A long-delayed accounting of Florida’s disaster spending fund shows the state is sitting on more than $400 million in unpaid bills tied to its immigration enforcement operations, but the numbers tell a more complicated story than “the state can’t pay its bills”: Florida is still waiting on more than half a billion dollars in reimbursements the federal government promised months ago.

The report, submitted by the Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) on September 11, was due to lawmakers on July 15 — nearly two months late. It arrived just an hour before the Legislative Budget Commission met to vote on additional funding for the state’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund, the account Gov. Ron DeSantis has used since 2023 to cover both hurricane recovery and immigration enforcement costs under a continuously renewed state of emergency.

According to the report, Florida had 592 outstanding vendor invoices tied to immigration enforcement as of June 30 — including costs from the now-closed “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility in the Everglades — totaling more than $417 million. Separately, the state owes another 82 invoices connected to Hurricane Milton and 27 tied to Hurricane Helene, a reminder that the fund’s obligations extend well beyond the immigration fight that has dominated headlines.

The more striking figure may be on the other side of the ledger: Washington has sent Florida only $84.5 million of the $608 million in federal reimbursements it committed to for detention-facility costs, leaving more than $523 million outstanding from the federal government’s own promises. FDEM Director Jared Perdue told lawmakers his office is “aggressively” pursuing that money, while emphasizing the state remains prepared to respond to a major storm.

That preparedness carries real stakes. The report projects the fund could end the current fiscal year with a $1.5 billion deficit in a worst-case hurricane scenario — a liability state budget writers will need to reckon with well before the next storm threatens the coast.

Lawmakers responded to the overdue report by approving $240 million in general revenue for the fund and authorizing FDEM to spend up to $250 million to clear pending invoices from immigration enforcement and hurricane recovery alike.

Democratic legislators, including Senate Minority Leader Lori Berman and Rep. Anna Eskamani, criticized the timing and completeness of the disclosure, calling for greater legislative oversight. Their concerns about transparency are reasonable — a report due in July should not arrive in September, an hour before a funding vote. But the underlying fiscal picture is less a story of state mismanagement than of a federal government slow to make good on money it already agreed to send, leaving Florida taxpayers to carry the balance of a border and immigration crisis that originated in Washington’s failure to enforce federal law in the first place.

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