'Alligator Alcatraz' Contracts Disappeared From a Florida State Database
A state official says the contracts contained "proprietary information," so they were scrubbed and replaced with bare-bones summaries.
State contracts for Florida's controversial "Alligator Alcatraz" detention camp were removed from a public database and replaced with far less detailed documents after media outlets began writing about them last week.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which is overseeing the state's new immigrant detention camp in the Everglades, says the contracts contained "proprietary information."
However, open government advocates and state Democratic lawmakers say that removing details of the contracts flies in the face of Florida's promises to provide transparency in public spending, especially given the massive expenditures of taxpayer money involved. The most recent reporting on the ballooning costs of the Everglades detention camp puts it at $250 million and growing.
"That's a lot of our money that we deserve to see how it's spent, and it's a high profile project," David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, says. "There's a lot of public interest, so those are two reasons why this information should be proactively posted online."
On July 16, The Tributary, a nonprofit Florida news outlet, first reported details of a $78 million contract to Critical Response Strategies (CRS), a consulting company that is apparently responsible for managing day-to-day operations at the detention camp. The Tributary reported that CRS is linked to a venture capital firm headed by one of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' "biggest financial backers."
But shortly after reporters began piecing together the details of who was being hired to staff, supply, and service the 3,000-person-capacity tent prison, the information started being scrubbed from the internet—not just from the companies' webpages and LinkedIn profiles, but from state websites.
"State officials also appear to have clawed back information about CRS: A copy of the $78 million Alligator Alcatraz contract was included in a state vendor database Tuesday [July 15]," The Tributary reported. "On Wednesday, it was no longer available."
The CRS contract disappeared from the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System (FACTS), an online database hosted by the Florida Department of Financial Services (FDFS). The database allows the public to track taxpayer-funded state contracts.
Florida state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani (D–Orlando) wrote on X on July 16 that it appeared more than a dozen contracts totaling more than $200 million in taxpayer dollars had been scrubbed from the FACTS website.
The Miami New Times confirmed that six of the contracts Eskamani flagged related to the detention camp were no longer available on the FACTS website.
Although the FDFS hosts the website, individual agencies, such as the FDEM, are responsible for uploading contracts.
Stephanie Hartman, FDEM spokesperson, says in a statement to Reason that the documents "included proprietary information that shouldn't have been uploaded, so they have been corrected and posted."
The agency did not respond to a follow-up question about which specific information it considers proprietary.
"They didn't correct anything," Eskamani says. "All they did was upload just the cover [sheet], which has no info. There are no trade secrets—only government grift to no-bid contracts."
The reuploaded document of the CRS contract, for instance, is a bare-bones summary of the contract amount, supplier, and other information such as issue date and the amount awarded for the contract. The previous version contained detailed line items of purchase orders and other information.
As Cuillier points out, if sensitive private information was included, it could simply be redacted without having to pull the entire document.
"I can't even imagine what [the concerns] would be for a contract like that, but let's say for argument there is something in there that really hurt the company," he says. "Just black that out and put the rest up. Transparency is critical here when we're talking about taxpayer dollars."
To prove his point, Cuillier quotes from the FACTS "frequently asked questions" webpage, which says that, "Given that government purchases are paid for by citizens, through taxes and fees, how government procures goods and services and the amounts it pays for them should be open for public review."
The FACTS website even includes a Thomas Jefferson quote on the importance of transparency in government bookkeeping: "We might hope to see the finances as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books, so that every member of Congress, and every man of every mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently, to control them."
"I love that the State of Florida cares so deeply about transparency and is quoting our great Thomas Jefferson about how critical it is," Cuillier says. "Now they need to just follow through with that."