The Florida Governor has handed out hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars through no-bid contracts to Republican mega-donors like Carlos Duart and Tina Vidal-Duart, the corporate CEOs who are cashing in on family separation at the Everglades Detention Camp. No-bid means no competition, no accountability, and no transparency. It leaves the door wide open for corruption and higher costs for all of us. That’s why Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith filed SB 700, a bill that will stop future governors from abusing states of emergency to enrich their allies.
Transcript | Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith at 12/3/25 Senate Democrats’ Press Conference on Immigration Legislation:
What I have right here in front of us is the original emergency declaration from Governor DeSantis in 2023, the so called immigration state of emergency that mentions Biden’s so called border crisis, no less than four times.
It’s full of obsolete information that no longer applies to the current state of affairs in Florida, and yet, the governor has used this executive order, this dated executive order, as an excuse to be able to enrich his Republican donors with hundreds of millions of dollars in no bid contracts with public money to build their disgusting Everglades detention camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades.
This executive order should not be renewed. As you already heard, it has been extended almost 20 times, with no oversight, no accountability from the Florida Legislature, no real questions asked about where this money is going. Who is benefiting from this money? How many detainees do we even have at the Everglades detention camp. We don’t know. We don’t know because the governor, who claims to be a law and order governor, is using his emergency authority as an excuse to circumvent 25 Florida laws.
He’s using it for a number of reasons, as reported by the Miami Herald, his emergency executive powers, emergency orders have allowed him to skirt Florida laws that require those who select contractors to put in writing that they have no conflicts of interest. So conflict of interest laws have been ignored by this governor. Background check requirements for people supposed to be working in these facilities have been ignored. We also know that transparency laws that require government agency purchases to be posted online have also been skirted under his emergency power.
We know that he doesn’t have to follow any requirements for competitive bidding to make sure that we are efficiently using public money… because this is Doge, right? This is the doge state, where we are FAFO-ing every single day, and making sure that we are effectively using public dollars, except, of course, when those public dollars, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being used to fund no bid contracts to build the Everglades detention camp and much, much more, in ways that are extremely corrupt and definitely about grifting off of public dollars.
Our bill, Senate Bill 700 is about making sure that future governors, whether they be Democrat or Republican, are not able to abuse their emergency authority for political purposes or to engage in political stunts, as governor DeSantis has done. Senate Bill 700 will do a few things. It will ensure that no state of emergency order can extend beyond one year, and if the legislature wants to make an exception to extend that emergency order, they can do so with a two thirds majority vote of both the Florida House and the Senate, ensuring that a co equal branch of government, the Florida Legislature has oversight and input on the states of emergency.