TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— Florida taxpayers paid millions of dollars more to protect Gov. Ron DeSantis and his family last year as he prepared to launch his presidential bid.
In total, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement last year spent $9.4 million on salaries for agents and transportation costs for the detail that protects DeSantis, his wife, Casey, and their three children, according to state records — a more than 55% increase in the cost of protecting him.
That’s $3 million more than the $6 million the agency spent the previous fiscal year to protect DeSantis and his family. The more recent totals cover July 1, 2022, through June 30, a time frame when DeSantis’ travel increased significantly. He campaigned for key Republican Senate candidates across the country during the 2022 midterms, traveled to his own political fundraisers and, in May, launched a presidential bid.
“By law, FDLE must provide protective services to the Governor and the First Family,” Jeremy Redfern, a DeSantis press secretary, said in a written message.
Redfern said the increased costs are tied to DeSantis’ having become a higher-profile national politician.
“His record as the most effective conservative governor in American history has also earned him an elevated threat profile and FDLE has increased the number of protective agents to ensure the governor and his family remain,” he added.
In June, FDLE officials acknowledged that there was increased security around DeSantis but said at that time that it was not because of his increasing political profile. They blamed failures by past FDLE leadership to keep enough agents assigned to protective services, the department responsible for protecting governors and visiting dignitaries.
The agency said FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass made the decision based on recommendations from a transition team he put together after DeSantis appointed him in August 2022.
“Unfortunately, the team Commissioner Glass put together during his transition found that after nearly a decade FDLE had failed to request necessary additional resources in Protective Operations while the threats nationwide have increased leaving the section critically underfunded and, in many cases, understaffed,” FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessenger told NBC News in June.
At the time, both former FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen and Republican Sen. Rick Scott, a former two-term governor, pushed back against the framing. Scott said he never had an issue with his protective services detail.
“I had a great working relationship with FDLE and the agents of the protective detail,” Scott said, responding to FDLE’s claims. “Their protective and investigative work was an important part of Florida hitting record low crime rates over my eight years as governor.”
The increase in protective services over the past year is larger than it was in most years, but it has been part of a regular increase over the years. In the fiscal year ending in June 2012, the state spent $2.1 million on protective services for Scott and his family, a number that rose $4 million over the next decade to the $6 million the state spent last year. But the increases pale in comparison to the more than $3 million one-year increase during the last fiscal year.
FDLE also spent $457,242 protecting visiting out-of-state dignitaries in dozens of visits.
The most expensive trip cost $86,924 to send DeSantis to a Republican Governors Association conference in Utah.