Taxpayer bill for DeSantis’ Israel rescue flight comes to $4 million

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis paid a Tampa-based nonprofit about $4 million in state taxpayer dollars reserved for emergencies to evacuate 270 people from Israel to Florida after the war broke out, state officials said.

The money – nearly $15,000 per passenger – went to Project Dynamo, a 2-year-old nonprofit rescue organization run by military veterans that was already on the ground collecting names of Americans who wanted to get out of Israel. It has also conducted rescue operations in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and other hot spots around the world.

“All in all, we’re sitting right around $4 million on that particular flight with all of the services, hotel stays, rental cars, anything we had to do to help the people get back to their homes,” Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie told the NewsNation cable channel Monday.

While a commercial round-trip ticket from Tampa to Tel Aviv normally costs a little more than $1,000, Project Dynamo CEO Bryan Stern told the Miami Herald that tickets are running upward of $25,000 in some cases under the present circumstances.

In his Oct. 10 executive order declaring a state of emergency, DeSantis authorized the use of a $1.5 billion emergency fund created for him by the Legislature for the governor to respond immediately to emergencies.

The Legislature initially gave DeSantis $500 million for the emergency response fund in 2022, and an additional $650 million during a special session in January. The Legislative Budget Commission gave DeSantis another $350 million for Hurricane Ian last October.

Besides Sunday’s flight from Tel Aviv to Tampa via Portugal, Project Dynamo conducted four other, smaller flights carrying 20 people, Stern said Monday.

Conflicting reports have been given about how many of those passengers on the flight to Tampa were from Florida – some news outlets said there were about 200 Floridians, while others said it was more like 70. At least one passenger was a foreign national from the Czech Republic and 91 were children.

The state Department of Emergency Management has not responded to repeated requests for clarification or details about the operations, including details about its arrangement with Project Dynamo. DeSantis has said more such missions were on the way.

Project Dynamo took the lead on organizing the flights, Stern said. He and his team were already on the ground identifying hundreds of people who wanted to leave Israel for about a week before DeSantis signed the executive order and declared he was going to bring Floridians home. He also claimed the federal government was not moving quickly enough.

A day later the State Department announced it was flying people out of Israel.

DeSantis inserted himself into the Israel-Hamas war as his campaign for president was flailing. He only raised $9 million in individual contributions during the third quarter, spent $11 million and still owes $1 million in expenses, according to federal election records.

Stern said during a news conference Monday that his organization was already raising money for the rescue operation when the state offered to help and would have continued its operation with or without DeSantis’s support.

It was the only one of 602 missions where Stern’s group received government assistance and the first time a government official greeted a flight as it landed. The flight touched down Sunday night around 8 p.m., the same night that CBS’ “60 Minutes” broadcast a piece on DeSantis’ migrant flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.

Stern told the Herald he heard DeSantis was planning to help, so he reached out to his friend, Sen. Jay Miller, R-Tampa, a former Green Beret, and then met with Guthrie and other state officials.

“I think that Gov. DeSantis wanted to do something. But before he issued the executive order, he needed to know that he had partners,” Stern said.