The amount is a fraction of what Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has spent to build the sprawling tent-and-trailer compound at a remote airstrip in the Florida Everglades
Author Archives: Kate Payne
Kate Payne is The Trib's state government reporter.
She’s spent her career in nonprofit newsrooms in Florida and Iowa and her reporting has run the gamut, from interviewing presidential candidates on the campaign trail to middle schoolers in the lunch line.
Kate has won awards for her political reporting, sound editing and feature writing and was named 2024 journalist of the year by the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Kate’s previous newsrooms include the Associated Press and WLRN Public Media in Miami. Her stories and photographs have been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR and PBS, and her reporting on the death penalty has been cited in a filing in the U.S. Supreme Court.
You can reach Kate at kate.payne@floridatrib.org
Posted inFlorida
From ‘low-cost’ to $1 million a day: questions remain about ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ funding
As legislators in Tallahassee are locked in back-and-forth negotiations over the state budget, GOP leaders have downplayed questions about who will ultimately pay for the multi-million-dollar facility
Posted inFlorida
The rise and fall of an AI-driven ‘local news outlet’ in South Florida
The search to find out who was behind the South Florida Standard shows how easy it is for the real people behind digital doppelgangers to remain in the shadows
Posted inElections
Florida lawmakers cede redistricting authority to executive power
Florida lawmakers voted largely along party lines to rubber-stamp a new Congressional district map.
Posted inHealth
‘Release the data’: Florida Trib report on maternal health spurs billboard campaign
The campaign was launched by Mayday Health, a reproductive health education nonprofit that uses digital advertising and guerilla marketing campaigns.
Posted inFlorida
As Florida restricted abortion, state’s maternal mortality committee went dark
A secretive panel hadn’t publicly released any annual findings about maternal deaths in years until a Florida Trib reporter asked about the lack of action
Posted inImmigration, State Government
Lawmakers curtail governor’s emergency powers after ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ spending spree
Less than two weeks after the Florida Trib reported that newly released documents showed the DeSantis administration had burned through more than a million dollars a day on the makeshift tents-and-trailers facility, both chambers of the GOP-controlled Legislature voted to add new limits on the fund.
Posted inElections
Florida lawmakers approve bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote
Critics say the change could wrongfully prevent thousands of eligible Floridians from voting over paperwork technicalities
Posted inFlorida
Medicaid work requirements didn’t work in other states. Florida considers trying it anyway
Work requirements in other states have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, with little to show for it, and those who keep an eye on Florida’s lead family welfare agency question how the troubled bureaucracy can handle another regulatory hurdle.
Posted inFlorida
‘Constitutional trainwreck’: Florida lawmakers seek surveillance crackdown
The legislation, which has come under fierce criticism from civil-rights and free speech advocates, represents another expansion of Florida’s security apparatus under Gov. Ron DeSantis.