>> This is a production of Wedu PBS, Tampa, Saint Petersburg, Sarasota.

>> Right now in WEDU, the governor and legislative leaders reached agreement on a tough new immigration bill.

More and more parents are using school vouchers to send their kids to private schools, and a large number of them are from wealthy families.

The migration to Florida shows signs of slowing, and a new Chamber of Commerce poll finds Floridians back the governor's effort to make it harder to amend the state constitution.

All this and more next on Florida This Week.

Welcome back.

Joining us on the panel this week, Janelle Irwin Taylor is a journalist and the publisher of Southeast Politics.

Hunter Branstner is the vice- president of the Polk County Young Republicans.

Victor Dimaio is a political consultant and a Democrat, and Kimberly Leonard is the politics reporter and author of The Florida Playbook for Politico.

Nice to see all of you.

Thank you for doing the show.

Well, after another special session of the legislature this week, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law two wide ranging immigration enforcement bills that will, as the Miami Herald puts it, usher in a new wave of requirements that aim to ensure that Florida is well positioned to help President Donald Trump identify and deport scores of immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Just a few days ago, the governor was threatening to veto the legislature's version of an immigration bill that was passed last month, calling it weak.

Here's what the governor is now saying.

>> All in all, I think this is really, really strong.

I commend the legislature for stepping up to the plate.

If they're able to able to pass the proposals as presented now, they can expect my strong support.

When the part time legislature meets in special session and cost taxpayers an additional $50,000 per day.

The regular session starts next month.

Democrats called this week's session a waste of time.

>> This is our second special session within 30 days to address a problem that really the federal government should be working on.

So that means that we have missed opportunities to focus on issues that are important to Floridians, like lowering the cost of health care or their auto insurance or their property insurance.

So yeah, a lot of time has been wasted on this.

While the Republicans in the legislature and the governor tries to suck up to Donald Trump.

And Republican State Senator Joe Gruters said this about the bills, he said this is about maximum collaboration and coordination with the Trump administration.

We have a president who is laser focused and a governor and cabinet who are laser focused on this side.

But meanwhile, the Democrats are not so happy about the about the bills.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said today the Florida legislature passed the most extreme anti-immigration legislation in the country, which creates a new state crime that will make it easier to target immigrants and kick Dreamers out of college.

Families will be separated, students will be saddled with debt, and fear will fracture our communities.

And Kimberly, let's start with you.

What are some of the provisions of the bill and how did they reach a compromise?

They were at odds just two weeks ago.

>> I know it was such a big turnaround, and it was very interesting to watch all the leaders come together yesterday praising each other.

There was kind of a love fest going on.

But what happened is that they really wanted to win on this.

They felt like Florida should be first.

And in talking to the Republican Party of Florida, they would often tell me that they saw this as the number one issue that they got inroads on at the ballot box and why people elected them.

So what the bill would do, first of all, it allows more local law local law enforcement officers to receive training to be able to essentially help federal immigration officers in order to assist, to have the state assist with deportations and turn people over.

One of the more controversial provisions that it has, which was also mentioned, is that it gets rid of in-state tuition for dreamers.

Those are people who were brought to the U.S. as children who are undocumented, who, you know, grew up here.

And so they'll no longer be able to receive that, that in-state tuition rate.

It also makes it a crime to enter Florida as someone who is undocumented, which is something that we haven't had.

And it creates a new enforcement board for immigration.

This is one of the big sticking points in the bill initially.

Who would be in charge of it?

What they ended up doing was that they created, instead of giving it all to the Agriculture Commissioner, which is what the legislature had wanted in the first place.

They're essentially splitting it with the governor.

The agriculture commissioner, the state attorney general and the the chief financial officer of the state.

And if they make decisions on this, they all have to be unanimous.

So they ended up sort of compromising on that.

But if you'll recall, DeSantis is actually set to appoint the next attorney general, as well as the next state chief financial officer.

So those who will be on this role will have close governor ties, or be the governor himself up against Wilton Simpson for some of these big decisions on immigration.

Kimberly, is there a bonus to law enforcement officers who cooperate with the federal government?

Is there a $1,000 bonus if they cooperate with the federal government in turning over some undocumented immigrants?

It's that but it's also training that is provided.

So there's $250 million that are set aside just so that local law enforcement officers know what to do, know where to go.

You know, basically Trump wants support from states on this.

