TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — DeSantis administration officials knew about aviation safety issues and budget overruns by the Florida State Guard almost a year before those accusations became public this month, but fired the informant who warned them, records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show.

James Ethridge, a retired Navy commander, was hired in March to analyze and fix safety issues with the guard’s Aviation Response Squadron. He quickly provided a report that detailed “severe” safety violations and mismanagement that meant “millions of dollars wasted.”

He recommended the guard — reactivated by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 to help with disaster response, public safety and, more recently, immigration enforcement — ground all flights immediately until the safety problems could be addressed.

Three weeks after he was hired and days after sharing his concerns with the guard’s executive director Mark Thieme and then-chief of staff Jay Arnold, Ethridge was fired. Arnold told him by phone that “it just wasn’t working out,” but in his official letter of termination said the cause was “a result of your failure to follow directives, and conduct unbecoming a public employee,” Ethridge said.

The DeSantis administration managed to keep Ethridge’s concerns, and those of other guard employees, under wraps until last week, when the Sentinel broke the news that senior officers, pilots and soldiers were leaving the agency after alleging misuse of taxpayer dollars, unreported sexual harassment claims and poor planning and budgeting by the agency’s top executives.

In his report, also shared with the governor’s office, Ethridge said flight operations contained critical safety gaps including no documentation that the aviation unit was compliant with FAA standards, and that flights took place when conditions were unsafe.

He also reported that he refused to fly a Blackhawk helicopter without further training because he had not flown a helicopter in 13 years but was told by his supervisor that he just needed to “kick the dust off.”

“I have a professional obligation to the aviation industry to get FSG to stop flying planes. They are too dangerous,” he said via email.

Ethridge, a Navy pilot with more than 20 years and 4,000 flight hours, was hired as the guard’s aviation operations officer to help refine safety standards, maintenance practices and operating procedures.

After he submitted his report to the governor’s office, the Office of the Inspector General in the governor’s office set up a phone interview with Ethridge for March 27, he reported. But he was fired on March 20, and the investigation was dismissed.

State officials claimed that he hadn’t followed guard rules and that his conduct was unbecoming because he had circulated “a safety memo in front of rank and file including volunteer soldiers,” records from his employment case show.

But Ethridge and his attorney argue he was fired for sharing safety concerns, and they are upset he was not granted whistleblower status with the Florida Commission on Human Relations. That status could have provided him some protections and possibly compensation for being fired. A commission investigator said that although Ethridge engaged in whistleblower activities as defined by the Whistleblower act, he did not prove they were the cause of his firing.

In December, Ethridge filed an unlawful termination suit with the Public Employee Relations Commission, which is pending.

Though the guard is mostly a volunteer force, it has a paid staff of about 32, most of them, like Ethridge, retired military. DeSantis reactivated the guard 75 years after it was disbanded, with critics at the time calling it his private army.

In public statements in recent weeks, mostly on social media, some former guard employees claimed that Thieme racked up $100,000 in flight time and other costs to obtain a personal private pilot’s license using guard planes and pilots, the Sentinel reported.

Those former employees also criticized Thieme’s spending millions of dollars on aircraft parts and planes incompatible with existing surveillance equipment and the guard’s mission. And, like Ethridge, they said they were retaliated against for speaking out against Thieme, the third chief executive since the guard was reactivated four years ago.

Mike Pintacura, one of the former guard commanders who spoke to the Sentinel for last week’s story, said this week that lawmakers in the Florida House were seeking answers.

The House Speaker’s Office confirmed via email to the Sentinel that members were “aware of the allegations, and we are looking into the matter.”

The turmoil surrounding the state guard comes as DeSantis is asking the legislature to double its budget, which now is at $36 million.

Neither the governor’s office nor Thieme responded to requests for comment.

Since Ethridge was fired, other salaried pilots quit because they were intimidated or worried about their safety, he said. “These are not volunteers, but hired paid professional pilots having to quit,” he said.

Chief Pilot Matt Sweet, who was Ethridge’s supervisor and met with him and Thieme to discuss Ethridge’s safety concerns last March, said in a text message to the Sentinel he resigned Wednesday. He is the latest guard official to leave over concerns about how Thieme is running the agency.

Pintacura, a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran who helped oversee the Guard’s Special Missions Unit., resigned on Jan. 14, saying he lost confidence in Thieme’s ability to “exercise sound, informed and accountable judgment.”

In a recent Instagram post, Pintacura said Thieme misappropriated state funds and grossly mishandled budget protocols. He told the Sentinel he and others shared their concerns to members of the governor’s staff but they have yet to hear back.

“We are very disappointed with Governor DeSantis.” Pintacura said.

He also said he was disappointed with Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, a former Green Beret, who met with former guard commander Lt. Col. Jordon Bowen but has done nothing since. Bowen was forced out after refusing to give what he thought was an unlawful command to another guard member.

Ethridge’s attorney said she and her client were “quite surprised” when the human relations commission denied him whistleblower protections. The commission hears cases of public employees who believe they were wrongly fired for making agency disclosures.

The timing of Ethridge’s dismissal and lack of “any meaningful inquiry into (his) concerns all point to one conclusion,” that his “complaints of the safety regulations was a motivating factor – if not the sole reason – for the adverse employment action taken against him,” his lawyer, Alison Breiter, wrote to the commission in July.

Ethridge said the reactions to his safety report were hard to take but he doesn’t regret what he revealed.

“I owe it to aviation, an industry I cherish, to stop the FSG from flying aircraft until they are Safe for Flight,” Ethridge told the Sentinel.

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