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

[music] Coming up, what bills were passed and what bills were passed over in the Florida legislative session?

We'll take a look.

In a dramatic shift, governor DeSantis will put pen to paper signing a bill to prevent golf courses in state parks.

And a former Florida Democratic Senate leader has left the party and entered the 2026 race for governor.

These stories and more are next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos joining the panel this week.

We have Kim Droege.

She is the host of connecting with Kim on the Tampa Bay Arts and Education Network, and a Republican.

We have Jackie Callaway, a longtime investigative reporter and journalist who works in media relations.

Mitch Perry is the senior political reporter for Florida Phoenix, and Ryan Ray is the chairman of the Leon County Democratic Party.

Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

We begin with what Florida lawmakers are doing in Tallahassee.

They have extended this year's session to June the 30th in an attempt to reach a budget agreement.

It's the one bill that the legislature is constitutionally obligated to pass.

Leaders in the House and Senate are divided over tax cuts, with House leaders wanting a sales tax cut and governor DeSantis favoring a $1,000 rebate.

Some of the bills approved include one that will make it more difficult for citizen led constitutional amendments to make it on the ballot.

Lawmakers agreed to roll back a law passed in 2023 that would have forced schools to push back start times in 2026.

Now leaving the decision up to the schools, one of the priorities for both chambers this year was to address the rising fees for condominium owners.

The legislature approved a bill that allows condo owner associations to secure credit lines and invest funds to pay for building repairs, instead of imposing immediate fees to raise large amounts of cash from owners.

Those funding requirements were passed back in 2021 after the collapse in Surfside of a 12 story condo that killed 98 people.

The legislature failed to make meaningful changes in the state's property insurance market.

Senate President Ben Albritton told reporters that he believed changes lawmakers made in 2022 and 2023 are working.

He said, discouraging lawsuits that insurance companies blamed for the high rates.

The Office of Insurance Regulation has reported a 0.7% drop in insurance costs in the fourth quarter of 2024, and 12 insurance companies have entered the state's market this year.

Lawmakers did pass a bill that focuses on improving storm relief.

It will streamline permitting efforts and prevent local governments from charging more in permit and inspection fees for six months after a storm.

It also enhances preparedness efforts and training for local officials and language regarding crane safety during storms.

That's a response to the crane collapse in downtown St. Pete during Hurricane Milton.

And Jackie, I'd like to start with you.

There is a lot in there, but so many more residents were expecting to hear more in terms of property insurance.

If you talk to realtors, if you talk to homeowners across Florida, they will tell you that one of their top concerns is the skyrocketing rates that we are all paying for homeowners insurance.

It has driven people to sell their homes.

It has driven people to leave the state.

And while the state will tell you, state lawmakers, as you pointed out, will tell you that there have been reforms in the last couple of years.

That's true, but is it enough?

We saw hundreds of people filing documented complaints after Ian, people who had lost everything that were telling people and they had documents to prove it, that the estimate that their adjuster sent in to the insurance company was not what the insurance company paid out.

I mean, that's all documented record.

We don't know that that's not happening again.

The state says that there are new rules on the books, and there are that they have to deny a claim, or they have to pay out a claim within 30 or 60 or 90 days.

We don't know if that's enough.

But the bottom line is, as you pointed out, 0.7% decrease after year over year double digit gains.

That to me does not seem like relief to consumers.

Kim, how do you see all of this playing out for the consumer?

Well, I think that I agree with Jackie.

I mean, it's too little, too late actually.

And here we are sitting in the beginning, two and a half weeks away from hurricane season starting again.

And I think everybody at this table knows people that are still not in their homes.

They are not they they have not received checks.

They have not received relief.

They are not living in their homes.

And now here we are starting again.

I know in my section of the county which is the fastest growing part of Hillsborough County, actually, we have seen home sales come to an absolute standstill.

Nothing is selling.

And before I mean basically you just had to put on the market and boom, it was gone.

But I think people are looking at, you know, the, the high cost of living in Florida because it's not just insurance.

I mean, my auto insurance.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my auto insurance is almost as much as my house insurance now.

And I'm thinking, wow, how is that?

And, um, I think that they are looking at the high cost of living in Florida, the issues of insurance, and they're kind of saying, yeah, no, I can go somewhere else.

Well, a lot of residents are also saying that they are looking at a lot of things, but they don't see a whole lot of action coming out of the legislature.

Ryan, how do you respond to that?

Well, it's a this is the most dysfunctional that observers of this legislature have ever seen it.

We're seeing them exchanging subpoenas and impeachment threats instead of dealing with these exact issues that you're talking about.