He's going to be getting a lot of resistance from blue states who are already coming up with ways to sort of Trump proof their own states.

And so that's why you're seeing Florida go in the opposite direction.

And I think part of it too, is DeSantis also, you know, trying to make nice with Trump after what was a contentious primary during the 2024 election.

And so he is finding ways to show that he's a good sport and that, you know, they're going to support what Trump does and have basically Florida be first on anything like this.

So I don't think it's the last issue that we'll see Florida try to take charge on.

And, you know, something was left out of the bill.

And I want to read from Lawrence Mower of the Tampa Bay Times.

This is what he reports.

He says there's one topic that was off the table, though, going after the companies hiring undocumented immigrants and bills passed by the legislature and signed by DeSantis on Thursday.

State lawmakers are not requiring more companies to screen workers through E-Verify, the federal database that confirms an employee's citizenship status.

They are not assigning more resources to enforce it and aren't increasing penalties for companies who violated the governor had the E-Verify power all along.

Really only used it sparingly over the last three years.

>> Yeah.

So this is a provision that's really aimed at, you know, nobody in the GOP controlled legislature or in the executive office wants to be viewed as anti-business.

So this is a way to kind of throw throw a bone almost to Wilton Simpson in a way to say that, you know, we're not going to harass your business practices.

We're not going to get in the way.

And you have to understand, too, that there's an underlying conversation that's not been part of this debate, and that is that a lot of this immigration push stands to harm most the agriculture industry, because a lot of the labor that, you know, pick citrus and tomatoes and things like that, a lot of that is undocumented labor.

So there was there's been a lot of talk about that driving prices up.

So I think kind of the quiet part that's not being said out loud, you know, might have something to do with with prices at the grocery store.

All right, Hunter, what's your take on the bill that was passed or the two bills that were passed and signed into law.

>> Uh, I think it was a good compromise between the governor and the legislature.

Uh, there was a lot, of lot of heated moments for the past couple of weeks.

So I'm glad they came to some type of amicable agreement.

Uh, one of the most important things about this that I think a lot of people are overlooking is that the, uh, group between the CFO, the governor, the commissioner, and, um, is basically just under the FDLE still and the governor still has control of that.

So enforcement is still going to be under the governor.

Um, this little task force is more on funding.

It's going to be assistance, data gathering, cooperation with the feds.

So I think one thing that's really important is to realize that governor DeSantis isn't, you know, going to have to run everything through this task force.

It's still going to be, uh, his show in a way.

So I think a lot of people are overlooking that.

And I think the governor still won out on this.

He still got a lot of the things he wanted in this bill.

Uh, there's still some things that are kind of contentious in there.

So we'll see what happens.

But I'm excited about it.

And Hunter, one of the things that was taken away was, uh, help in college tuition for dreamers.

Uh, are you are you okay with that?

I'm not opposed to it.

Um, the way I look at it is this way.

It's a high risk, high reward situation if you come into the country illegally.

It's a crime regardless, right?

If you come to the country illegally, it's, it's you're you're risking your future on this.

And the parents knew that the parents, unfortunately, the kids were, uh, they were put up as chips on this.

They were just.

Hoping the kid's kind of innocent victims.

In a way.

Yeah, I wouldn't call them victims.

I'd say they're innocent in the situation, but their parents used them to stay, and then they.

They were hoping that they were going to get the free ride.

Um, do I think that those people should be kicked out of the country?

The kids?

No, I don't believe that's the case.

I don't believe that there should be a reward, though, for the risk that they took when they came here.

I mean, there's no you're not giving them a handout, though, to be clear, this was just giving them in-state tuition.

So it's not entirely a handout.

It's not like they get free.

I mean, some of them might, but.

Well, they get reduced tuition.

But the question is, will they drop out of college if they're in college, will they drop out of college?

Victor, what are you hearing?

You're part of LULAC, one of the Latino groups.

What are you.

>> President of the Hillsborough County Democratic Hispanic Caucus And I want to make several really key points that are important.

Number one, this had nothing to do with immigration.

It had everything to do with DeSantis running for president, because what they accomplished in this bill was and this is actually a part of 4 or 5 different sessions about immigration that they've had to pass these bills, and they've given billions of dollars into this, into this program of immigration.

And you know, how many people from Florida, that Florida has deported out of the state?

Zero.

Not one immigrant that's illegal has left Florida because of anything Florida does, because number one, Ice is the one that handles this.

