Weaponized Bureaucrats Part I
My vocal opposition to the DeSantis agenda has earned me a spot on the enemies list.
The full force of the Ron DeSantis administration is reigning down on me. Next month, May of 2023, will mark my twentieth year delivering transition services to teenagers on behalf of the state and federal government. We have partnered with the Florida Department of Education consistently since 2007. In 2017, we began our partnership with the Department’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in which we use federal dollars to help students with a diagnosed disability prepare themselves for life after high school.
During our relationship with the Department of Education, we have submitted monthly or quarterly programmatic, fiscal and administrative reports. It is the Department’s responsibility to review, reject or approve those reports. So, why is the Florida Department of Education, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation pursuing an administrative complaint declaring my organization incompetent and seeking a permanent end to our partnership?
This is that story. The story of how it started. The ongoing story of how it’s going. The story of what it’s like to have a weaponized bureaucracy trying to annihilate all that makes you, you.
You still mad?
In 2012, I was the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 6th Congressional District. It was an open seat and the Republicans had a stacked primary. Among the mix was an independently wealthy, Craig Miller and the well-known Evangelical dentist turned Mayor, Fred Costello and the Country Club Republican City Councilman, Richard Clark. I hoped to run against Richard Clark but I figured that Fred Costello would emerge from the primary. No one thought the young Tea Party fanatic who didn’t even live in the District would come out on top but he did. By a lot.
Our polling showed us that his support of Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Social Security and up the age for retirement was exceptionally unpopular. So, given Florida’s very short six-week-long general election cycle, my campaign decided to scrap the commercial we planned for one that exposed his “risky voucher scheme.”
During the debate, I punched at him for accepting endorsements from radicals like Phyllis Schlafly and Joe Arpaio. He called me a “European Socialist” and a “warmed-over Nancy Pelosi.” Other than that, it was a very issues-focused run. My campaign did earn the support of thousands of independent (and maybe some moderate Republican) votes. But Ron won that election. He went to Congress and I continued looking for ways to help teenagers get ready for early adulthood.
No one in Tallahassee, including three Republican Governor’s, seemed to mind that I am a Democrat or that I ran for office. In fact, during the entirety of my career, Republicans have been in the majority in Tallahassee. Even after journalist, Matt Dixon called attention to the fact that our Board of Directors includes both Republican and Democratic legislators, legislators rejected the idea that helping kids is partisan.
When DeSantis won the race for Governor in 2018, people would occasionally ask if I saw that as problematic. I soundly rejected the notion of a DeSantis hit list. The Ron that I encountered on the campaign trail was fiercely opposed to the “politicization of unelected bureaucrats.” I also believed, given his relative disinterest in domestic issues and his careful curation of his foreign affairs chops, that this was a temporary stop on his way to the White House. “The dude just isn’t that petty,” I’d reply. “I doubt he even remembers my name.”
It appears now that I was wrong. Not about the White House part. I was wrong about the other part.
First, Let Me Catch You Up
In 2016, when Rick Scott was Governor, I reached out to the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) about bringing our services to high school students who had been diagnosed with a disability. On June 19, 2017, our Jobs for Florida’s Graduates program was authorized to provide school-to-work/college transition services using Vocational Rehabilitation dollars Congress appropriates. Federal tax dollars.
At the time, I was pushing hard to not just simply implement the 2014 changes made by the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act (WIOA), I was pushing them to be bold and innovative in how they implemented it. It had been three years and they had made little progress toward implementing the updated federal law. And there was a horrific federal monitoring report that lead to the return of $18.0 million dollars to the US Department of Education that should have been used to help teenagers find and keep employment. In March 2018, Ana Ceballos told that story.
“Unfortunately for the students, the planning took too long and wasn’t collaborative in nature,” said Heather Beaven, the CEO for the Florida Endowment Foundation for Florida’s Graduates.
I thought a scathing monitoring report accusing VR of a total lack of oversight and even submitting false data to the federal government, plus some media attention on how all that led you to give millions back in unspent funds, just might be enough to shake the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. It was and it wasn’t.
After several decades, the VR Director retired and the new Director appeared to have a much more collaborative nature. I remember in our early conversations, she said, “it takes time to turn a ship this big.” I hoped that would be a good sign of things to come but by March of 2018, I was frustrated - more like incensed - with the glacially slow speed at which VR works.
I requested a meeting. It was then that I met Brent McNeal, the attorney for the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Soon VR, presumably Brent himself, drafted a contract for services. You see, Jobs for Florida’s Graduates serves students in various locations throughout Florida, making the lack of process uniformity among local VR offices unsustainable. For instance, one VR youth counselor in Palm Beach County required - not one - but two in-person meetings with parents to sign various forms, while the VR youth counselor in Putnam County was fine with email communication.
“Vendors say the blame is on an “ill-thought-out process” and a “sloppy rollout” of the program; state education officials say the problem was a lack of qualified vendors and professionals.”
When you’re serving 500 teenagers in various locations, process predictability is vital. For example, the inconsistencies meant that, between August of 2017 and March of 2018, only about twenty percent (20%) of students made it through the VR process. In other words, one in four of our high school seniors who requested school-to-work transition services the summer before entering their senior year made it all the way to Senior Skip Day without those services. That also meant, that my organization delivered over $500,000 in federally required services on behalf of the State of Florida for free.
That’s a hard pill to swallow and I did ask if VR had reported unpaid services to the USDOE on their federal report (RSA-911). When I didn’t get an answer, I asked the USDOE the same question. They referred me back to VR. Finally, the response came that the data in RSA-911 is in the aggregate and there would be no way to see it student-by-student. I didn’t find out until recently that, that isn’t true. Anyway, I decided to write off the loss and move on under the new contract drafted by VR.
That school year, 2018-19, was relatively smooth in terms of reporting and money flow. The various processes on the ground remained a nightmare but at least we had one point of contact for our monthly reports and our folks didn’t have to use the multiple and redundant technology platforms VR mandated. The following year, 2019-20, was even smoother. By then, we had worked with nearly 2,000 VR students. Our staff, our partnering schools and VR local staff had settled into a rhythm.
So in January 2021, when the FLDOE Office of Inspector General called to tell me that our contract was due for an audit, I was eager to engage. I know our data is squared away and I know our services and our student outcomes are unimpeachable.
Once Commission Richard Corcoran decided to pursue the Presidency of Florida State University, he reorganized FLDOE. One change was promoting Dr. Eric Hall from Special Chancellor to Senior Chancellor. The new role gave Eric responsibility for VR. It was a concerning move because, not only is VR the largest Division within FLDOE, federal law requires state agencies to ensure VR has direct access to the agency head. In hindsight, I think the VR Director agreed. She resigned ten months after the reorganization.
In general, I was optimistic about Eric’s engagement in VR. While he was President of Communities in School in North Carolina, Eric incubated Jobs for North Carolina’s Graduates using the same curriculum and program model we use in Florida. Additionally, Eric and I both had a long history of working with AMI Kids. Hell, Eric even wrote his Ph.D. dissertation about how recognizing white privilege is a sign of exceptional leadership before he was forced to recant it. It sure seemed to me that, while Eric is a champion of privatizing schools and even school districts, he was also devoted to the kids who are too often overlooked.
My optimism died and the battle began in earnest on March 5, 2021.
In the upcoming weeks, I will walk you through what it really looks like when a state agency weaponizes its considerable power against the citizens and the companies they are paid to serve. I have decided to share this as it unfolds because it is harrowing and it is happening with alarming frequency. I hope you will stay tuned.