Florida Gov. DeSantis signs legislation that makes it harder to file ethics complaints

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Friday signed into law a measure prohibiting ethics investigations from being launched until they are prompted by a complaint from someone with personal knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing.

The measure (SB 7014) was widely opposed by government watchdog organizations who warned it will undermine state ethics laws at both the state and local levels.

“Let’s be clear: This has never been about minimizing frivolous complaints; this is about making complaints almost impossible," said Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida, after DeSantis's action.

“Governor DeSantis says he believes that Floridians deserve protection from corruption, but his actions today speak otherwise," she added.

Still, the legislation was approved by wide margins in the Republican-controlled state House and Senate. Supporters said the change was needed to blunt the filing of complaints against elected officials to discredit them, particularly in election years.

Those who backed the measure said complaints have been “weaponized” against candidates.

But opponents argued it raised the bar on ethics complaints to impractical heights. They said it was unlikely a witness to wrongdoing would be willing to publicly identify themselves by name and file a complaint under oath, as the new law requires.

Anything short of personal knowledge would be considered hearsay. As a result, state and local ethics commissioners would be barred from investigating alleged violations.

The new standard also eliminates complaints based on investigative reports that appear in the media and bars local ethics panels from self-initiating probes, forcing them to act only when a valid complaint arrives.

A host of organizations had urged a DeSantis veto. Among them were the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause Florida, the state’s NAACP, the Florida Ethics Institute and Florida Rising.

“This bill allows unethical conduct to continue unchecked, thereby diminishing public trust in the Sunshine State,” the groups said in a letter earlier this year to DeSantis.

Sen. Danny Burgess, a Zephyrhills Republican and chair of the Senate’s Ethics and Elections Committee, proposed the changes during the spring legislative session in an amendment unveiled on the Senate floor.

With fall election campaigns looming fear of complaints being filed to tarnish candidates appeared to be a driver of the legislation.

“I put my former prosecutor hat on and we don’t charge people with crimes unless we have something other than inadmissible hearsay,” said House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, a former assistant state attorney.

The measure, though, goes further than barring filing charges. If only hearsay allegations are involved, even the possibility of ethics officials investigating possibly wrongdoing would be barred.

“Personal knowledge makes it sound like you have to have been there when the ethics violation occurred, seeing it with your own two eyes,” said Jacksonville City Council member Matt Carlucci, who helped form his city’s ethics panel more than 30 years ago and who is a former chair of the state ethics commission.

“Generally, people who violate ethics don’t exactly invite friends or members of the public to attend their bad behavior,” he added.

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on X at @JKennedyReport.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: DeSantis signs bill that makes it harder to file ethics complaints