In June, just before Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature finalized the state budget, GOP leaders slipped a sentence into the spending plan authorizing state officials to acquire a piece of property in the Panhandle through a popular land-preservation program. 🧵...
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Three months later, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis used that little line in the budget to spend $83.3 million in taxpayer money on a tiny spit of vacant land in Destin that records show is majority owned by a prominent real-estate developer and Republican Party donor...

Nov 1, 2025 · 12:04 PM UTC

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And the state’s GOP-controlled Cabinet quickly signed off on the extravagant purchase price, which, at more than $20 million an acre, is more than 10 times the price the developer and his partners paid for the land less than a decade ago...
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That sentence buried deep inside the budget — the line that enabled Florida’s top politicians to pull off a land deal that a longtime conservation leader called “a sham” — came, emails show, from a lobbyist for the developer...
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The email trail was unearthed by Seeking Rents through a public records request that we made near the end of this year’s legislative session. This is about as gross as it gets in Tallahassee. And it’s even uglier than you may realize. Many more details at the link below:
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jasongarcia.substack.com/p/f…
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