By Daniel Ducassi, FloridaBulldog.org
A legislative committee tasked with being a fiscal watchdog for the state approved a report falsely stating that the requirements of a key financial transparency law have been met despite clear evidence of chronic, widespread violations of the law.
The Transparency Florida Act requires state agencies to post public copies of all contracts within 30 days of being signed, but a Florida Bulldog analysis revealed more than $6 billion in emergency contracts from the governor’s office that had no such documentation – more than 700 contracts.
Though Florida Bulldog sent the findings to members and staff of the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, the committee approved a report on November 3 stating the requirements of the Transparency Florida Act have been met. Not one member of the bipartisan, 14-member committee – co-chaired by State Rep. Chase Tramont, R-Port Orange, and Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary – discussed the report or asked any questions about it before approving it by a voice vote. The entire process took less than a minute.
The committee report also contained no recommendations for improving the law, which currently has no penalties for noncompliance.
The approval came after the committee spent more than an hour grilling Daytona Beach city officials about having a building permit fee account that had grown too large, with members lecturing the city about the importance of fiscal stewardship.
State Senator Jason Pizzo, who represents parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, even questioned the choice of pickup trucks that the city’s building department had chosen to buy — but was silent when the committee approved the false report. Staff for Pizzo, who served as Senate minority leader before leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent and announce a gubernatorial bid, acknowledged receiving an email from Florida Bulldog about the missing contract documentation and said it would be discussed with the senator prior to the November 3 meeting.
While the silence by the committee was bipartisan, so were the political contributions by one of the biggest beneficiaries of the hidden contracts, Miami’s CDR Maguire – a major supporter of Governor Ron DeSantis’s political ambitions.
CDR Maguire and its affiliated companies provide engineering, financial, and emergency management consulting services, along with healthcare and lab services, to communities across the country, according to its website.
Under the DeSantis administration, CDR Maguire and its affiliated companies racked up contracts valued at more than $537 million and that haven’t been uploaded to the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System (FACTS) for public inspection as required by the Transparency Florida Act.
The Florida Department of Financial Services, currently headed by the state’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, is responsible for overseeing and updating FACTS.
MIAMI’S CDR MAGUIRE’S POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
CDR Maguire, affiliated companies and executives gave Pizzo $6,000 in campaign contributions, along with another $60,000 to his political committee, New Opportunity Florida.
CDR and affiliated companies also gave $345,000 to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and more than $150,000 to the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee since 2020.
Further, CDR Maguire gave $25,000 to the Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which supports Democratic state Senate candidates, and $15,000 to the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee. The Florida Democratic Party received $25,000 from CDR Maguire in 2020. The committee’s only Democratic Senator was absent from the meeting.
Other potential watchdogs who could speak out about the DeSantis administration’s violations of the law have also received substantial donations from CDR Maguire and affiliated companies.
CDR Enterprises Inc. gave Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Friends of James Uthmeier $275,000 in 2025, with executive Carlos Duart giving Uthmeier’s 2026 campaign for Attorney General another $3,000 in March.
CDR Enterprises gave a political committee supporting Florida CFO Ingoglia $100,000 in September.
State Rep. Yvonne Hinson, D-Gainesville, was the only committee member to respond to questions from Florida Bulldog, stating her vote was based on the information presented to the committee.
Hinson said she “absolutely” believes the committee has a responsibility to take action to investigate why the contracts were not posted, and that she “would like to believe the committee members do as well” after seeing the evidence.
In her response, Hinson also defended the committee’s chairman as “a fair and honest Christian” and urged Florida Bulldog to submit its findings directly to the committee.
STATE COVERING UP OR IGNORANT OF LAW
More than a week after Florida Bulldog published our analysis finding that billions of dollars in contracts were missing public documentation, Florida Division of Emergency Management spokeswoman Stephanie Hartman defended the administration in a statement showing the administration didn’t understand the law — or was lying to cover up its systemic violations of the law. The Division of Emergency Management is legally part of the governor’s office.
“The ‘missing’ contracts you referenced are, in fact, purchase order information (to include deliverables and total pricing) which are also legally binding documents that are currently and have always been posted into FACTS,” Hartman stated. “All purchase orders in question are event-specific and issued based on competitively procured standby contracts that we utilize during an emergency.”
The statement is false on multiple counts. For one, the law explicitly defines purchase orders as contracts and requires copies be posted online on the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System, not just “information” about them. Whether the documents are classified as contracts or purchase orders is irrelevant as state law treats them identically for transparency purposes. Regardless, 26 of the contracts were identified by the administration as contracts, with contract ID numbers, and not as purchase orders.
Beyond that, it’s clear many of the purchase orders were not competitively procured, with the administration itself indicating in the contract database they were all no-bid contracts.
For example, the administration in 2020 entered into an $11 million no-bid contract for COVID-19 testing with a phony lab testing company run by a known fraudster. Though the administration provided Florida Bulldog with a copy of that contract, identified in the system as a purchase order, it still has not uploaded the contract into the database more than five years later.
The administration’s own comments about the fraudster contract at the time suggested it was not competitively procured stating, “Time is of the essence when securing these critical testing supplies for Floridians, and that limited time does not allow for the Division [of Emergency Management] to vet every company’s executive leadership or board of directors.”
