Florida buying a new state airplane

Ethics watchdogs fret current rules could lead to rerun of past abuses

TALLAHASSEE – Florida is set to buy an airplane for Gov. Ron DeSantis, but questions remain about the rules regarding its use in the wake of past abuses of state aircraft by state officials.

The prior governor, Rick Scott, sold the state’s two planes designated for him and Cabinet members when he took office in 2011.

Scott highlighted the scandal of abuses by previous Cabinet members in his bid for governor in 2010 and made a campaign pledge to sell the planes. A multimillionaire, he flew around the state on his own private planes once he took office.

When DeSantis took over in January, the only state plane available was a

$10,000 aircraft the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received from the federal government, and it experienced mechanical trouble in one of his first flights. That led lawmakers to put $3.83 million in this year’s budget for a new plane, including $1.29 million for initial loan payments.

The FDLE plans to buy a Cessna Citation Latitude, with seating for nine, for a total of $15.5 million in the coming weeks.

But the new plane isn’t coming with a new set of rules for its use, leading one ethics watchdog to question whether it could lead to a reemergence of the abuses by politicians that spurred Scott to ditch the old fleet of planes in the first place.

“To avoid even the appearance of impropriety they should establish rules that govern the use of what is now public property,” said Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida, a Tallahasseebased ethics watchdog group.

When asked what rules or guidelines there will be for the plane’s use, DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Ferre would only point to a state law allowing FDLE to transport and protect the governor. That law doesn’t address how and when the aircraft can be used.

An FDLE spokeswoman also didn’t answer a question about rules for the plane’s use.

But Ferre said using the public plane for personal use won’t be an issue for DeSantis.

“The governor’s use of the FDLE airplane is to carry out the business of the state,” Ferre stated in an email when asked if DeSantis would use the plane to fly to political events such as rallies with President

Trump.

Ferre said DeSantis did not use the state plane to get to Trump’s reelection kickoff in Orlando in June, but she didn’t immediately answer a follow up question asking how the governor got to the rally.

There is widespread consensus across party lines that the governor of Florida needs a plane to get around a large state with a capital located several hours away from many population centers by car.

Buying one also carries the benefit of cutting down on the practice of relying on planes supplied by lobbyists or corporate donors, Wilcox said.

But it can be tempting for elected officials to mix personal travel with state business.

In 2009, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Chief Financial

Officer Alex Sink all took trips on state airplanes that intermingled personal business and official events.

Taxpayers paid $425,000 for Kottkamp’s 365 trips, most of which were journeys from Tallahassee to his Fort Myers home. Sink often took detours to Tampa to pick up or drop off a family member on the way to events around the state and one one occasion flew from Miami to Fort Lauderdale before flying commercial to a vacation in the Bahamas.

Cabinet officials and the lieutenant governor won’t have access to it, unless they’re traveling with DeSantis because the plane is being bought by FDLE, which has legal authority to provide protection and transportation for the governor. Lotto: 6-21-33-34-51 Xtra: 53x5 Powerball: 3-6-45-66-68 PP: 13x2 Cash 4 Life: 1-6-19-47-55-1