I was glad to see that they did touch on some of these issues.

But ultimately, when you've got a divided against itself legislature in an all out war against Ron DeSantis, I think it's going to be really, really hard to focus on these issues that Floridians want us to focus on, like Kim said.

And I think that Floridians are after the mass influx that we've seen across the country during the Covid era, during the Free State regime period, I think people are voting with their feet against Florida, and I think Florida is looking like a less favorable proposition for many people, largely because of the dysfunction and state government inaction.

Mitch, are you seeing that with your readers of the Florida Phoenix?

Well, it's interesting in your promo there for what happened.

You know, you mentioned the citizen led constitutional amendments, how that that really took a lot of time up in the session this year.

That was a top priority of Governor Ron DeSantis following the near passage of amendments three and four last year on cannabis and abortion rights, respectively, which both, by the way, passed with majority support but not the 60% required.

So, you know, the legislature, the Republicans, they believe there's petition fraud issues.

So they pushed this through.

It's already pretty hard to pass a constitutional amendment.

Any group who's been involved with this will tell you that basically $100 million dollar proposition right now.

It's going to be much harder.

There's big time fines there.

It's actually probably less onerous as it originally formed at the beginning of the session.

Uh, they can't use people who aren't from Florida now, for example, to collect these signatures, which is going to be a problem for the folks who do these things.

Um, so that really took up a lot of the oxygen in the room, actually.

Uh, was that really the biggest thing going on?

Well, it was a priority for the Republicans.

Well, you know, I just want to say one thing.

There have been some good I mean, I've got a list of bills, some good legislation that was passed out of Tallahassee.

Unfortunately, the dysfunction the the arguing back and forth, the name calling and everything else.

The chaos, the extension.

It's just overshadowing everything good that happened because there were there was was some good legislation passed.

But would it be fair to say that constitutionally, the one thing, the one bill that our state leaders have to pass is the budget, and they've not done that?

Yeah.

And it's about taxes, right.

And it's about what's the best tax to give to people.

Perez went very far out with the reduction of originally 0.75% for reduction of 6% sales tax, which he said would be about $5 billion, the biggest tax cut ever in the history of the state Senate.

President Albritton came back with a little more modest proposal on clothes and shoes.

And then the governor kind of the last hour or the last month or so, throws in this whole thing about property taxes, which is a very major issue to look at and probably is going to be addressed in the next fall in the form of a constitutional amendment.

That's why Perez has formed this committee right now to study the implications of that.

And where do you get that revenue from?

Because as we know, that really funds local government in so many ways.

So, um, and where we're at right now, as we sit, you know, we don't even know when they're getting back together to discuss this.

It's really gotten quite toxic.

And they're still $4 billion apart right now.

Uh, is this the biggest thing that that is necessary?

Well, again, the governor will tell you that it's a property tax, that we are having a revolt similar to California in 1978, if you will, in terms of people demanding that.

And it's no question that property values have risen big time in the state because it's been more popular state in the last couple of years.

And there's so much to follow.

Right.

And so one of the other aspects that we're following is what they are doing with state parks.

And that's the next story that we're going to go to.

Governor DeSantis says he will sign a bill into law to prohibit building golf courses, hotels and other amenities on state state park land.

It's a course reversal for the governor after intense pressure by politicians and the public against plans to build golf courses in a number of state parks.

The plans were first revealed by the Tampa Bay Times and led to protests, including one at Honeymoon Island.

The bill also adds more transparency around any future proposed changes, requiring the public to have 30 days notice before a hearing.

When last year's controversy began, Floridians had just six days to absorb the news before a series of one hour hearings were held across the state.

Kim, what's your response to that?

Well, first of all, I'd like to say that I'm personally one of those people that did not think this was a good idea.

I can't imagine anybody thought it was a good idea.

People go to state parks to get away from all of that activity.

It would seem to me.

But I also think that it's a great testament to the power of the public to rise up when they were incented and motivated and mad and say, no, no, no, no, no, and we're not going to accept this short notice for public hearings.

And we don't like this idea.

And I have to say, well, kudos to the governor for recognizing that and pivoting away from it.

And and it didn't go anywhere in session.

And it's not going to go anywhere, you know, for the foreseeable future.

So, Ryan, what do you say about that?

Well, yeah, I think governor DeSantis, he kind of ran as a kind of a St. Pete Times Republican, right.

Who cared who was a mainstream and who cared particularly about environmental issues and then went bipolar exactly in the wrong direction.

I think giving frankly, our our highest and best uses as a state, our state parks, the real Florida.

