Florida lawmakers voted during their recently concluded regular session to recreate the state’s embattled disaster response fund — with some new guardrails.
The Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund can’t be used to purchase any more boats, aircraft, or motor vehicles, but they can be leased for a “short-time,” SB 7040 says. The Republican-dominated Legislature approved these new guardrails after the state’s emergency managers spent more than $573 million on immigration enforcement in three years.
The expenditures included operation of the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Deportation Depot” migrant lockups, as well as private jet flights to the Everglades center, restaurant meals, and legal fees.
“Emergencies demand speed, but they also demand discipline,” House sponsor Rep. Griff Griffitts said Friday ahead of the final vote.
The bill recreates the fund, which lawmakers allowed to expire on Feb. 17. It requires the joint Legislative Budget Commission to review every time the governor extends a state of emergency — with one caveat: The chair and vice chair of the commission could waive approval if it’s a state of emergency extension for a “manmade or technological emergency,” like immigration.
The budget commission is a House-Senate panel with authority to tinker with the state budget between regular sessions.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency on immigration in 2023 and has extended it every 60 days since then. That’s allowed his administration to pull from the emergency fund for immigration enforcement.
The fund was created in 2022 to allow the governor to quickly respond to a disaster without waiting for legislative approval.
The bill creates a separate account within the emergency fund for federal reimbursement deposits, sets the expiration date at July 1, 2028, and requires a quarterly report on spending and the financial health of the fund.
An earlier version of the bill would have required the Florida Division of Emergency Management’s executive director to sign off on the report under penalty of perjury, but the measure passed Friday removed that.
It passed the House on an 80-20 vote and the Senate on a 29-7 vote. It will head to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk to be signed into law.
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