of hearings at the request of Senate President Bill Galvano that included federal, state, and local law enforcement.

Criminologists from academia and what have you.

And the solutions are really complex and there really is no consensus.

We're a very divided country on the Second Amendment issue.

What we what we did learn, though, is that we have an abject disregard for the sanctity of life in this country.

There has been, um, there's been um.

You know, uh, mental health issues for as far back as we as we can remember.

Yes.

And, and people have had challenges in their personal life, but how they act those out today is just extraordinary relative to what it has been throughout history.

So we really have to look deeply into these mental health issues.

There are other issues that are embedded in the problem of solving the gun crime depression.

Depression is a real thing.

But you know what people do when they get depressed these days is pretty horrific and and unconscionable.

And until we get back to being a society that has more respect for the sanctity of life.

I think these, these, these situations are going to continue.

Mike, you know, just this week we had we saw the sheriffs deputies stopping a man in Brandon who was dressed in full camouflage, walking down a main thoroughfare in Brandon with a rifle, refused to stop in his tracks.

Police had to open fire on the man.

It seems like we hear more and more about these cases.

Um, is that do you think that that's, um, just we're more aware of the, of the stories because they get more coverage, or is that something that you find is changing in your career as an investigative reporter?

Well, it seems to me that one of the biggest problems, first off, the FSU shooting was an outlier because he used a pistol.

Most of the mass killings are with automatic weapons, and it seems to me I'm not a gun owner, but the Second amendment is here to stay.

Guns are not going to go away.

It's embedded in our society.

I don't understand why there isn't a ban on automatic weapons.

And people say hunting.

Well, you know, people don't go deer hunting with an AK 47.

To me, it would save so many lives if we ban the sale of automatic weapons and the bump stocks, as they were talking about in the piece leading into this.

That seems to be the problem.

There has been just since I've been covering it, more and more automatic weapons slayings in our country.

And and besides hopes and prayers, as every politician says after there's a shooting.

If we could just ban that, it would save countless lives.

And that's one of the things that the students from Tallahassee this last week, and also students from parkland have said, we don't want to hear any more that you're sending us your hopes and prayers.

We want to see more action.

Um, shifting gears now to something that's a lot more positive.

Saint Petersburg, in the city of Saint Pete.

They may now be keeping Albert Whitted Airport unchanged for the next 20 years.

And that's a reversal of previous plans.

Take a look.

A state grant would require the airport to remain functional.

The Saint Pete City Council unanimously approved the grant at a public hearing this week, and a final vote is set for May, the first in a 2022 master plan.

Mayor Ken Welch had suggested the 119 acres of downtown waterfront should be looked at for broader community use.

Also in the past, the airport was eyed as a potential site for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium.

The airport was damaged by Hurricanes Helene and Milton last year and became vital in disaster recovery.

President Joe Biden landed there in Marine One to survey the damage.

Mayor Welch said of the airport, quote, the data and facts led me to not pursue a non-aviation use.

End quote.

And Colleen, you were one of the first to report on this.

You follow all of the activities in the city of Saint Pete very closely.

That's your news beat.

Tell us a little bit more about the grant and this decision.

Absolutely.

So it kind of goes back to Mayor Ken Welch's first 30 days in office.

You know, if going back to 2021, it was kind of what's going to happen to the Tampa Bay Rays.

And yet 30 days into office, Mayor Ken Welch was like, you know, we should take a look at the at Albert Whitted at Albert Whitted Airport.

Of course, a waterfront airport, even though that had never come up on the campaign trail.

But the city was kind of master planning that area anyway.

So Mayor Welch sought to maybe kind of freeze some grants and get out of like, the the city's current obligations to the state and federal government because the state and the federal government actually heavily subsidized the airport and wanted to do like an economic study of what was like the opportunity cost that was lost with having an airport there that, you know, critics say kind of only serves very wealthy individuals who can fly planes versus having, you know, Waterfront Park or, or something else there on that land.

But around July of last year, Mayor Ken Welch backed off of that and actually said, you know, we could do maybe a lot with what's there right now.

They're looking at maybe using sort of like helicopters to transport people and cargo there, and they put together a task force on that.

But probably the biggest change really occurred right after that with Hurricane Helene and Milton, because in a really worst case, direct hit hurricane, if all the bridges are damaged, Albert Whitted might be the only way to get relief into Saint Petersburg.

Should Saint Petersburg become an island?

And you saw, you know, President Joe Biden flew into there on Marine One during those hurricanes.

And now the city is accepting another state grant that would obligate the city to keep Albert Whitted as an airport for the next 20 years, because the government says, you know, we're going to give you some money.

You know, it's got to be used for that, to.

Make that commitment for at least 20 years.

It's interesting, too, to hear you talk about the Tampa Bay Rays and the stadium.

When we look at the landscape of all these different properties that are making headlines, it seems that there's so many of them have been discussed as a as a probable new home, possible new home.

Um, this week we saw that Derby Lane, the racetrack that's been owned by the same family for such a long time, has just been sold to an organization.

And so that was also, um, a site that was discussed as a probable home for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Absolutely.

Yes, they've looked everywhere, everywhere and in between for a possible Rays stadium.

Uh, Albert Whitted was floated as a potential site for the Rays.

Um, but it was actually taken offline because of climate change and rising seas.

Um, because of climate change.

Uh, so waterfront sites seem to be off.

