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

[music] Coming up after widespread protests across the state, another Florida land deal is dead.

Hillsborough County removes more books from school shelves after being chastised by Florida's attorney general, and another conservative leader steps up to take control of the Pasco-Hernando State University.

These stories and more are next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos.

On our panel this week we welcome Jennifer Griffith.

She is the immediate past chair of the Pinellas County Democrats.

We welcome Stanley Gray.

He's the former president of the Hillsborough County Urban League, a businessman, and is not currently affiliated with a political party.

We also have Jake Hoffman, the executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, and Craig Patrick, the political editor and chief investigative reporter for Fox 13 news.

Thank you to all of you for joining us today.

Thank you.

We begin the program with a controversial plan to swap 600 acres of protected land in north Florida for property elsewhere in the state, and that plan is now officially dead.

The land was part of the Guana Preserve in St. Johns County.

The developer, upland LLC, withdrew the application after bipartisan protests against the deal.

It came less than 24 hours after President Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who has strong ties to the area, publicly opposed the deal.

It would have traded 600 protected acres of the Guana Preserve with 3000 acres across the state.

Lawmakers were inundated with emails and letters protesting the plan.

In a letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the developer blamed misinformation for the backlash, saying they never planned commercial or community development.

Now, Republican State Representative Kim Kendall wants the state to purchase the 104 acres the developer owns next to the Guana Preserve to protect those as well.

I'm trying to figure out what we can button up to stop this.

Wrap around this workaround, find a hole, whatever you can be done to try to do this again.

We're going to try to button that down as hard as we can, which will also include giving more than three business days notice.

This comes after a previous plan was canceled to build golf courses and pickleball courts on state park land.

That followed statewide protests.

Governor Ron DeSantis has said he will sign a bill into law that will prohibit the building of golf courses and hotels in Florida state parks.

Jennifer, I'd like to start with you.

There's so much for everyone to cover.

What are your thoughts on this?

Well, first, my first thought would be it's really good to see that it is a bipartisan pushback on this to protect our private our public lands in Florida.

As a third generation Floridian, I've watched over time as our land has been developed and more developed and more developed, and what that takes away from neighborhoods and what the development of this land can do.

Um, it's just really good to see this pushback from everyone, and it's good to hear that the governor is going to sign the bill.

That's pretty much where I'm going.

Jake, what did you think?

Yeah, I think that it's good to see leadership all the way up from the white House to Congressman Byron Donalds, who's, you know, right now, probably the front runner to be governor of the state of Florida coming out against this type of plan.

And I think there's this perception by the public, because we live in the state of Florida, because it's Republican controlled state, that this is always Republicans fault when there's going to be development anywhere.

And so I just think it's important to kind of note that it is bipartisan, a pushback against this, that sometimes these developers do try to put things around the system.

They give these three day notices and all this and that kind of stuff.

And there's something maybe going on very locally to St. Johns County.

But it's good to see Republicans push back.

And I expect that, you know, listening to Representative Kendall, that there's going to be a bill to to try to fix this, this issue going forward.

And this is not the first time that we've seen in recent weeks that the public comes out voicing their opinion about a certain land project and then reverses the decisions that are being made by leaders.

I think one of the things that this really shows is that we still have, as a practice, minority interest groups having too much control over issues.

And again, I'm glad too, that it's a bipartisan pushback, but I think it kind of shows a bigger problem that we have.

You know, one is who are these people we need to know to the depths who they are.

And then the other part of it is, is why are why does our system let people operate in?

I call it dark.

It's not good.

Craig, how do you weigh in on this?

You've been following several stories.

Speaks to the power of civic engagement, that's for sure.

The ability to get government to bend to your wishes.

And you have bipartisan pushback here because people moved to Florida.

Not for big box stores or strip centers or even golf courses and hotels.

They moved to Florida for the idea of Florida for preserving its natural treasures.

And when you have a bit of a pattern, you mentioned the state parks issue.

You also had intention to permit exploratory drilling in the Apalachicola River area because of that pattern, the lack of information.

That's why I think so many people to the left and to the right of the political spectrum united against this particular idea.

And we also had the situation in the city of downtown, in downtown Clearwater, where the Church of Scientology had proposed buying a certain piece of land in downtown a certain street rather.

And the folks came out were part of the city council meeting and that they have now rescinded that that proposal that they had.

And it fits a broader pattern if you want to drive it home.

Imagine if the national government, the federal government wanted to trade away Everglades Park, and they're going to get more land for it.

Where's this other land?

Well, here and there, a little bit here, a little bit there.

What are they going to do with it?

Not clear, but a majority of it will preserve the wetland habitat.

