Fly-by-night government: Committee finds State of Florida paid out-of-state employee $42,000 to commute to Tallahassee

On the heels of a scathing state audit documenting the Department of Management Services’ lax oversight of thousands of government vehicles, new questions are being raised about the agency’s hiring of employees based out of state and the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for them to commute to Tallahassee.

“I’m interested in why people are being allowed to live out of state,” said state Rep. Vicki Lopez (R-Miami-Dade), who chairs the House State Administration Budget Subcommittee, which has been probing the spending decisions and management practices at the Department of Management Services (DMS). “We don’t pay any state employee to commute.”

But, in a pattern reminiscent of lavish travel expenditures by top presidential aides working out of state for the University of Florida, more than $56,000 in tax dollars have been spent for commuting costs for four DMS employees, Lopez’s committee found. Those numbers do not include commuting costs for DMS Secretary Pedro Allende, who lives in Miami. 

DMS is responsible for managing various workforce and business-related functions, including real estate, procurement, human resources, retirement, telecommunications, and fleet management. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, the Legislature appropriated $1.1 billion to DMS, according to the January audit report.

Documents obtained by the Florida Trident show the bulk of the reimbursements went to the agency’s data director, Edward Rhyne, who resides in Maryland. Rhyne was hired in March  2023 and earns $206,276 annually. So far, Rhyne has collected nearly $42,000 in reimbursements for travel costs, most of which are listed as “routine job duties” and “out of state flights” to Tallahasee, according to committee data.  

The other three employees, all part of the DMS “Data Team” and all highly paid, are spread throughout the country: one in West Virginia, one in Idaho, and one in Bethesda, Md.

All of them have been reimbursed by the state for “out of state” travel costs to Tallahassee totaling thousands of dollars. 

Efforts to reach Rhyne, Allende, and the DMS communications department for comment on Friday were  unsuccessful.

Allende, an attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Florida law school, was appointed DMS Secretary by Gov. Ron DeSantis in June  2022. At the time, he was a member of Florida’s Cybersecurity Advisory Council, and had previously worked for the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, among other federal appointments. 

In November 2023, DeSantis included Allende among his appointees to the Government Efficiency Task Force, a voter-approved group charged with improving government fiscal efficiency.

For Lopez and others, questions remain about Allende’s narrow focus on IT, leaving the rest of the agency largely overlooked, as the audit in part suggested. The watchdog findings included a lack of supporting data and record keeping, such as mismatched identification numbers used to keep track of millions of dollars worth of vehicles.  

“This is a mess,” said Lopez. “And when you see the magnitude of all the issues that we’re seeing at DMS, it (begs) the question, should the secretary be here full time?”

Costs for his own commuting, along with the tens of thousands of dollars in travel costs for Allende’s out-of-state data team hires, are expected to be addressed at Lopez’s next committee meeting on Tuesday morning.

Allende did not dispute any of the auditor general’s findings.

In the meantime, a bill (HB1445) sponsored by state Rep. Debbie Mayfield (R-Melbourne), and its Senate companion (SB 1760) sponsored by Sen. Erin Grall (R-Vero Beach) would require certain public officers and employees to be residents of the state, as well as U.S. citizens. Additionally, the legislation requires agency secretaries such as Allende to “reside in the same counties as their respective headquarters.”

Award-winning journalist Michelle DeMarco has returned to journalism after two decades in public service. As a print reporter, she covered two state capitols and earned multiple state awards. Her investigative work included unearthing an upscale housing development built atop an abandoned dump and the hanging deaths of women inmates.