Editorial: DeSantis delays valid ethics complaints for years. Why?

We understand that Gov. Ron DeSantis is a very busy man. Iowa, New Hampshire, Tallahassee. It’s a lot. Somewhere along the line, though, surely he’s had time to read, and take final action on, 42 ethics cases against Florida public officials.

Florida ethics cases sit on DeSantis’ desk as he vows to ‘break the swamp’

Yet he hasn’t bothered to finalize a single complaint forwarded to him by the Florida Commission on Ethics since February 2021. Many — we suspect most — of the officials named in the complaints awaiting his signature aren’t even in public office any more, so maybe he thinks matters have taken care of themselves. No (more) harm, no (more) foul, right?

That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Violating Florida’s ethics laws — which are, on paper, among the strictest in the nation — is supposed to carry a penalty. But if penalties are never assessed, then those laws are reduced to nothing more than paper tigers.

That’s a problem for an appointed commission that already had a reputation for heel-dragging and charge-dropping, despite diligent efforts by the commission staff to investigate and evaluate ethics complaints.

Admitted violations

In some cases, the violations involved misbehavior that the public officials involved actually admitted to. Take the case of former Palm Coast Mayor Milissa Holland, who — from her official mayoral email account — pitched Orlando city officials in 2018 on the benefits of a customer-service client created by a Flagler-County-based company called Coastal Cloud. The company provided some of its services to Palm Coast city government on a “pro bono” basis, though the city paid a $108,442 software licensing fee to a vendor called Salesforce as part of the deal. Holland was (and is) a Coastal Cloud employee, which she did not disclose to Orlando officials.

There were other allegations against Holland levied by former city employees, including the city’s own ethics-compliance officer. But the Orlando complaint was the one that stuck. In August 2021, she entered into a joint stipulation with the Ethics Commission that included a $1,000 fine (which amounts to a slap on the wrist) and an agreement that she’d violated ethics rules. By then, she’d resigned her position as mayor.

More than a year later, that final order is still sitting in DeSantis’ in-box. As for Holland? According to her LinkedIn profile, she’s still at Coastal Cloud — and as of this week, also serves on an advisory board for Salesforce.

Cozy.

There are other orders hanging fire, including the case of former Apopka Mayor Joe Kilsheimer, who agreed that he improperly billed the city for costs he and his wife incurred to attend a national mayors’ conference in 2017, and Orange County ex-commissioner Betsy VanderLey, who stipulated that she should not have voted on a county contract with a firm her own company was doing business with.

We suspect these deposed leaders would like to move on. But they can’t. Until the orders become final, there’s no way for them to settle up, an Ethics Commission spokeswoman told the Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher.

Strange priorities

We can’t help but contrast this odd reluctance to sign off on agreed-upon cases with DeSantis’ blood-and-thunder rhetoric about cleaning house in the federal government, should he win the GOP nomination and then the presidency. Or his eagerness to use legally dubious authority to suspend elected officials, such as Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Monique Worrell and her Hillsborough County counterpart Andrew Warren, for the “crime” of disagreeing with him or the Legislature.

Maybe DeSantis thinks he’s put enough time into the commission’s work. After all, he controls five of the nine appointments to its ranks —- including its former chairman, Glen Gilzean. Funny thing about that: After four years at the commission, Gilzean accepted a $400,000-a-year job heading up the former Reedy Creek Improvement District after DeSantis (spurred by his anti-Disney vendetta) orchestrated a legislative coup and replaced its board members with his own nominees. Turns out it was against state law for Gilzean to serve on both the Disney board and the Ethics Commission. Oops.

Once that conflict was revealed, Gilzean resigned from the Ethics Commission. DeSantis rapidly found a replacement, tapping a founding member of a group known statewide as crusaders for book-banning in Florida schools. That’s a deeply questionable choice, given Moms For Liberty’s demonstrated appetite for distorting the truth and levying false accusations.

Yet DeSantis can’t make time to finalize 42 cases, in defense of Floridians’ right to leaders who respect standards of public trust and ethical behavior. As these cases molder away, their deterrent effect dissolves.

That should tell Floridians what kind of priority DeSantis places on ethical behavior, no matter what he does on the campaign trail.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com