Bill aims to strip Florida Cabinet of its power

Gov. Ron DeSantis is back in the spotlight for a pending overstep of power.

He’s working to strip the Cabinet of its powers and hand them off to him, something he tried to do once before, but that bill didn’t pass.

Is the governor going against his own party in this power play? At the very least, he’s pushing them. Florida’s legislature is dominated by Republicans, as it was the last time DeSantis tried to move a similar bill through.

That isn’t stopping him from pushing the bill that argues the founding fathers envisioned a “unitary executive.”

Florida’s Cabinet is supposed to meet every single month, but DeSantis has held just five Cabinet meetings since the pandemic began last March. If he gets his way, he’d strip his Cabinet members of some of their responsibility.

“The proposal seeks to transfer certain powers from state agencies under the executive branch and under the governor specifically,” said Sandra Pavelka, a political science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

She said DeSantis already has more power than most.

“If you look at the basic premises of the Republican Party, the Republican Party seeks to decentralize government and administration,” Pavelka said. “And this bill seems to do the reverse.”

In HB 1537, the governor would take over control of the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

The bill also takes away the Cabinet’s oversight of agencies under their supervision. For example, the power to determine areas of the state deemed critical to maintaining the environment would fall under the governor instead of the commissioner of agriculture, Nikki Fried, Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat.

WINK News reached out to the governor’s office and every member of his Cabinet for an interview. Only Attorney General Ashley Moody got back to us, saying she’s reviewing the bill.

In a statement to the Orlando Sentinel, Fried blasted the bill as a way to marginalize her office, but a DeSantis spokesperson said, “The legislation would create a more efficient and effective government, which has always been central to the governor’s mission.”