This is a production of WEDU PBS Tampa, St. Petersburg Sarasota.

There's a duel in Tallahassee over proposals to lower property taxes or sales taxes.

Florida's congressional delegation fought hard in D.C. to get federal funds to help rebuild the state after two devastating hurricanes, but now the funds have been canceled.

We'll tell you why.

And new research says that Florida is the number one state at risk of experiencing coastal flooding in the next 25 years.

Some of the most vulnerable areas may be just around your corner.

These stories and more are next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos joining our panel this week.

We have Kathryn Varn who is a reporter for Axios Tampa Bay.

We have Roberto Torres, who's a business owner and an independent, not a member of political party.

Janelle Irwin Taylor is a journalist and the publisher of Southeast Politics.

And Travis Horn is founder and CEO of Bullhorn Communications and a Republican.

Thank you for joining us this week on the panel.

Thanks for having us.

We begin with the activity in Tallahassee.

Governor Ron DeSantis says he wants to save Floridians about $1,000 on their property tax bills over the next year.

It's part of his push to eliminate property taxes entirely in 2026.

This comes after a proposed sales tax cut by the House speaker.

The governor's rebate needs to be approved by the legislature.

It clashes with a proposal by Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, who wants to reduce the sales tax rate from 6% to 0.25%.

Both proposals would provide $5 billion in tax relief.

If approved, the property tax rebates would be issued in December, according to the governor's office.

Perez says his proposed sales tax break is a way to make Florida more affordable.

Senate President Ben Albritton said he thinks both ideas are worthy of thought and consideration, although he prefers a one time non-recurring relief in the final tax package, leaving a permanent tax reduction for future consideration.

Ultimately, the governor would like to place it on the 2026 Florida ballot for a constitutional amendment eliminating property taxes permanently.

Travis, I'd like to start with you.

Is the property tax rebate a good strategy for Republicans?

Well, I think, you know, I'm a Reagan Republican.

I never met a tax cut I didn't like.

You know, so I'm going to say that I never thought we'd have this conversation really coming up.

Going to school in Florida.

Born and raised here.

Family owns property here.

Have owned property here.

I always thought, wow, wouldn't it be nice if we could ultimately, one day you really own the property because as it stands, you never really own the property.

There's always the tax man.

And if you don't pay the taxes, someone will take the property away from you.

My mom's lived in the same home now going over 40 or 50 years.

And will she ever before she passes away?

Will she ever really own that property?

No.

Not really.

So I welcome the conversation.

I don't, you know, we'll let them hash it out, whether it's a sales tax cut for now or, or a long term property tax reduction.

I'd love to see us eventually at least have some sort of big exemption that maybe after a certain period of years of owning property tolls, if you can do that without there being any kinds of constitutional problems for equal protection or anything like that, if you could formulate something like that, I'd love to see it.

Roberto, the House speaker, and the governor clearly are sparring in public.

Um, how does this bode for the Democrats in the midterm elections?

Who are the candidates who are watching this?

I think it's an accounting problem.

I think that they recognize that there has to be some sort of relief, whether that comes with like a permanent or a temporary reduction.

I mean, two totally different approaches.

One says ignore school districts or your roads.

We're going to we're going to lose this funding that actually goes into into those things.

And the ones that are disproportionately affected are the ones that live in rural areas that depend on more schools built or hiring the best and the brightest, which are the teachers we already have.

We have a drain, especially in Hillsborough County, which is the eighth largest school district to other surrounding school districts that have a larger tax base that can that can recruit those teachers and pay them more.

Right.

And on the on the sales tax form, um, the opportunity to provide some relief with inflation.

I welcome it all the time.

I mean, I see people struggle to afford their groceries.

However, that idea that sales tax, we're going to also lose that on the tourism side.

And that's troubling, because we also have this idea to pay for infrastructure, which are the things that we enjoy through that.

Kathryn, when you all are doing your stories on Axios Tampa Bay, what are the residents telling you?

Is there is one more favorable than the other?

Do they have an option that they prefer?

I we haven't heard too much from readers on this issue.

I do think one of the biggest questions that we have, and something I've heard from local government officials, is, is how local governments will be funded if property taxes were eliminated or there was a big cut.

I mean, you're local, you know, police department, fire department, parks, schools, you know, are all like are all funded through largely property taxes.

