Bipartisan 2026 law required quarterly accounting of a fund that spent $566 million on immigration enforcement last year; Legislature has yet to receive it as hurricane season peaks
ORLANDO, Fla. — A group of Democratic Florida lawmakers this week sent a letter to Jared Perdue, the new executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, requesting the quarterly report on the state’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund that state law required the agency to deliver to legislative leaders on July 15. The report is now 40 days overdue.
The reporting requirement was created by SB 7040, which the Legislature passed in March 2026 with support from members of both parties. The law directs the Division to give the Senate President and House Speaker a quarterly accounting of the fund — including its projected year-end balance, its cash flow, an itemized list of current and pending purchases, and the status of federal reimbursements.
The Division has said it transmitted the report on July 28. The materials sent that day were five spreadsheets cataloguing disaster spending over several years, and did not include the itemized accounting of inventory, assets, and invoices the statute requires. Only one of the five documents addressed immigration-related spending.
The letter asks the Division to produce the complete report by September 8, along with an explanation of the delay, a date certain for the next quarterly report due at the end of September, a current accounting of outstanding contractor obligations, and a full reconciliation of federal reimbursements.
“This is not a complicated request,” stated Representative Dr. Anna V. Eskamani. “The law says the Legislature gets a quarterly accounting of this fund, and forty days later we still don’t have one. We are in the peak weeks of hurricane season and neither chamber can say with confidence what is left in the fund Florida depends on when a storm hits. Floridians deserve to know that money is there.”