There's a group called Florida Keepers that folks should look up on social media that's doing really great work about this stuff and preserving our state parks.

But I agree.

I totally agree with Kim that the voice of the people really matters.

The voice of these journalists that really matters, that brought this to the forefront.

And I agree that this is um, I don't it wasn't a beautiful process that led us to this good legislation.

But I'm very glad that we're here today.

And Mitch and Jackie, that's got to make both of you feel good as journalists to see that this turnaround started with really important coverage by the local newspaper.

Here's the thing.

We know that as journalists, our job, we said, I know you know this, Mitch knows this.

Our job as journalists is to shine a light into dark places.

And what would have happened if that light that had not been, you know, we didn't shine that spotlight there.

Um, and I think, you know, we've seen a lot of apathy at the polls, not necessarily recent elections, but we've seen apathy over the years at the polls when certain election years people are not showing up.

Sometimes, depending on if it's an off year or it's not a presidential election.

To me, this is like the rallying cry to show your voice matters.

Your vote counts.

We almost never see this governor do a 360 as we did here.

And I think it was just the power of not only local media, which this is a case for local media, if there ever was one, and then also a power that shows the power of public opinion.

And which people had some really strong, passionate opinions about.

Across the board too.

It should be noted that this is Republican and Democrat alike who really came out against this.

You know, I covered the protests or one of the protests at Honeymoon Island in Dunedin last August.

I swear it was about 115 degrees.

It was insanely hot.

And yet there were well over 150 people there and who wanted to be there.

And we saw that that whole week or a couple of weeks there in August once the story broke.

Also, kudos to there was a whistleblower who came out that, uh, you know, really kind of delivered the goods that really propelled this story to move forward.

Uh, and yeah, you know, it.

Bill passed unanimously in all committees, uh, in the chamber and other environmental win.

I want to throw out there Apalachicola, uh, up there in North Florida near the river.

There was another proposal that passed that's going to hopefully with the government.

Don't know if he's going to sign or not.

That would basically ban drilling in that area.

And that's another area where we saw unanimous votes in the legislature and big people power, pushing the legislators to support that.

So the civic engagement is important.

It's not just something that we talk about.

It's something that gives us, empowers us right to to bring about change in our communities.

The other story that we're following is the Florida senator, who used to be the leader of the Democratic Party, is jumping into the race for governor, but Jason Pizzo will not be running as a Democrat.

Take a look.

Pizzo plans to run as an independent in the 2026 race.

He announced his plans during an interview with Miami CBS affiliate.

The state senator represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, and he assumed leadership of the Senate Democrats after the 2024 election.

But in a speech last month, Pizzo condemned the party as, quote, dead and likened the state of bipartisanship to, quote, the fall of Rome, end quote.

He says he won't officially enter the race until September.

Other opponents in the governor's race include Republican Congressman Byron Donalds.

On the Democratic side, we have former Congressman David Jolly, who switched from Republican to Democrat Ryan as the chair of the Leon County Democratic Party.

You've got to be very unhappy when you hear someone from the Democratic Party say that it's dead.

What's your reaction to all of this?

Well, I think that it's more Jason Pizzo's stock within the Democratic Party that was dead.

Frankly, a lot of us who who followed him for a long time aren't terribly surprised by this.

I'm old enough to remember when he unseated an incumbent black Democrat by saying she's too much of a Republican.

She votes with the Republicans too much.

And then, I think, continued to bludgeon his way to the center.

I think the right really.

So frankly, he was just a bad fit for the caucus.

Um, David Jolly, a swing area congressman, into the party.

Jason Pizzo out of the party.

I'll take that all day long.

It seems like everyone's changing party affiliations, Mitch.

Yeah, a very interesting development.

I guess.

The thing is, whether you're David Jolly or Jason Pizzo running as an independent or running as a Democrat, you're going to be a big underdog in this race coming up next year, I think, Ryan, you'll acknowledge that.

Um, and I think with Pizzo.

Right.

He had I mean, there's obviously reasons in his, in his own, you know, range, you know, what he's looking at here.

But it's going to be really challenging.

We haven't seen an independent, major independent run since Charlie Crist in 2010.

Didn't turn out too well.

Um, but I think that's again where the state of the Democratic Party is when it comes to these big statewide elections right now, where you have a disparity of voter registration somewhat about eight points or so, roughly, uh, he's putting a lot of stock in independents, NPA voters, which he now is, which, you know, some political scientists will tell you aren't really purely centrist voters.

They do lean more left or right.

They just don't, for different reasons, want to be a part of a political party.