Okay.

What about the other 49%?

Where does that leave it?

Who's behind this?

Not clear.

With so many unanswered questions, that would be a national scandal and that wouldn't fly.

And so, with respect to Clearwater, what you saw in Apalachicola, what you also see the Guana River.

This too does not fly in Florida.

When you all hear the representative talking about buttoning things up so that this cannot happen in the future, so that deals and agreements on land use cannot be decided upon with three days notice.

How does that what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think that, you know, one of our problems is, is that we have gotten away from, for, by and of the people.

And I think that this is a classic example where if we don't open this up for everybody to see it, you'll see that special interest groups are doing things that are going against the will and the desire of the people.

And the governor still won't release who's behind the LLC.

So it's a question of who is actually started this process for the land.

Mhm.

Okay, well we're going to move on to our next story.

Um, more than 600 books have been taken out of circulation from Hillsborough County classrooms after a letter from state officials.

Take a look.

In a letter last week, Attorney General James Uthmeier asked for the immediate removal of materials.

He called, quote, patently pornographic, end quote.

The books include Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Ari Folman's Anne Frank's diary the graphic adaptation.

Uthmeier said the state's newly created Office of Parental Rights plans to give parents more say in what books remain.

School District Attorney Jim Porter says that since 2022, Hillsborough County has removed over 389,000 books from its collection of more than 2 million books and says it will continue to, quote, actively review its collections, end quote.

Stephanie Farrell, co-director of the Florida Freedom to Read advocacy group, estimates that around 622 titles were pulled and called the directive, quote, a horrible state overreach, end quote.

According to Pen America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, Florida tops the nation in book removals.

And, Stanley, I'd like to start with you on this.

I think that this whole process is is subjectivity in action.

And it's really kind of interesting to me because and again, I'm not declaring war on anybody.

But when you look at this states, individuals who are participating in swapping clandestine homosexual activities and all other things that you might say are sexual perversion, there's one party that leads this, okay, and it's the Republican Party.

So my first question is, is to the Republicans who seem to be behind this, you know, where did you get your ideas for the for for these things?

Was it reading books?

And I also have a real problem with because the reason why I say it's subjective is because when you read something, you interpret something different than than I would.

Okay.

I mean, in a classic example of that is the Bible.

And I think that what we've done is, is that we have unleashed an arm of subjectivity that is driving this process.

And I don't think it's right.

You saw the picture there.

I didn't see anything but Caucasian women.

I mean, where are the black women?

Where are the Hispanic women?

Where are the Hispanic men?

Where are the Black men.

This this whole effort is being driven by a minority.

And I'm going to give them 32% when the rest of the percentage have no voice in this at all.

Not all Republicans are share those feelings.

Just like not not all Democrats share those feelings.

And I agree with you.

There's diversity of opinion within each political party.

Jake, how do you see this?

Well, I think that we've started a process here in Florida that gives back the ability for the parents to make decisions and and be able to challenge books.

And it's obviously been a long standing issue that's happened here, especially in Florida.

And we've got a better process now.

I think that enables parents to challenge books like this.

I think when people see the headlines and they see, well, Anne Frank's diary, well, it's not Anne Frank's diary, it's Anne Frank's diary, the graphic edition.

So there's a bunch of sexual graphics in the book.

Why is that?

Why does that need to be in schools compared to Anne Frank's diary?

And so even people who, like myself are Jewish, look at some of the interpretations that were done by an author and and ask why you can't teach that book instead of this book with this, this additional graphic material put inside of it.

So again, I think it is subjective to Stanley's point.

And but it was subjective when somebody, as an unnamed bureaucrat at the school decided we're going to stick it in the library.

Well, it wouldn't be an unnamed bureaucrat at the school.

It would be a librarian that decided to put it in the library.

That goes through an entire process of approval, and it's always the parent's right to tell their child, you can't read that book when they bring it home.

Um, there were countless books in the library that I never picked up, let alone.

We now have the internet that kids can go find anything they want to find on.

Well, and parents to to just consider the other side.

There are parents that say that schools make it very difficult for them to come in and say, I do not want my child to read that book.

Can you provide another activity for them to do while the rest of the group is reading this?

I think that schools, because of this pushback, have gotten much better about warning.

We're going to talk about this topic.

They send permission slips home.

They offer opt out.

They're trying to do as best as they can to give diversity of thought.

And if you take a look at the books that are being banned, they're all very diverse.

There's no, um, really buttoned up.

They're going after beloved.

They're going after The Bluest Eye.

You can see where they're going.

They're trying to erase history, in my opinion, and I'm not real appreciative.