And so, um, you know, there's been a pattern in Tallahassee of eroding what's called home rule.

You know, where the, the local government, uh, decides what's best for its own residents.

And this would be kind of the ultimate erosion of home rule.

So that's definitely one of the biggest questions we have.

And that we want to try to, you know, get a better sense of for our readers.

So they they, you know, know what's actually at stake and what will impact them on a day to day basis.

Janelle, this is the first legislative session after our devastating hurricane season.

So many more voters expected sturdy conversations around the whole issue of insurance.

Um, it will there be a political consequence to having so much attention on property taxes, sales taxes, homestead instead of really tackling the issue of rising cost of insurance?

You know, in a in a former life, I was a communications director, so I have some experience on that side of things.

And if I were working for Governor Ron DeSantis right now, I would be looking at this as an opportunity to say, okay, well, we we haven't seen much movement on the property insurance front.

We're working on it.

It's a slow roll sort of thing.

So here's something that we can do immediately to offer property owners some relief as they still continue to face these higher than normal property insurance rates, but I don't think that it should be ignored.

The conversation about regressive tax, right?

Sales tax is inherently regressive because it affects everybody the same.

So if you're going to roll something back, why not have it be the tax that's going to benefit.

A tax rollback that's going to benefit everybody rather than just property owners who typically are more affluent than non-property owners.

But, you know, there's also the argument that maybe those savings, if you're a landlord, trickle down to your tenants.

So, you know, there's there's really strong arguments to be had no matter what side of this argument you're on.

Any way you slice it, though, the governor is able to pitch this to his constituency.

As you know, I'm trying to give you some relief because I know your wallet is hurting right now, right?

And the other big story that we're following is so many different communities.

Were expecting relief coming their way because of the projects that were approved in Congress in the past six months.

After two devastating hurricanes hit the Tampa Bay area, U.S.

Representatives fought in Congress for millions of dollars in relief.

And then earlier this month, Congress voted to cancel every one of those projects.

The Tampa Bay region's five U.S.

Representatives secured at least $105.5 million in combined special projects this fiscal year.

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna fought for Pinellas County, with Saint Petersburg set to receive $9 million to help keep residents from being inundated by floodwater.

Clearwater beach was slated for nearly $1.8 million in improvements to keep storm water at bay.

The funding became collateral damage in the struggle to keep the federal government running after March the 14th.

The bill didn't include local projects.

Almost every Republican voted for it all, but one Democrat voted against the bill.

Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan lost more local money than anyone, including more than $28 million for a Longboat Key Storm resiliency project.

Local projects are often criticized as pork or earmarks, and were banned in 2011, only to be returned in 2021.

With stricter rules, representatives must sign forms indicating they do not benefit financially from the projects.

Janelle, what's your take on this?

What are the communities supposed to do next?

They were counting on this money and now it's not coming.

You're going to see a lot of conversations at the state level and at the county level, both in Hillsborough and Pinellas and other places that have been impacted by this.

But I think something worth looking at in this is something that's not even actually directly related to those cuts.

And that is the issue that's still plaguing Pinellas County beaches with beach nourishment.

There is a hang up there with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers really being a stickler for the requirement that all beachfront property owners impacted by beach nourishment sign over their easements so that the Army Corps of Engineers can access that land, and that has not happened.

So therefore the beach nourishment hasn't happened.

And you mentioned Anna Paulina Luna.

She's one of the people who's been fighting for that.

So when you're already facing the lack of beach nourishment, which helps prevent damage from hurricanes, they're called barrier islands for a reason.

You're really kind of exacerbating the next hurricane season.

So that's really something that elected officials at whatever level, are going to have to pay very close attention to and make sure that this double whammy doesn't make our next hurricane season that much worse.

Politically, it's been interesting to watch the conversations about who's saying what are we voting in favor of something that Trump is is in favor of.

It's really showcasing the insecurity about how do we deal with the Trump administration, even among the Democrats, they are opposing each other publicly.

Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi has been very upset over Chuck Schumer's decision to go with a vote.

Roberto As a former Democrat, what does it do when you have these very high profile Democrats arguing against each other at moments like this?

I think that's the reason why we became an independent.

I mean, it's it's this idea that we had the most devastating hurricane season in the last 100 years affect our region, and now we're not going to have relief.

This is our Katrina.