So, I mean, the Democrats have been hoping that that those NPAs would be their savior in recent years.

It's not turned out that way.

Um, but I will be curious to see again how this develops in terms of the other candidates.

Charlie has not officially announced yet.

He probably will within the next few weeks, he says.

And I'm sure that is going to be the case.

Um, but will we see anybody else Democratic mayors or.

excuse me, Democrats come in.

That will be interesting to see as well.

You mentioned Byron Donalds.

He is by far the leading candidate right now.

He's got the Trump imprimatur behind him.

He's also raised close to $15 million right now already with no other Republican in sight.

When you look at the statistics for no party affiliation registered voters in Florida, it's about a quarter of registered voters in the state of Florida.

Kim, how does that work in his favor?

Well, first of all, Mr. Pizzo, I would say when you're going to leave, just leave.

You don't have to scorch earth in when you leave, right?

Because there is a forever that happens after that.

Right?

So.

But I say, okay, welcome.

Uh, you know, good luck.

Uh, we I think there's no there's going to be a plethora of people who want to run for governor, it seems like.

And the big question will be, can they overcome Byron Donalds Trump endorsement as we get closer to the primary, because we saw what happened to Adam Putnam, a guy who would have been a great governor, wanted it his whole life.

And in one tweet and in one endorsement, it was all over.

And so I think that the other thing I would say is whether we like it or not, and we agree with it or not, we are a two party system in this country.

We are a constitutional republic with a two party system.

We don't really have the structure.

The infrastructure for third parties doesn't mean they shouldn't, you know, but we don't really have that kind of structure to support that.

But I say come on in.

All are welcome.

Right, Jackie?

As a as an investigative reporter for so many years, the Hope Florida Foundation situation involving the governor and several members of the administration, it really seemed like it quieted down.

Conversations about Casey DeSantis possibly running.

Um, how do you, as an investigative reporter, see all of this play out.

Well, I would have loved to have seen either the First Lady or the governor.

Um, take a modicum of responsibility over the hope.

Florida.

I think that has soured a lot of people.

That is a lot of money.

And as a consumer investigator, I was always under the impression that Hope, Florida, I had actually referred people, especially during times of post hurricanes when people were flailing or during the after the pandemic, when Hope Florida was created, people were struggling for jobs and they really needed some assistance.

I put my faith and hope, Florida, referring people to that agency, thinking that they were doing the most good, and now we're finding out not that much money was given out.

And to me, it is just such sour grapes to think we have been sold this bill of goods for 2 or 3 years now, that this was an agency doing the most good for Floridians who needed it most.

And now we're finding out some of how this came to be and some of where that money went.

I was so disheartened to see that the money went for political purposes, what could be perceived as political purposes rather than helping Floridians, which is what it was sold to us as.

I can't imagine that she would have any ground as a politician after what we've seen, and also the fact that the state legislature went so far in investigating this, and all of a sudden it was like, there's there's probably criminal wrongdoing, but the buck stops here because we are not prosecutors.

And if you have a Florida Republican appointed attorney general, I don't know how I don't know how this goes any further.

It probably doesn't.

Probably not at the state level.

And there was some thought that the feds might pick this up.

The Trump administration, Pam Bondi or the U.S. Attorney in north Florida.

That doesn't look like it's going to happen, at least right now.

But you're absolutely right, Jackie.

This this was the big thing in Tallahassee the last in April.

And then the last committee hearing, it's like, okay, we're done now.

I know Speaker Perez said at one point.

I'm not, I'm not.

This is still going on.

I'm not taking my box back to Miami until next year when, you know?

And he even hinted that this could be going on throughout the summer.

But it doesn't look like it right now.

Well, and I don't think there's any chance at the federal level right now until after the election is over, that this is going to be pursued.

And it certainly from my point of view, it's very disappointing.

And it doesn't pass the smell test for sure.

In the state of Florida, we have the rule that you have to resign in order to run.

Um, and that the when is the deadline for that?

And how soon do you expect to see more people, Mitch, coming and declaring?

Well, you got a long time ago.

You still have a year to qualify as actually, Mrs. DeSantis said yesterday.

So, you know, we can see a lot happening.

I want to mention another candidate in this mix, by the way, John Morgan.

Uh, and you talked about, you know, third parties.

He's talking about kind of crazily creating a third party.

I don't see that happening because he says he says he might run, but he won't run as an independent.

So he's not gonna run as a Democrat.

I don't know how that works, but, um, but there are still plenty of time.

