House Republican who investigated Hope Florida seeks changes to the law

Alexandra Glorioso, Miami Herald on Jan 29, 2026

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Two years after the DeSantis administration steered $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to a political campaign, the House Republican who followed the money is pushing legislation to stop future administrations from doing something similar.

State Rep. Alex Andrade’s bill, HB 593, was passed unanimously Thursday afternoon by the House Government Operations Subcommittee — the first panel to hear it. It has one more committee to go before a full vote by the House, indicating that it is a priority for leadership.

A similar bill in the Senate has yet to be heard.

Last year, the Herald/Times began reporting on the Hope Florida program and its related state-created charity. The joint news bureau uncovered that the DeSantis administration spent more than $35 million of the public’s money on his political campaign to defeat two constitutional amendments in 2024.

Andrade’s bill targets how $10 million of that total effort was spent. The money came from a Medicaid settlement and was diverted through the Hope Florida Foundation charity to a political committee. That transaction is now the subject of a grand jury investigation in Leon County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been adamant that his administration broke no laws. Under the bill, diverting settlement money offered to the state to a third party would be expressly prohibited.

The bill would also forbid a chief of staff in the governor’s office from fundraising for a campaign, as Attorney General James Uthmeier did when he worked for DeSantis in 2024 as his top aide. And it would ban governors from using the bully pulpit to solicit campaign donations, as DeSantis did when he asked fellow Republicans to donate to his effort to defeat the ballot amendment that would have overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban.

Spokespeople for DeSantis and Uthmeier did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Andrade is a lawyer from Pensacola who oversees the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, which he used to investigate the Hope Florida program and the foundation’s finances.

Additionally, Andrade’s bill requires state agencies or officers to notify the attorney general and legislative leaders in both chambers, including from the minority party, within 10 days of a settlement being reached.

The DeSantis administration did not notify the Legislature about its $67 million settlement with Medicaid contractor Centene, from which it steered $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation.

The notice required by Andrade’s bill would include the settlement terms.

There was no public debate or comment on the bill in committee on Thursday.

Andrade told the Herald/Times after the bill passed that it is an attempt “to spell out” what public officials’ obligations are when it comes to protecting public money.

“I think the laws were broken in 2024 when that money was spent,” Andrade said. “This is an attempt to just walk people through, explicitly... these were bad things that happened that were the result of fraud. Just don’t do this.”