This is our superstorm Sandy.

Republican and Democrat.

In both times, there were tons of relief and effort to rebuild.

And the fact that we were left in the dust.

There's no Superman coming.

The idea that the federal government is a trusted partner to help us build our infrastructure that belongs to everyone.

It's just not there anymore.

Travis, how do you feel about all of this?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?

So, I mean, I think you're going to see our bipartisan effort to claw back some of those funds federally.

You know, but those of us who don't live on the water and who aren't living on beachfront property are not as terribly concerned about it, obviously.

Right.

So, I mean, but again, if you're more forward thinking and you think it will ultimately trickle down, it will impact the entire community.

Yes, we do want to see some of those those improvements.

You know.

I think that's a really good observation.

However, we just saw in this particular season that areas that were not on a specific flood zone plain became flooded.

So it may not necessarily be that you're among the water.

You don't have to live by the water to be affected by by by climate change.

And that's really a great segue into the next story that we're tracking, watching very closely.

Florida is the state where the most people and properties will be at risk of severe coastal flooding by the year 2050.

That's according to a new analysis that was just released this week.

Take a look.

The nonprofit Climate Central found that in just 25 years, a total of 23,000 people and 17,000 homes in Florida will experience annual coastal flooding due to high tides or strong winds whipping water onto land.

This includes areas previously unaffected.

The study also found that Florida is especially vulnerable with more homes and people than other at risk states such as New York, New Jersey and Louisiana, partly because the long coast lies almost at sea level.

It also reflects the state's approach to zoning and planning, with high population density right in the areas most vulnerable to catastrophic damage.

The research was released along with the Coastal Risk Finder, that allows users to zoom in to specific areas and adjust outcomes.

Storm surges as high as ten feet destroyed thousands of homes on the Gulf Coast in the past year.

The higher the sea levels, the more potential storm surge.

The report, including the Coastal Risk Finder, can be found online at Climate central.org.

And just within the last 48 hours, the forecasters came out with a predictions for this year's hurricane season.

They're predicting a 17 named storms, nine hurricanes, four of them.

Major, it's not good news.

What are some of the things, Kathryn, that you expect we should be looking at seeing in our coverage as as you.

All the reporters help our community prepare for what may be ahead this hurricane season.

So, I mean, hurricane season is what keeps me up at night.

I mean, it's just it's, you know, the price of paradise, right?

Um, I think we we really got to pay attention to water.

And that water is the most dangerous aspect of hurricanes.

Even though we saw some really high profile damage from wind, like the roof of Tropicana Field and some other damage like that.

But, you know, water killed, storm surge, killed 12 people in Pinellas County.

And, uh, and, you know, battered a lot of homes along the coast.

But, you know, great point about inland flooding being an issue as well.

Rainfall, you know, being so powerful and lasting for so long that it's that it's actually, you know, dousing all of the drainage infrastructure that we have in place.

So I think everyone needs to be really worried about water and having a plan in place, you know, to to get themselves to safety.

Uh, you know, rather than, you know, being stuck in, in a flooded area.

Um, so, I mean, and that that report, you know, I think is really important and everyone needs to be paying attention to as we're, uh, you know, heading into a hurricane season where a lot of places still are rebuilding.

I was just at Sunset Beach on Treasure Island last night, which was my my favorite beach, my go to.

And I, you know, I hadn't been to it since right after the storm.

And it kind of looked in a lot of ways pretty similar to right after the storm.

I mean, a lot of those houses, you know, were, uh, are still rebuilding caddies on the beach.

They're they're operating out of a tent right now because their building got so destroyed.

So, um.

It's you know, what's interesting, though, is we spent the last century draining Florida.

We did.

If you look at the history and we decided maybe it's not a great idea and it didn't work out so well really either, um, draining into the Everglades.

And so they pulled back.

But we still have water management districts because this is such a big issue, it's going to continue to be a big issue.

It's Florida.

There are more people, as you saw in the the flyovers living on the coast than ever before.

But we didn't do that.

We we live inland.

We live on high ground.

If you look at drive down Bay shore, notice the homes that were not impacted.

The older homes, the antebellum mansion.

Now it's sitting on high ground.

There's there's undulations in the land that they knew about when they built these homes.

Right.

And so, you know, it's just going to continue to be an issue in Florida.

I love, like I said, I love Florida, Price of Paradise.