This is a federal government responsibility.

This is all for show.

What was interesting for me is to see the legislature pushed back, because they've told a lot of Republicans I know have told me probably they're just tired of getting pushed around by the governor telling them what to do.

They overrode a they overrode a veto.

Which which is which is shocking that the Republicans would fight the, the the governor on this.

And there's a bunch of other vetoes coming too.

So the the governor, the legislature is finally going to be pushing back against the governor on a lot of stuff.

And number two, this is this this entire bill is unconstitutional, because inside that bill, there's a provision that if you are illegal and you and some and you murder somebody, you're automatically getting a death penalty with no trial, no, you know, no ability to defend yourself.

That's blatantly unconstitutional.

So you would expect lawsuits.

But, but, but the House Speaker Perez, the senate president, all Britain, they had nice things to say about the governor this week.

The governor had nice things to say about the agriculture commissioner.

I mean, you know, you're saying that it's all.

It's all Mickey Mouse.

I mean, really, I'm telling you, they have spent billions.

We have appropriated billions of dollars in this state to get rid of illegals, and they haven't gotten rid of one yet.

So that's, that's what I'm trying to say.

This is all a show horse thing for the governor.

Look good.

Yes, they kissed and made up.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's going to happen in this next session.

Coming up here in a few weeks.

Okay, well, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the number of families using state vouchers to attend private school has jumped in the last year.

The program was initially designed to help low and moderate income parents afford private schools.

But last year, lawmakers dropped the income limits on Florida's programs, opening the program to all families, regardless of income.

More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers for the first time in the 2023, 2024 school year.

That's a 67% increase from the year before, according to data from Step Up For Students.

That's the non-profit that administers most of the state's scholarships.

Now, one quarter of the families who receive the $8,000 state subsidy are in the top income bracket.

That's an income of $125,000 a year or more for a family of four.

Hunter I was surprised at that Orlando Sentinel report.

I mean, that's if one quarter of the families that are receiving vouchers are among the wealthiest families in Florida.

Um, it's a it's a subsidy for the wealthy.

Are you okay with that?

Or, you know, make the case why that should be.

I wouldn't agree with the terminology that it's a subsidy for the wealthy.

I mean, do the wealthy pay taxes?

Do they still pay taxes on everything they buy?

I mean, they're still part of society.

And the most important thing here.

It's not just the money, the voucher itself.

It's the ability to choose where you want to send your kid to school.

This is all about parents rights and their ability to govern their family unit.

The greatest form of governance is the family unit.

All right.

Going to the public school sector before this whole school choice thing choice thing popped off.

I had academies at my school where essentially we had legal academies, vet academies where if other districts didn't have that, they could try to apply to get in there.

So this just opens up more and more opportunity for students that if they don't want to go to a certain school, they can go to another.

It's not just about the wealthy parents, it's about everybody having more options.

And you're starting to see the influx of parents moving away from public school if they have that option.

So I think vilifying the idea of using a school voucher is absurd.

And they pay taxes anyways.

All right.

Victor, how would you respond?

This is a sin.

I mean, when I went to Catholic schools from first grade to 12th, my parents had to pay with no, with no subsidies, with no, with no pennies in it.

This a rich person making 100 or $200,000 a year has no business getting taxpayer money.

This is really should.

If you're going to give vouchers, give it to poor people who would like to send their kids to, uh, to a better school.

But the fact of the matter is giving, giving millionaires money, uh, to send to a private school and what's most important to me, and I've railed on this for for decades now, even on this program.

These private schools do not have to take the test, just like the public schools do.

This is this is just proves that the Republican Party hates public schools.

They hate the public schools, teachers unions.

And this is more punishment against them to try to literally destroy public education in this state.

And it's sinful what they're doing.

This is not this is not right.

It sounds great, but it's not good.

Hunter, you want to get back in?

Yeah.

But if you look at the decisions on how people how people govern their own families, they're rushing to go to private schools.

It's not just the wealthy.

People are leaving public schools because they want to get away from what the public schools are teaching.

So just saying Republicans hate it.

It's a, it's a falsehood.

Parents, citizens, taxpayers want to get away from what the public school system is until they start fixing it, or to a better place.

You just saying because they don't take a test, doesn't mean that the opinions and the choices that parents make are incorrect for their child and for the students.

But the point here is that millionaires and billionaires do not deserve a subsidy to send their kids to a private school.

