MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida department head is under scrutiny over an official posting that appears to campaign against the upcoming abortion amendment vote.
Campaigns against and for may be partisan and political — but official state business may not be.
Which is why Jason Weida of the Agency for Health Care Administration is under scrutiny and under fire.
The AHCA posted what appeared to be part of a campaign against the upcoming vote on Amendment 4 that will allow voters to choose whether to take government out of abortion healthcare decisions.
“Current Florida Law Protects Women, Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety,” the state website proclaims in large print.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been working to defeat the amendment, which is a massive grassroots effort to put the question to voters in the wake of Florida’s tightened timelines for pregnancy terminations, now only legal before six weeks.
“You don’t use state resources, you don’t use a state agency website that is supposed to apolitical, agnostic as it relates to politics, policy and philosophy,” said Democratic State Sen. Jason Pizzo.
While state Democrats crafted legal action against AHCA on Friday, Pizzo, the incoming senate minority leader, tried diplomacy first.
“I said listen, this is my good faith, honest belief that this is in violation of the law, and what’s of greater importance is that the content is removed before it continues to do any harm,” Pizzo said.
Those efforts apparently failed.
The official department response?
A prepared statement that says the webpage is to “provide information and transparency to Floridians” and that “many in the media have not covered it correctly.”