I'm staying.

I've heard people say they're leaving.

Yeah.

I don't think that's going to be a long term problem though.

We're not going to see people turning away from Florida because of.

How do you feel about that?

So in some ways, this is being addressed.

I think you could make the argument that it's not being addressed aggressively or quickly enough.

But, you know, you're looking at things like there's an ongoing attempt right now, as we speak in Tallahassee, to increase the amount of money available for people to get grants and reimbursements and such to raise their homes.

The Elevate Florida program.

Florida homes, I think, is.

Elevate Florida is offering up to 75% to help you cover the cost of elevating your home to today's standards.

And there's and there's a separate effort going on in the legislature right now to kind of include raising homes in a program that already existed as well.

So you are seeing efforts to not just look at I mean, you can't put the bathwater back in the bath, right?

Like I feel like I got that saying wrong, but whatever.

Um, so, you know, how do we take what we already have?

You can't stop climate change from happening.

What's already happened.

But you can say, let's build smarter, let's be resilient.

And things like hardening and raising homes, you know, moving forward with new building codes, making sure that we're building in appropriate places.

That's really what Florida can do right now.

And I think you're seeing that being embraced on both sides of the aisle, which is a lovely thing to see in One, 2025.

Is to elevate a home, though I'm pretty sure it's over $7,500, so.

It's quite.

It's probably a drop in the bucket.

It's quite expensive.

Quite expensive.

Especially now at a time when everyone is having to to do this.

That's affected by the 50/50 rule by FEMA.

And I think at one, you know, once again, is something that disproportionately will affect lower income people, renters who, you know, can't rely on a landlord to do the right thing or or maybe their landlord just sells off the property and demolishes it or whatever, or people living in mobile homes.

I mean, that's that's something I think about a lot.

In coastal communities where where tourism represents perhaps 75% of the economy or the local economy, and a lot of those homes are either beach rentals or not primary residence.

It's easier to say, well, this does not affect somebody that perhaps doesn't have a yacht or have a house on the beach.

However, there's a lot of people that buy groceries and work in the local economy, whether it's maintenance, repair or they actually provide like a blue collar workforce.

I think it's it's it's not ideal for us to say, perhaps this is something that we ought to look at.

However, the more resources that we delve into prevention and the idea that if we can learn from all this onslaught of people the same way that you guys love Florida, there's like about another million people that are coming within the next ten years, and particularly 25,000 per year for the next ten years in the Hillsborough County.

So we might end up between four and a half, almost 5 million people living in this Bay area.

So how are we going to address that, and how are we going to provide a successful, resilient infrastructure with the appropriate funding mechanisms, which is, you know, perhaps, you know, taxes, property taxes or sales tax.

And planners and political leaders are saying we need data to build and base these decisions on.

And so this study says we're providing data.

The climate study, the Coastal Risk Finder, where you can add information and find out what the results would be in your neighborhood.

But when you take a closer look at it, when you you can adjust the outcome based on whether or not political leaders have imposed or implemented green energy.

Moving away from fossil fuels.

So the question is if they have storm, um, wind, wind power and and sun, solar, solar power, um, that will benefit the areas.

Correct.

So the question is, is this truly a resource or is this a political tool that would be used?

I don't I don't see how solar is going to stop the water from flowing in, you know, or green.

Green.

I mean, I bought a hybrid recently.

Newsflash Republican bought a hybrid.

But, um, it's great.

With the greenhouse effects there.

So experts say that it does affect the temperature and all these different things in the climate.

I don't think that's that's a long term fix, though.

Well, let me let me just clarify that a little bit here, because while I'm saying that you can't, you know, you can't really undo what's already happened.

You can take steps to keep it from getting worse.

So while I'm while I'm saying that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working aggressively on mitigation and resiliency strategies.

Now, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't still be effort to make sure that moving forward, we're not exacerbating problems that already exist.

To make our houses energy efficient, where they have solar panels on top of it when there's a major storm that comes.

I mean, they can get back online within 24 hours instead of having to purchase a generator and then having to live in heat for the next 7 to 14 days.

Well, there's pros and cons right to to every side of it.

Um, before we run out of time, I'd love to get your take on what are the other big stories that you all think we should be following this week?

Travis, I'd like to start with you.

