TALLAHASSEE — DeSantis administration officials knew about aviation safety issues and budget overruns by the Florida State Guard almost a year before those accusations became public this month, but fired the informant who warned them, records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show.
James Ethridge, a retired Navy commander, was hired in March to analyze and fix safety issues with the guard’s Aviation Response Squadron. He quickly provided a report that detailed “severe” safety violations and mismanagement that meant “millions of dollars wasted.”
He recommended the guard — reactivated by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 to help with disaster response, public safety and, more recently, immigration enforcement — ground all flights immediately until the safety problems could be addressed.
Three weeks after he was hired and days after sharing his concerns with the guard’s executive director Mark Thieme and then-chief of staff Jay Arnold, Ethridge was fired. Arnold told him by phone that “it just wasn’t working out,” but in his official letter of termination said the cause was “a result of your failure to follow directives, and conduct unbecoming a public employee,” Ethridge said.
The DeSantis administration managed to keep Ethridge’s concerns, and those of other guard employees, under wraps until last week, when the Sentinel broke the news that senior officers, pilots and soldiers were leaving the agency after alleging misuse of taxpayer dollars, unreported sexual harassment claims and...
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