TALLAHASSEE — Lawmakers and DeSantis administration officials who were wined and dined at a private golf resort last year were told they don’t have to disclose lavish hotel rooms and custom golf bags as gifts to the state Ethics Commission.
Under state law, gifts over $100 from state-created charities, such as the Hope Florida Foundation that sponsored last year’s event, must be reported to the commission.
But after the Times/Herald wrote about the fundraiser last month, the president of the Hope Florida Foundation instructed attendees not to bother: These weren’t gifts.
The attendees’ “assistance” was worth more than any gifts that they received, Foundation President Joshua Hay wrote. Citing past state ethics opinions, Hay said that none of them needed to report the hotel rooms and other items to the commission.
“The Foundation believes that the expenses paid to cover the assistance you provided to the fundraising event were not gifts, and therefore are not required to be reported by you,” Hay wrote.
Five GOP lawmakers chose to disclose $1,266.73 in gifts anyway, revealing the charity paid for:
$614.88 for hotel rooms
$336.10 for a custom golf bag
$240.75 for rounds of golf
$75 for a shirt
One DeSantis official, Deputy Chief of Staff Cody Farrill, also filed a disclosure, showing he received a two-night stay at a private resort worth $567.84.
But that disclosure was made only “in the interest of avoiding politically motivated complaints,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ general counsel, Ryan Newman, wrote to the Ethics Commission.
“In light of an ongoing political campaign to discredit Hope Florida, this successful fundraiser may be used to target EOG (Executive Office of the Governor) staff and other state employees who helped with the event,” Newman wrote.
A spokesperson for the commission said it couldn’t give an answer about whether Newman’s interpretation was correct.
But their interpretation was questioned by state ethics experts.
The commission has consistently held that merely attending an event doesn’t rule out the need to report gifts received, said Caroline Klancke, a former general counsel and deputy executive director of the commission who now runs the nonprofit Florida Ethics Institute.
Instead, the person has to provide substantial work for the event, which is mentioned in one of the opinions Hay cited, Klancke noted.
Klancke said it’s possible that some officials in the governor’s office provided substantial work for the event, such as checking in guests or setting up tables, which would negate the value of the gifts they received.
But she said caution was warranted for people who simply showed up.
“The items received by them are likely gifts under both the letter and spirit of the law,” Klancke said in an email. “To interpret merely attending a function in one’s public capacity as a blanket exception to the definition of gift would negate the necessity to ever disclose any gift ever again.”
The two-day event at the Watersound Club near Destin raised $700,000 for the Hope Florida Foundation, according to the organization.
The 501(c)(3) was created in 2023 to support Hope Florida, a state program and brainchild of first lady Casey DeSantis, which is supposed to help move needy Floridians off of government services. The foundation is intended to support churches and nonprofits that provide those services.
But reports from the Times/Herald and Republican lawmakers revealed that it wasn’t complying with state laws requiring it to be audited, to maintain a budget and to adopt bylaws. Its board meetings were being held in secret, in violation of state law, and it hadn’t filed its tax returns with the IRS.
“There are lapses in reporting procedures,” Hay told a House committee in April.
Hay, a certified public accountant until this year, is the CEO of a company that does tens of millions of dollars in business with the DeSantis administration.
The DeSantis administration last year also moved $10 million from a state settlement with a Medicaid contractor to the Hope Florida Foundation, which then quickly gave the money to two nonprofits. Within days, the nonprofits gave nearly all that money to a political committee controlled by DeSantis’ then-chief of staff.
Former federal prosecutors and a key Republican lawmaker said they believed the diversion of the $10 million could be criminal. Prosecutors in Leon County have an open criminal investigation related to it.
The foundation spent $95,547 on the Governor’s Cup event. On the first day, lobbyists and others had the chance to golf with DeSantis. On the second day, lawmakers participated in another golf outing with DeSantis and other administration officials.
Records show the charges and receipts were managed not by the foundation but by a former employee on DeSantis’ campaign for governor.
The event raised questions among nonprofit experts interviewed by the Times/Herald last month. Unlike a typical fundraiser, in which attendees are asked to at least pay for a ticket benefiting the charity, 14 of the 60 attendees donated — less than one fourth of those who were there.
Many attendees, including lawmakers and political operatives, were unaware that the event was sponsored by the Hope Florida Foundation until being contacted by a reporter. Two political advisers to DeSantis told the Times/Herald last month they would reimburse the charity for their stay.
Determining whether high-level officials received prohibited gifts would require an Ethics Commission investigation, Klancke noted. But bringing about a complaint that would spark an investigation was made much more difficult.
Last year, the Legislature changed state law forbidding the state commission from investigating corruption or ethical complaints made against politicians if the person lodging the complaint did not have immediate firsthand knowledge of the activity at issue.
In his letter to the commission, Newman reiterated that it shouldn’t investigate complaints based on news reports.
“In the past, Commission staff have improperly deemed complaints against EOG (Executive Office of the Governor) personnel to be legally sufficient to commence an investigation where the complaints were based solely on news reports and the facts alleged did not constitute a violation of the Code of Ethics,” Newman wrote.
Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau reporter Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.
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