Budget conference: Legislature nixes Hope Florida line operators, kills hires of new Navigators

The Legislature closed out its health care budget without any funding for Hope Florida staff at the Department of Children and Families (DCF). A plan to add six Hope Navigator positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs also fell flat.

It was a quiet end for a noisy scandal that consumed much of the attention around this year’s Legislative Session, which continued as budget talks ran into overtime.

Both the House and Senate initially budgeted more than $2 million for the DCF to continue, but the House suggested zeroing that amount out entirely as it conducted an investigation whether $10 million in Medicaid settlement money given to Hope Florida was siphoned to an anti-marijuana political campaign.

The Senate last week agreed to kill the funding. And as top budget negotiators for the House and Senate met for final meetings, the dollars never resurfaced.

“I think we’re going to have to probably have a discussion with the Governor and his staff about how we go forward,” said Sen. Ed Hooper, a Clearwater Republican chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Do they have funds available still left to do that? And will this get revisited a few months? It may come back for next Session.”

Hope Florida for years served as a priority project for First Lady Casey DeSantis. The program aims to move Floridians off government assistance through partnerships with the faith-based and nonprofit sector.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has defended the program and called the investigation a smear.

But lawmakers were troubled by bookkeeping irregularities, and then by revelations two grants to nonprofits accepted the money and immediately made like-sized grants to a political committee run by Gov. DeSantis’ Chief of Staff James Uthmeier, whom the Governor later appointed to be Florida Attorney General.

Lawmakers ultimately could not pursue any specific charges, though Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican heading the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, has recommended prosecutors look into House findings.

But in the short term, the Legislature holds the purse strings, and determined the spending on Hope line operators at DCF wasn’t worth the cost.

Additionally, the House and Senate initially considered a proposal to develop a Patriot Navigator Program with Hope Florida to assist veterans in accessing benefits and assistance. The House had budgeted almost $516,000 toward that effort, but ultimately scrapped the plan. That would be enough to hire six additional navigators on top of five already working there.

“If the Governor’s Office is disappointed in the decision not to fund these,” Andrade said, “I am sure they will be reviewing my projects similarly.”