DeSantis targets officials who didn’t commit crimes

Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended four Broward County School Board members last week for engaging in what the governor described as “incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority.

Under Florida law, the governor can suspend elected and appointed officials for wrongdoing that includes the commission of a felony, neglect of duty, malfeasance, incompetence and habitual drunkenness.” The governor then has the constitutional right to appoint someone to fill that position.

But in recent history, DeSantis’ predecessors — Republicans Jeb Bush and Rick Scott and now-Democrat Charlie Crist, who is running to unseat DeSantis — generally reserved that power to suspend elected officials when they were charged with a crime, according to records from the state Senate analyzed by the Tampa Bay Times.

DeSantis said the decision was in response to findings of a statewide grand jury that was tasked with investigating the Broward School Board’s response to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting that left 17 students and staff dead and 17 injured.

Since DeSantis came into office in 2019, he has suspended at least 15 elected officials, eight of whom were ousted for what the governor said was neglect of duty, incompetence, or misuse of authority. Five of the eight took place this year. A review of previous gubernatorial suspensions that went to the Florida Senate for final action, not including those of notaries public:

Bush suspended at least 17 elected officials during his eight years in office, including Miriam OIiphant, the Broward elections supervisor. Bush originally removed Oliphant after a disastrous voting count in the 2002 primary.

Oliphant was later charged with 55 infractions by the Florida Elections Commission but ultimately was not prosecuted or fined. Her successor was Brenda Snipes, appointed by Bush and later elected to keep the job. She was later suspended by Scott, and then reinstated by DeSantis so that she could resign and retire.

Crist removed at least 13 officials from office, all of whom were charged with crimes, during his one-term in office.

Scott suspended at least 15 people from office, 14 of whom committed crimes (Snipes was an exception), and dozens of notaries for alleged misconduct.

DeSantis’ actions have raised concerns among Democrats and some attorneys, who worry the governor is exercising his executive power more aggressively and more frequently as of late.

“The governor is insistent on doing the quote-unquote my way or the highway approach to governance,” said Ben Kuehne, an election and compliance lawyer who has experience with gubernatorial suspensions.

Kuehne represented former Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who DeSantis suspended in 2019 and blamed for the response to the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. One of the Broward County school board members who was suspended by the governor — also because of the response to the Parkland school shooting — called the governor’s decision “un-American and undemocratic.”

“He doesn’t care about democracy and overturned the will of the voters,” Laurie Rich Levinson said in a statement. “Because you may disagree on local policy decisions is not a reason to remove someone from elected office.”

While the governor can remove a public official from office, the matter is ultimately decided by the Florida Senate. The governor has to hire a special master to make his case. The issue can also land in court, as shown recently by Andrew Warren, Hillsborough County’s former top prosecutor who is suing DeSantis for removing him from office.

DeSantis ousted him from office earlier this month because he pledged not to prosecute people receiving an abortion or their doctors performing them. Warren then filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, saying that the governor violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Although Warren vowed not to enforce laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors or laws limiting abortion, the state currently has no laws on gender-affirming care that Warren could have refused to prosecute.

DeSantis has remained steadfast on his authority to suspend elected officials who he says neglect their duty.

“It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” DeSantis said in a statement on Friday when he announced the suspension of four school board members in Broward County. DeSantis also appointed four people to the school board to fill the vacancies left by his suspensions.

The governor had previously announced a replacement for a fifth member on the board after Rosalind Osgood was elected to the state Senate. That meant that DeSantis’ appointments are now a majority on the nine-member school board, which oversees a school district in a Democratic stronghold.

“Governor DeSantis not just suspended four elected school board members in Broward and replaced them with political allies. This is following school board elections, too,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.

When asked about the appointment process, DeSantis’ press secretary Bryan Griffin said the appointment to replace the suspended school board members came after the release of a grand jury report that recommended the governor suspend them.

“Several community members and potential applicants” reached out and made an application to the governor’s office after learning of the grand jury report, Griffin said. He added that they “also invited applications at the same time through our contacts in the community.” He did not elaborate when asked for more specifics.

“We were fortunate to have had an immediate response from the community — a community that we suspect has long been looking towards this day as another important step in moving forward from the tragedy in 2018,” he said.