That's the point.

Taxpayers.

The taxpayers.

Yeah.

So, Janelle, I mean, this is a startling trend.

I think the number went up by 67% last year.

What's the upshot?

If we see more and more people leaving the public school system and taking these school vouchers, and I should say a lot of schools charge more than $8,000 a year, for yearly tuition.

So some schools charge 15 or $20,000 a year.

But what's the upshot if we.

So I need like ten, 15 minutes to go through everything.

And we don't have that clearly.

So let's look at this from a couple of different perspectives here.

So first of all, the lower threshold of the income to have it being a top earner is $125,000 in this particular economy that we're in right now.

That's not a ton of money at $125,000.

A lot of people probably couldn't afford to send their kids to private school.

So at that lower level of the top level, you know, I wouldn't classify that as giving a handout to the wealthy.

But on the other side of that, the argument is that the more money you continue to give to this, these voucher programs where you do have some wealthy families taking advantage of it, not just those $125,000 earners, you know, that's, that's taking money away from public schools.

So it's a which came first, the chicken or the egg sort of scenario where if we were adequately funding public education, would we need to send people to private school because public education would be adequate.

By giving that money to the private school system, by using these vouchers, you're eliminating the ability to improve the public schools.

So it's kind of a vicious cycle.

And I think that, that's the that's the largest argument against these vouchers, more so even than the concept of giving a handout to wealthy people.

Kimberly, I'm wondering about the budget implications for this.

If we if this trend continues, what are the budget implications for the legislature?

Well, we know already that heading into this session that the legislature doesn't have as much cash as they've gotten used to.

You know, they're still going to have a surplus, but we don't have in this state the tons of federal dollars that are coming in that we have in past years.

And Speaker Perez has already warned people, and not just him, the budget forecasters as well.

Look, we're going to have less cash to work with.

Now, does that mean they'll pull back from universal school vouchers?

I don't think so.

Just because it was such a popular piece for Republicans and something they really wanted to do.

And again, this fits into the category of, you know, Florida leading the way, moving ahead on this, and probably will also serve as a model, as the federal government considers what to do about the Department of Education and potentially refunding those dollars to states in a way that pushes them to do universal voucher programs as well.

President Trump has already said that he's looking at programs like this.

Well, the website Florida Media now reports that for the first time in nine years, Florida's fallen out of the top three destinations nationwide for people seeking a new place to live.

Florida fell to number four on the list, behind South Carolina, Texas and North Carolina.

While the numbers still show a continuing increase in Florida's population, the trend of households moving to Florida has steadily declined over the past few years.

In 2024, while 50.4% of households moving were inbound to Florida, 49.6% of movers were outbound, representing only a 0.8% actual growth rate.

During the last year, according to data gathered by Atlas Van Lines, the top five reasons given for the decline are the insurance crisis, the increase in natural disasters, the expensive housing market and property taxes.

The rapid land development and changing scenery and population congestion and traffic.

So, Victor, how well is the state legislature dealt with these issues?

The insurance crisis.

Increase in natural disasters.

The expense of housing market over development, and you know, rapidly disappearing environmental features and the traffic congestion.

Well, I agree.

I mean, it starts with insurance.

I mean, I work for the insurance commissioner's office.

My family was an insurance business.

The insurance situation here in Florida, starting with homeowners, is a scandal.

I mean, they've had all these sessions.

They're bragging about these ten companies that have come in to take shed prices from citizens.

But the fact of the matter is all you need to do.

In fact, there was a famous story in the media that on the floor, as they passed this bill recently about reforming home insurance, they said, hey, let's get in the insurance business because all you need is a warm body and a checkbook.

Governor said this week that insurance rates are going to go down in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade.

And he was immediately contradicted by the Associated Press and other media offices.

That that's not true.

Patrick Manteiga in La Gaceta this week showed the six counties, including Hillsborough and Pinellas, where it's actually going to go up by 13% your insurance bill.

It's already sky high and it's going to get 100 times worse.

And it's sad because people can't afford to live here because they have to have insurance.

Hunter, let's go to you.

We're running out of time.

But what do you make of this study that says that people the influx of Florida is slowing down because of these problems?

Insurance is definitely one of the issues.

But I'd also like to play the supply and demand game.

People came here for the last four years on a massive ideological basis and because of the income tax, right.

So people didn't just come to Florida because it was a nice beach destination.