Hartman did not respond to follow up questions and information demonstrating the falsity of her statement.
ARE TAXPAYERS GETTING A GOOD DEAL OR BEING RIPPED OFF?
The systemic lack of public documentation makes it difficult to determine if taxpayers are getting a good deal or being ripped off.
The administration gave more than $22 million in contracts to Trinity Health Care Services, the company at the center of a federal indictment against U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties and previously served as CEO of Trinity. Cherfilus-McCormick is accused of stealing $5 million in federal pandemic relief money and then using the money to fund her campaign. The charges line up with a lawsuit the state filed alleging the company knowingly accepted $5.8 million in overpayments by the Florida Division of Emergency Management for COVID-19 related work and then refused to return the money.
The lawsuit also identified three Trinity contracts that the DeSantis administration never published to the state’s contract tracking system, yet another violation of state law.
Cherfilus-McCormick has maintained her innocence, calling the indictment unjust and baseless.
In another example, the state has more than $10 million in contracts with California-based Air Bear Tactical Aircraft, contracts the state never uploaded to the public database. In 2023, the state entered into what would ultimately be an 18-month lease for a DA62 MPP airplane, used by the state for maritime immigration enforcement, through Air Bear Tactical Aircraft for $3.26 million.
This price is significantly higher than public estimates to buy the plane outright. A representative for the plane’s manufacturer, Diamond Aircraft, told Skies Magazine that the base price is $1.67 million, and adding common options like weather radar and deicing brings it to about $1.9 million for the aircraft, which is specifically marketed to law enforcement agencies.
An Air Bear representative who declined to provide his name argued that a “fully equipped” intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance plane could cost “millions more,” saying the price with additional equipment could be in the neighborhood of $4 to $5 million. The company also cited costs for transporting the plane from Europe, where the plane was located, explaining that it was the only one available given the state’s urgent need.
The Air Bear representative wrote that the state “issued the purchase order for the specific aircraft under emergency decree,” contradicting Hartman’s claim about “competitively procured standby contracts.” Hartman’s assertions are further undermined by the Sun Sentinel reporting that it obtained a copy of the contract from the state in 2023, citing the aircraft’s replacement cost of $4 million, but the administration still hasn’t uploaded the contract document two years later in clear violation of a law designed to give the public easy access.
Air Bear’s ties to the administration extend beyond its emergency contracts, valued at more than $10 million. Air Bear managing partner Gary Standel contributed $1,500 in 2021 to a political committee associated with Governor DeSantis, Empower Parents PAC, which was formerly known as Friends of Ron DeSantis.
CDR SAID EXEC, BOARD MEMBER RIPPED IT OFF, BUT DID PUBLIC PAY?
Without the actual contract documents, it’s difficult for the public to verify what the lease itself included or why the price to taxpayers was roughly what it would have cost to just buy the plane. The secrecy surrounding this and hundreds of other contracts undermines the purpose of the FACT database, accountability to the public.
The secrecy surrounding these contracts also makes it difficult for the public to know if taxpayers ultimately bore the cost of the kind of inflated prices and alleged fraud that CDR Maguire itself described in a now settled 2024 lawsuit in state court in Miami-Dade County.
CDR Maguire and CDR Health Care alleged they were ripped off by one of their own executives and a board member on deals that appear related to its emergency contracts with Florida that are missing public documentation.
CDR Maguire alleged its former chief operating officer Robert Meek and a former board member of CDR parent company CDR Enterprises, Ruben Almaguer, worked together to “price gouge” CDR companies for emergencies by funneling more than $17 million in deals through Almaguer’s company, Coconut Creek-based Forts Logistics.
For example, CDR Health Care allegedly paid Forts Logistics nearly $200,000 more than it should have for cleaning services at a Hurricane Ian field hospital, and that it was charged $105,000 more than it should have been for 100 hospital beds related to the state’s Hurricane Ian response, most of which went unused, according to the lawsuit. CDR companies alleged they also sold Forts Logistics 1,500 traffic cones for $10,500, never got paid for them, only for Forts Logistics to rent the cones back to CDR for $220,100 for 45 days.
Overall, CDR said it demanded $1.7 million because of the “excessive and egregious markup in costs” billed by Forts Logistics, which hired former COO MEEK after CDR fired him. Forts Logistics did not respond to a request for comment. Almaguer is a former interim director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. He resigned from that post in 2010 amid allegations of misspending, nepotism and sex discrimination.
CDR’s lawsuit against Meek and Almaguer was ultimately settled in a confidential agreement.
Finally, with all those contract documents missing it’s not clear what information the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee or its staff used to conclude that the requirements of the law had been met. Committee staff would not answer Florida Bulldog’s questions about their methodology.
The committee has the power to order audits by the state Auditor General, but the Auditor General last conducted an audit of FDEM’s contract management practices in 2016. That audit found many contracts were not posted online within 30 days but did not state there were contracts where documentation was entirely missing, as has happened more than 700 times under the DeSantis Administration.
FDEM stated in response to that audit that it had incorporated a “check and balance” into its monitoring process to ensure compliance with the law, but nine years later the agency continues to systematically violate the law.
Florida’s constitution also requires “the governor shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…” Yet DeSantis’s administration has defied the law since soon after he swore his oath in January 2019.
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