Gov. Ron DeSantis is on his way out.
Byron Donalds will take over the position on Jan. 5. He's already appointed a transition team.
There's a lot more work to be done. The governor-elect has just two months to prepare to lead one of the country's largest state governments. But what actually happens during a governor's transition?
WUSF’s Douglas Soule talked with Jeff Kottkamp, the president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch. The group publishes a handbook to help incoming governors navigate the process.
The interview below was edited for length.
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It's been eight years. Can you remind the public what actually happens between Election Day and a new governor taking office?
"The transition is an enormous amount of work. You have to start assembling your team. One of the things you have to do is start preparing a budget. Shortly after the new year, the new governor will have to present the proposed budget. You also have to start interviewing people to fill in your agency heads. So you need to find a new secretary of health and secretary of education — and on and on. It's an incredible amount of work in a short period of time.
"Your first session, your first year in office, really sets the tone for your entire four-year term. And so making sure you're on firm ground, that you have a solid legislative agenda, a solid budget, great leadership on your team — these are all really important, and it all has to be done in two months."
How does the position selection process work?
"Some of the positions are outright appointed by the governor, some are appointed by the Cabinet, but typically the Cabinet will follow the lead of the governor. So that will all come together at Cabinet meetings after they all take office in January. But what's happening now is the governor has just announced his transition team. The transition team will now bring in some additional staff. They'll start compiling lists of names for people that they want to interview and provide a short list to the governor to select the secretaries for these agencies."
What happens to existing leadership?
"One of the things that happens if you're a sitting agency head at the time, you're all asked to submit your resignations so that the new administration has the opportunity to put in somebody else if they choose to. Now they may choose to interview somebody that is currently in a position, but often you'll see a change, particularly at the top."
Does everyone need to tender their resignations, or just the top-level employees?
"It's only going to be top-level employees because you need to have institutional knowledge. You need to have people in place that know how to get the day-to-day work done.
"You want to make sure that each of the agencies are following the leadership of the new governor and the new administration, and that's generally why you have some changes at the top."
You went through this process personally. You were the lieutenant governor for former Gov. Charlie Crist when he served from 2007 to 2011. What was the Jeb Bush to Crist transition like?
"I really didn't think about it during the election. You're just so focused on winning the election. So we announced our transition team the next day, and then I spent basically the next two months in Tallahassee, day after day after day of interviews, of briefings, of meetings, and all of it paid off because we had a really, really great first session. It really sets the tone for primarily the first two years of the administration. But it really is long, grueling days."
Let's go back to the budget. Donalds takes office on Jan. 5. He has to submit his budget proposal less than a month later. How does that happen?
"Well, you've got to hire a good budget chief. So that's going to be one of the first people they hire if they haven't already done it. They'll lead that charge, and then you got to break it up into the individual segments of the budget."
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