Well, like I said, we in Tampa Bay, we've grown tired of the conversation about the Rays.

I think I think I have, but but I've also grown tired of not getting to a solution.

So I think I'm glad to see there's groups stepping up, offering to possibly purchase the raise, and maybe get them a permanent home, and I'd love to see that conversation eventually have an end.

Move forward.

Move beyond.

Move the ball forward.

[LAUGHTER] Roberto, what would you say is the is the other big story we should be looking at?

I think for me it's immigration.

Um, it really pains my heart that they removed the protection for 500,000 people and allowing them the opportunity for gainful employment, and it's going to get worse because the administration hasn't said no, that they're going to slow down, or that they're trying to do the right thing.

If the if the one thing that they should do is create a create a mechanism for somebody to have a path towards either citizenship or at least permanent residency.

As a business owner, how does this immigration issue affect the business?

Affects me.

I have three employees that had that temporary protection status that that the judge was able to to grant an injunction.

Towards so so it's a little standard relief but I think there's a lot of work to do still.

Thank you.

Kathryn.

What do you think is a big story?

I've been thinking a lot about fluoride this week.

The Miami-Dade County Commission just voted to ban fluoride in that county.

And that's, I think, the largest government that has voted to do that.

And we're seeing kind of this slow trickle of local governments doing that in Florida.

It came up in Hillsborough maybe a month ago in Hillsborough, actually struck it down and said, no, we're going to keep fluoride.

But if that's an issue you care about, you know, it'd be worth looking at what your local government is doing and what you know, if they're talking about potentially banning fluoride.

When Hillsborough came out against it, what was the argument?

Um, I think it's pretty in line with what, like Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is saying that there's potential dangers, um, to high exposure levels to children.

Um, of course, Dennis, Dennis and scientists have said, you know, the amount of fluoridation in local water supplies is not nearly at that level.

That is harmful.

And I think that's what won out in Hillsborough to where they decided, no, we're going to keep fluoride for now.

Something to to keep your eye on for sure.

Definitely.

Janelle, what would you say is the big story?

So much deja vu from the early 2000 in the Pinellas County Commission.

If you don't know about that, you know, look at what happened in Pinellas County the last time the Tampa.

Bay times won a Pulitzer for their editorials.

Exactly.

It was it was it was a lot.

So, um, my things a little bit wonky.

Um, so thoroughbred horse racing.

Like wonky.

Thoroughbred horse racing is a big topic right now in Tallahassee with the legislative session ongoing.

You have an effort to decouple, um, card rooms and slot machines from horse racing.

So it would take it would say that horse race racing tracks don't have to have live racing in order to host slot machines and card rooms.

Obviously there are pros and cons, there are strong arguments on both sides, but what I'm looking at isn't that specific issue, but what it means in general, because the the argument against it is that it's corporate welfare for the company that runs one of the horse tracks.

So to see whether or not that argument wins out, I think is telling to a lot of other issues as well.

Wow.

Well, none of you talked about the NCAA women's final, which is a really big deal.

So I would say that that for me is something that I'm interested in, even though I'm not a big basketball fan.

However, I'm all about the local economy.

The last time that they played here, this is the fourth time that we've had them, um, generated $16 million.

So that's really great for the local economy.

Um, anything else before we go that you all want to add in?

You know, Roberto mentioned the immigration issue, and there's another bill in Tallahassee right now that would lower the age that kids can have jobs.

So that's also something that I'm watching.

It's very, very heated debate on that.

So to see where that goes will be very, very interesting.

It's loosely related to the immigration question to fill that gap.

About that on a prior show.

And kids as young as 14 and 15 years old talking about maybe working before 630, after a certain hour on school nights.

No guaranteed meal breaks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we I'm not happy to know that protectionism and horse racing is one of the bigger issues in Tallahassee.

It needs to be property insurance.

Good point.

All great issues that we'll continue to follow.

Thank you for joining me on this week, Florida This Week.

That's it for us.

Thanks to our panel again, Kathryn Varn, Roberto Torres, Travis Horn, and Janelle Irwin Taylor.

Send your comments about this program to ftw@wedu.org.

Remember, the show is on every Friday night at 8:30pm on Sunday afternoons at 12:30pm and online, and you can watch past shows on YouTube.

Don't forget to friend us on Facebook from our entire team here at WEDU.

Have a great weekend!

[music]