Florida state agency head Pedro Allende, whose six-figure salary is being targeted for suspension due to an unsatisfactory job performance, has been nominated by President Donald Trump to fill a high-ranking position at the Department of Homeland Security.
The May 6 nomination has at least one state official questioning whether Allende has already abandoned his responsibilities as Secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services, which operates under a $1 billion budget serving state government by providing workforce and business operational support.
According to a notice posted by Congress.gov, Trump nominated Allende for the position of Under Secretary for Science and Technology at Homeland Security under current Secretary Kristi Noem.
The nomination was received by the U.S. Senate earlier this week and referred to the Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee, where it awaits a hearing, the committee confirmed.
“I don’t know how the appointment impacts the situation [at DMS],” said Republican state Rep. Vicki Lopez, chair of the state House State Administration Budget Subcommittee, which has been probing questionable spending and loose oversight at DMS under Allende’s leadership.. “It makes me feel like he’s checked out.”
A January report on DMS by the state Auditor General detailed troubling findings related to lax oversight and Allende’s inability to account for 2,200 missing vehicles valued at $57 million in the state’s fleet, among other issues. Allende did not contest those findings.
Following the audit, Allende failed to clearly answer committee members’ questions about a number of issues, including an employee services contract left unsigned, the abrupt cancellation of an office space lease in the state Capitol, and a statutorily required data collection project roughly three years overdue.
As first reported by the Florida Trident, Allende also came under fire after hiring four high-ranking employees who reside out of the state and charged taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in commuting costs to Tallahassee. When questioned by the committee, Allende confirmed he also didn’t live in the capital, and traveled at taxpayer expense to Tallahassee from Miami.
But Lopez said Allende by and large has evaded accountability for the problems occurring at the agency under his watch. “Secretary Allende gets very convoluted in his answers to us, then it gets very complex,” Lopez said following an attempt to elicit answers from him during one committee hearing.
Lopez recommended in March that Allende’s $210,000 salary be withheld pending resolution of the outstanding issues. “Not a dime will be replaced or released until he can answer these basic questions,” she declared at the time.
Lopez was joined last month by House Budget Committee Chairman Lawrence McClure, who requested a host of records from DMS and gave Allende until May 16, 2025, to comply.
Thus far, the requested records have not been received from DMS, Lopez confirmed. “I don’t expect him to answer,” she said. “I think his priority is to get out of town.”
The agency on Thursday did not respond to a request for comment on the Trump nomination and the outstanding legislative records demand.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Allende as head of DMS in June 2022. An attorney who worked for several federal agencies including Homeland Security during the first Trump administration, Allende later teamed up with over 100 other Trump administration veterans, including current Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, to back DeSantis over Trump in the 2024 presidential race.
An attempt to reach Allende through his communications director was unsuccessful.
Michelle DeMarco is an award-winning investigative reporter with the the Florida Center for Government Accountability who returned to journalism after more than two decades in public service. Contact her at demarco@flcga.org. The Florida Trident is operated by the Florida Center for Government Accountability (www.flcga.org), a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.