Uh, kind of off the table for now.

And the search is back up.

Non-existent.

Not sure.

I think we're still kind of like in the aftermath of that Ray's Stadium deal falling apart.

But yeah, every single piece of land that comes up, it seems like someone's maybe eyeing it for a home for the Rays.

As the person who that is your beat the city of Saint Petersburg and you cover the race so extensively, how difficult is it to get the people, the parties to speak and to give information?

Is there anything new that's bubbling up with that?

Anything new right now?

Um.

With the Rays?

Uh, not so far, I think.

You know, we're about a month, almost a month out from when the deal to build a $1.3 billion stadium officially fell through.

The Rays said that they would not move forward.

Uh, Mayor Ken Welch has said that he will not negotiate with owner Stu Sternberg or anyone in this ownership group.

Should the Rays, uh, sell or, you know, should Stu sell the team, then he would be open to those conversations.

Um, but right now, I think Mayor Ken Walsh kind of wants to move forward with developing the gas plant.

That's the land around Tropicana Field into his vision of affordable housing, jobs for minority owned businesses, or opportunities for minority owned businesses, jobs for local workers.

Um, and he's having conversations with city council members about that, but we haven't seen any real proposals or how they'll even go through, because the city is still obligated to provide a stadium that's right to the Rays.

And they're working on rebuilding the trop.

So they're waiting on that roof to come in.

And by August, and we'll see if it makes it from Germany to China to Saint Petersburg.

All eyes are on Saint Pete for that.

Um, before we go, I'd love to.

This is the part where we open it up to all four of you, and we say, you know, what are some of the other big stories?

There's so much going on.

What are some of the other big stories that that you all are following?

Um, Tom, I'd like to start with you.

Well, we're in the eighth week of the legislative session here, and the House and the Senate are unusually far apart in their budget negotiations.

The good news is we have two very capable appropriations chairs here that are locally Senator Hooper and and Lawrence McClure from the House and two presiding officers that are a really good match for one another.

US Senate President Ben Allbritton is a very stable, calm, collected kind of guy.

And Speaker Perez is a flamboyant Cuban American, and I think they're going to work well and end up trading some policy in the House for some appropriations issues in the Senate and bring this in for a landing.

Jonathan.

Well, I think a big story that everyone should be following is that we have a major, uh, due process crisis emerging both in the state and in this country.

You know, a few days ago, a Florida and by extension, US citizen was arrested and charged briefly by Ice under a suspended law, despite proving that he was a US citizen and was threatened with deportation.

Um, you know, this is such a massive issue because if there is even one person in the country that does not have full protection by due process, then really none of us do.

You know, the Trump administration will say things like, oh, maybe terrorists shouldn't have due process, maybe gang members shouldn't have due process.

But then what are citizens supposed to do if the Trump administration does not like a particular person?

Maybe there's someone who has written, you know, pro-Palestinian, uh, assignments and they say you are a terrorist.

You're getting deported tomorrow and you will not see a judge to prove otherwise.

It is a major developing problem.

Um, again, happened right here in Florida.

I think we all need to be keeping an eye on it.

Sheriff's deputies, uh, college campus, police departments have all come out talking about the training that they are working on with with ice.

And so, um, a lot of voices in favor and against.

It is a very difficult issue.

It always has been, the issue of immigration.

Um, I'd like to ask you, Mike, we're going to shift complete gears now.

What do you think is the other big story?

Well, it's sort of a combined story.

David Jolly is going to run for governor as a Democrat.

He changed his affiliation from NPR.

No party affiliation to Democrat.

He's a former Republican congressman who's on MSNBC all the time.

I talked to David about a month ago, and he said, it's probably going to happen.

He hasn't declared, but he's formed a committee to raise funds for that.

So he is definitely in the game.

And Bob Buckhorn is going to run for mayor of Tampa again.

I talked to Bob and try to get him to commit to it.

He's not ready to commit to me, but people in his closer inner circle have told me there is no question Bob is running.

He loved the job.

We came to Tampa at the same time in 1982.

I've known Bob forever.

He was just made to be on this earth, to be mayor of Tampa.

And there was a precedence with Dick Greco being mayor twice.

Bob wants to follow in those footsteps.

So if it if or when it happens, you heard it here first on Florida this week.

Colleen what's the big story that you have?

Okay.

So keeping in line with Tampa Bay Rays news, similar development of the city administration.

So Mayor Ken Walsh's administration gave a presentation on kind of like the future of Saint Petersburg's downtown waterfront.

And it they kind of floated plans to demolish Al Lang Stadium, which is the home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

To the Rowdies.

Yeah.

They would not play there.

Um, and the Rowdies, of course, are owned by the Tampa Bay Rays and they're owned by Stu Sternberg.

Now, these are just early concepts.

Not a full plan has not come up for a vote.

There was a committee discussion among city council members.

It may seem to be dead on arrival.

Some council members seem to be troubled by the fact that maybe the Rays and the Rowdies were not possibly included in these discussions, or maybe keyed in.

Um, and instead the city would be looking at demolishing Al Lang and putting an outdoor amphitheater, and this process is far off.

It would take place between 2028 and 2038.

But let's see if it even gets that far.

One to watch Certainly.

Shocking.

Thank you.

Thank you for this great discussion, everybody, and thanks for being here again.

Thank you to our panel, Tom Lee, Colleen Wright, Jonathon Chavez and Mike Deeson.

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