It was because that's where they wanted to go.

They knew it was a safe place to be.

They knew that's where they wanted to raise their families.

But we also got to start talking about the infrastructure issues with the massive influx of people the last four years.

We got to catch back up.

Our roads aren't there yet.

Our energy, we're burning through our energy.

We're buying energy from out of state.

So we got to be able to maintain ourselves.

But one very important thing I'd like to mention, it's the supply and demand issue of housing as well.

You see a lot of people moving out because they held equity in these homes.

And when the homes were bought by a lot of out of state money, inflated money, they cashed out.

They went to other places that had lower housing costs, and they were able to go and enjoy their lives, like go to North Carolina, for example, Texas.

You can buy a lot more right now for for what you sold your house for.

So yeah, some people left, but we just have nowhere else to go right now when it comes to infrastructure.

But people wanted to go live their lives in other states because they made the money off it.

Kimberly, Democrats have been complaining the last few sessions that these are the issues that ought to be dealt with in the legislature.

Um, you know, but they haven't had much success in doing anything about overdevelopment or, you know, some of the other issues that were were mentioned there.

Look, it's a hard problem to solve.

Um, first of all, they probably should get some kind of a commission to look at exactly what to do.

Um, you know, the move of, like, I'm someone who moved here from Washington, DC, um, to Miami Dade County.

And so I see the influx of people, and I see how different the prices were from when I used to kind of look at Zillow back when I was living in D.C. and comparing what housing was.

So they've they've got to work on this.

I do know that the governor wants to reduce property taxes, which might help a little bit.

Um, and he wants them to keep looking at this issue of, you know, proper property insurance and also some of these condo fees that are going on.

Everyone knows that it's a problem.

Um, even Republicans, members of the legislature tell me that this is the number one issue cost of living that they hear about from their constituents.

And so I just don't know that the public blames Republicans for these issues.

See what I mean?

So I think there's a difference.

They sort of see it as an inflation and influx of people problem versus oh, well, it's the Republicans in charge who are at fault.

And there's a lot of components that are adding up to the the housing situation that we're seeing now.

All right.

Well, as our guest, Janelle Irwin of Florida Politics reported this week.

A new statewide survey shows voters overwhelmingly support efforts to tighten the state's process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.

The poll found more than three quarters of voters, 76%, would be more likely to support a lawmaker who voted to restrict the constitutional amendment process.

That feeling transcended party lines, with 78% of Republicans and no party voters saying they would back lawmakers who vote in favor of tightening up the ballot initiative process.

73% of Democrats agree.

The chamber poll did not include the survey language.

Governor DeSantis has indicated he wants to make it even harder to amend the state constitution via petition.

And can we trust this poll.

If I'm giving it a salt shaker test?

I'm giving the whole salt shaker.

So so the key, the key line in that package there is that they didn't say what the survey language was.

So we don't know how that question was asked if it was asked in a way that was like, hey, do you think that wealthy corporations should be able to change Florida's constitution?

Who in their right mind is going to say, unless you're a wealthy corporation?

Yes, of course, let's do that.

But if you asked it in a fair way that said, you know, should we change the citizen initiated ballot initiative?

I think you might see some different results there.

So I think that that language is crucial.

And until we see what that language was, it's impossible to tell whether or not you can trust these poll results.

Kimberly, there's no doubt, I think, that the governor in this coming session is going to try to make it harder to do petition drives to change the Constitution, right?

That's right.

And he also said yesterday, when he did a press conference on Thursday when he was signing the illegal immigration bill, he said that the legislature legislative leaders had agreed to tackle this.

So it does look like they'll be moving ahead on that.

I don't know that, you know, Florida voters have a full grasp of what that might mean.

But before the last election, a lot of these more progressive policies in Florida have had passed, you know, through ballot initiatives.

But we saw that change, obviously, this past election.

On marijuana and on abortion.

And so it will be interesting to see, you know, where the public really is on that.

And that was after they've already made it harder.

To be clear.

I wish we had more time.

Thank you for a great program panelists.

That's it for us this week.

Our members, our panel members this week have been Janelle Irwin Taylor, Hunter Branstner, Victor Mayo, and Kimberly Leonard.

Send your comments about this program to ftw@wedu.org and remember, this show is on every Friday night at 8:30 and Sunday afternoon at 12:30, and you can watch past shows on YouTube.

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Have a Happy Valentine's Day and we'll see you next week.