And I can't believe as a political reporter that in the spring of 25, this is already over in the fall of 26, in terms of who we know is going to be running, I think there's a lot of time left here.

So before we go, I want to ask each of you what you think are the other big stories that we should be following.

I'd like to start with you, Ryan.

Oh, yeah.

No problem.

Yeah, well, this has been a great conversation.

I think that as we see the consolidations of power, both at the federal level and at the state level, with more and more of those who are incumbent and who have the most power snarfing up everything else.

I think an interesting example that's going on where I live in Tallahassee is Florida State University.

A state government organization trying to basically launch a hostile takeover of our community owned hospital, Tallahassee Memorial.

I think the imperial ambitions of a state government organization and University of Florida.

You see the governor making granular decisions about hiring and firing sub college level.

And you're seeing the entire college presidential search being basically run out of the governor's office.

I think that's really dangerous.

Our folks have taken a position against it, and I think that the FSU takeover of Tallahassee Hospital is an interesting story that I think deserves more coverage.

Jackie.

You know, I'm really concerned about the Medicaid cuts that we've been seeing.

You know, we had there were Medicaid protections for the sickest and most vulnerable among us, primarily children.

Like severely disabled children who need day in and day out care.

And we've seen the Medicaid cuts because the pandemic era protections those have those have faded away.

But what we haven't seen is a real effort to notify people, here's what's happening, here's what you need to do to reapply.

And we're hearing story after story after story of families who find themselves unenrolled and without health care.

And that really is one of our biggest shortcomings, I think, as a state.

Kim, what would you say is the other big story?

For me, it's very personal.

I worked last year to pass legislation for seniors and other vulnerable adults to protect their assets being scammed away that were stored in Florida banks.

And now what we're seeing is scammers using cryptocurrency.

And with an AI enhancements to scam seniors and other vulnerable adults of their life savings.

And we're not paying enough attention because cryptocurrency is the wild, wild West.

There's no regulation, there's no tracking, there's no anything.

And I is a force for good.

But it's also a force for evil.

And we, we we need to be much more cognizant of that, particularly when I'm looking at people in my community that have lost 800,000, a million or more dollars that you just don't have time to make up at their age.

You know.

I cryptocurrency people are looking at the novelty of these, but perhaps not paying enough attention to the dangers.

Yes, cryptocurrency when you go feed and those cryptocurrency ATMs are appearing everywhere now in all, you know, your local drugstores, your local supermarkets, when you feed that money and cash money into that machine, well, who knows what's going to happen then?

Mitch, I want to come back to Casey.

DeSantis, if I could for a moment.

You know, her and the governor were in Brandon this week, actually.

And I actually asked her the question, like, what are you doing?

Are you still pursuing a run for governor?

Because we haven't heard much of late.

and she did not dismiss it, but she was quite ambiguous about it.

She.

She was most critical ever of slamming the coverage of the Florida situation.

And that she also did say, like I said earlier, that she says, hey, we've got a.

Year to go here.

But she also interestingly mentioned the fact that.

Whomever this governor who she called the goat, whomever he wants to get behind.

We should really get behind that person because he's done such great work.

It indicates to me that DeSantis would like somebody to challenge Byron Donalds.

He doesn't see that Donalds is going to continue his legacy.

But the problem is, is actually so many people, others might do it.

Ashley Moody's in the U.S. Senate.

Uh, Janet, Janet is at Florida International University.

There isn't that other candidate other perhaps than Mrs. DeSantis.

And of course, she's not much of a work background in terms of being a leader.

Governor.

And the one thing she did have.

Well, we're seeing what's going on with that.

So interesting to see how this plays out.

But they're not ready yet to dismiss the possibility that she may still run next year for governor.

What was her.

Quickly.

What was her body language when you asked that question?

Yeah, she looked forward.

I think she she wanted to engage, you know, she was there with them because there was a report in the Miami Herald that said that it's basically it's over.

That's probably not going to happen.

I think they wanted to refute that, that story out there.

Well, thank.

You for coming.

This has been a wonderful discussion.

So appreciate having you all here.

Our panel again, thanks to them, Kim Droege, Jackie Callaway, Mitch Perry and Ryan Ray.

Also on May the 30th, I'll be hosting a special edition of Florida This Week with hurricane experts and survivors.

And we would really like to include you.

What was the biggest lesson that you learned from last year's hurricane season?

Email us your thirty second video or your written response to ftw@wedu.org.

Thanks for watching!

This show is on every Friday night at 8:30pm and Sunday afternoon at 12:30pm, and also online from all of us here at WEDU.

Thanks for watching and have a great weekend.

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