Over the last few years, Florida has gone from being the Sunshine State to the Political Patronage State.
Campaign donors and political allies keep cashing in — on no-bid construction contracts down at “Alligator Alcatraz,” shady insider deals at the governor’s Disney district for government services and in hastily arranged real estate deals for campaign donors who want government to pay them more for land than anyone in the free market ever would.
In many of these deals, other Florida-owned businesses didn’t even get a chance to bid on the public contracts. So they get shut out, and taxpayers get hosed while donors to and allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida Republicans gorge like pigs at a trough.
The concept of political spoils isn’t new. But this is a new level of blatant, with some spending even running afoul of the state’s own auditing laws. And nowhere do we see the spoils-on-steroids scheme on more flagrant display than in Florida’s higher education system.
Political hacks and has-beens have cashed in on university jobs for which they’re underqualified and overpaid and then gone on taxpayer-funded spending sprees that would make the Kardashians blush. But two new reports revealed more egregious behavior, including Florida Atlantic University paying a GOP-connected law firm a mind-boggling rate of up to $925 an hour and New College spending so out of control that it’s now more than $494,000 per degree.
The contract at Florida Atlantic University was exposed by WPTV, a Palm Beach station that was interested in how much its local school, led by former GOP legislator Adam Hasner, was spending on its crackdown on faculty members who posted negative things about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In its piece, WPTV revealed that FAU had agreed to pay former Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson $925 an hour while other shareholders at his firm would be offering their services at the bargain-bin rate of $495 an hour.
Lawson is a friend to the DeSantis administration who penned an op-ed defending Attorney General James Uthmeier’s role in the Hope Florida scandal. Shareholder Jason Gonzalez is a former general counsel for Republican Party of Florida.
A spokesman for FAU said Tuesday that Lawson is supremely qualified and that state regulations allowed them to award this contract to political insiders or anyone else without publicly soliciting bids. That second part is a problem, not an excuse. Seeking the best services for the best prices used to be considered a conservative principle.
Then there’s the ongoing spending orgy at New College. The Orlando Sentinel and other media have already reported on excesses there, starting with the $1 million-a-year compensation package former House Speaker Richard Corcoran gets to run a college with fewer students than many middle schools have — about 900.
The school also got caught cutting sweetheart deals to political insiders, including a $500-an-hour legal contract for a former Senate president, a $15,000-a-month P.R. contract for a former DeSantis spokeswoman and a $175,000-a-year foundation job given to the wife of the former chairman of the state GOP.
But now, two more reports have spotlighted the school’s excessive and ineffective spending. One came from the state itself in a DOGE report that found New College spent $494,715 for every degree it actually awarded (more than 10 times what UCF spends) and more than $80,000 per student in general (four times the system average).
Another damning report came from Inside Higher Ed: “Spending Soars, Rankings Fall at New College of Florida.” That piece noted that New College dropped 60 spots in the latest U.S. News & World Report college rankings, even as the school’s spending skyrocketed.
Knowing how bad all this looks, Corcoran tried to defend his pricey tenure in an op-ed published Tuesday on the Florida Politics website where Corcoran claimed he saved the school from a “death spiral,” that he was forced to shell out money for deferred maintenance and stressed that, despite what anyone else says, “We are succeeding.”
Listen, I know that there are some people who don’t care about massive wastes of taxpayer dollars as long as it’s done in the name of exorcising “wokeness” and owning the libs. But most people see this political spoils system for precisely what it is — and know that exorbitant spending and no-bid deals are eye-rollingly ridiculous for anyone who claims to believe in fiscal conservatism.
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.
