Key DeSantis initiative in limbo as Florida's governor feuds with legislators

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As state lawmakers move through the legislative session, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ legacy, and his wife Casey’s political future, appear to be on the line.

Lawmakers have yet to take up one of the couple’s top priorities this year: enshrining into law their conservative vision for welfare in Florida.

Hope Florida, launched by Casey DeSantis in 2021, is intended to get Floridians off government aid and services by diverting them to faith-based and other charity organizations.

So far, it’s been operating under the governor’s authority, and details surrounding its performance, personnel and separate fundraising arm have been vague. Ron DeSantis wants legislation creating an Office of Hope Florida within the governor’s office, but when lawmakers take up the idea in a Senate committee next week, it will be the first time that the proposal has gotten any air in either the House or Senate.

With time running out in the legislative session, the proposal could become another casualty in the Legislature’s battle with the governor this year — one that could weaken a run for governor by Casey DeSantis should she pull the trigger on a 2026 campaign to succeed her term-limited husband.

Cementing the program in law would give her a legislative victory to tout this summer in a crowded Republican primary. It could also assuage concerns about her lack of experience.

Casey DeSantis, a former television reporter, has never served in office.

The governor has been touting her creation of the program in press conferences, promoting her resume and connection to his administration, which is popular among Republicans.

“Some people are show horses and they babble and nothing ever gets done. And then some people are work horses,” the governor said last month after Casey DeSantis was asked about running for governor in 2026.

“Whether it’s the cancer innovation, whether it’s the behavioral health, whether it’s the Hope Florida, there’s been action, and there’s been results.”

Lawmakers say they’re running out of time to push the governor’s priority legislation, in part because DeSantis’ calls for special legislative sessions to address immigration earlier this year diverted time and attention away from the regular session. It’s scheduled to end May 2.

“We are dealing with a huge influx of bills that came out late,” said Rep. Lauren Melo, a Naples Republican in charge of the Hope Florida House bill’s first committee stop.

“There’s a massive traffic jam problem,” Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne, who oversaw the bill’s first committee in the Senate, said Wednesday, after leaving the Legislature to run for Congress.

On Thursday, the committee’s vice chairman placed it on the agenda for Tuesday.

Neither Fine nor Melo said they were opposed to the legislation requiring at least 11 state agencies to assign existing resources to Hope Florida, at the governor’s direction. Agencies could be asked to maintain call hotlines or assign case managers, for example.

The goal is to assign “hope navigators” to “guide Floridians on an individualized path to prosperity and economic independence,” according to DeSantis’ office. Navigators are supposed to streamline state services, from food benefits to hurricane aid, and send residents to a network of nonprofits, religious institutions and private businesses for everything else.

“Rather than perpetuate dependence on a Great Society-style bureaucracy, Hope Florida seeks to use government to connect individuals and families to more than 5,600 faith-based, community and private sector partners,” DeSantis said during his address to the Legislature this month.

During the address, he highlighted the case of Ginger Faulk, a 35-year-old Lakeland mom with two kids who said a hope navigator helped her get out of “poverty.” Faulk told a crowd that the navigator helped her get her high school diploma in 2021 and find grants to afford schooling to become a licensed physical therapist assistant in 2023.

“It’s all because somebody believed in me, because that phone call didn’t just stop at that one phone call,” Faulk said, according to a video on Casey DeSantis’ X account. “She put forth in front of me resources so I could tell my children that ‘We got this, God’s got us, and we are going to get through this.’”

But some lawmakers and observers have questioned whether the effort is duplicative or consuming critical resources across state government, including within the Department of Children and Families, where Hope Florida currently resides.

Florida has 115 hope navigators across state government, according to a spokesperson. That includes the director of the Office of Youth and Family Advocacy, according to a Hope Florida video posted on X. The position was created within the Department of Juvenile Justice after widespread abuses in the department were revealed by the Herald.

Hope Florida’s helpline is currently funded by federal child abuse prevention grants through the American Rescue Plan, which is set to expire. Lawmakers are proposing spending about $2 million to staff the helpline this year.

“From what I know, the very limited that I know about what Hope Florida does, it appears that agencies can do that same work,” said Rep. Vicki Lopez, a Miami Republican whose committee has been critical of state spending under DeSantis. “We could have case managers do that work within the agency.”

State officials have released few details about the program’s performance, beyond citing that it’s helped 30,000 Floridians move off of state assistance. A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Families did not answer questions about the total number of people helped statewide and in each county. Photos of smiling recipients in Hope Florida Magazine are stock images.

The state also set up a separate fundraising arm for the program, The Hope Florida Foundation, whose officers include lobbyists for Walgreens and Koch Industries, the massive private corporation founded by the conservative mega-donor Koch brothers.

The Department of Children and Families has not released to the Herald/Times public records about the foundation, including its nonprofit tax forms, its donors or the recipients of the money. None of the documents are online. In July last year, Casey DeSantis awarded $375,000 from the foundation across the top 13 churches participating in Hope Florida.

Sen. Danny Burgess, a Zephyrhills Republican who is sponsoring the Hope Florida bill in his chamber, told the Herald/Times he felt “confident” that the bill will gain traction this session.

“It’s a creative solution to not growing government, but harnessing the power of organizations that are doing so much good already,” Burgess said.

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Miami Herald investigative reporter Carol Marbin Miller and Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reporter Ana Ceballos contributed to this article.