I just think that, you know, even using the word ban is strong because we're talking about it's not available in a school library.

You know, there's this idea that we're burning books.

I hear it all the time from different people that we're burning books.

You can go on Amazon.

You are allowed to have any book you want in the state of Florida.

As a parent, if you say, hey, I really want my kid to read this book, then you can go do that.

There's there's nothing stopping you from from ordering it online or going into a public library even.

They're just not on the shelves in the school for the kids to to go to themselves.

And Craig and in fairness to parents who are in favor of really controlling the books that their kids are assigned to read in school, many parents do support this.

This is certainly not the first time that you all have covered stories about books being banned and not.

Yeah, and it comes down to parental choice.

The challenge is you've got to debate in which both sides say that they're fighting for parental choice, whether their kids have access to these books and libraries or whether their kids should not have access.

That's the issue here, and it's a challenging line to draw.

And by the way, you have the Miller test to determine whether something is obscene.

And that comes down to subjectivity.

First off, you have to make a determination that it has no particular artistic or literary value, and then the particular community has to determine whether it finds the material otherwise obscene.

That community may have different standards than, say, a state attorney general from Tallahassee.

So it becomes it becomes tricky.

And I would say, for example, here's an example of a book.

You have the story of a sex criminal who produces pornography and then engages in an illicit sexual relationship with another man until they both are tortured to the point they can't carry on.

Is that something that belongs in a high school library?

What if I told you that that story was George Orwell's 1984, in which the author is warning of a totalitarian society that controls people through censorship of content?

My point there is that it becomes a difficult line to draw, and it has to be very carefully drawn.

In the end, and that it can be argued from both sides in terms of what's appropriate and what's not.

And the other side is there are parents who would say, well, Animal Farm perhaps could provide a strong, important lesson on on the perils of totalitarian control, um, and asking for other books to be chosen that perhaps don't have that sexual content, heavy sexual content in them.

Stanley, you were going to.

Say, you know, one of the problems is, is that public schools are for the public.

Okay.

And I think that what we're doing is we're systematically like, now we've taken out history of minorities and women.

etcetera... etcetera... We're just going down a path that's not really good.

So now what's happened is the public schools are going to service, not the public, but the ones who have the voice.

And that's that is going against everything that the schools were established for.

Well, speaking of grade school, we're going to go now to the next level, which is the academic institutions of higher learning.

Florida's higher education system continues its conservative direction with the naming of a new interim college president this week.

Take a look.

Eric Hall, secretary of the Department of Juvenile Justice, was named interim president at Pasco-Hernando State College.

It may become a permanent role at the college's next trustees meeting.

Former Pasco-Hernando State College president Jesse Peters resigned after a controversial report on the school's enrollment and retention was made public.

Hall joined several Republican leaders with ties to Governor Ron DeSantis, taking over leadership at universities across Florida.

Those include former Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez at Florida International University.

Former State Board of Education chairperson Marva Johnson at Florida A&M, and former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran at New College.

Craig, how do you see this latest announcement?

Political leadership at colleges is nothing new.

Going back to George Washington and Jefferson and Madison Garfield, Woodrow Wilson, I could probably think of some others.

The issue here is whether there is a conservative takeover.

I honestly don't know the answer to that because a couple of reasons.

First off, a conservative is one who should be careful with money.

Was Ben Sasse, careful with money at the University of Florida in the decisions that he made.

By general definition, a conservative is one who limits change and preserves existing institutions that are working well.

Florida colleges and universities do a lot of things right.

And yet the individuals we're talking about, at least going back to new college and some other things have moved toward making some striking reforms, not preserving the status quo.

Well, that's a general definition.

What about political definitions?

But even there, what does conservatism mean in Reagan's era of conservatism versus today?

There are deep differences in economic and trade policy, certainly with respect to immigration policy, certainly with respect to foreign policy, definitely, as it relates to addressing aggression from Moscow.

So what do you mean by conservative takeover?

And even to this day, you have those who identify as conservatives in House leadership and the governor taking very different views of what conservatism is, to the point that governor is calling Republican leadership in the House liberal.

And you have leadership in the House saying that the governor is is spending or overspending.

So I don't know that we can say what a conservative takeover ultimately is.

I think that will be left to future historians.

And we may be in a little bit of a period of flux here.

How do how does this impact the value of the college education from a particular school.

Is this something that parents are paying close enough attention to?

The politics?

How this may or may not make their child's diploma from that school less or more valuable?

Well, they certainly should be.

And you look at Florida standing in national rankings, which are outstanding collectively among the universities.

We've seen some slippage, for example, slight slippage but backsliding nonetheless.

Is that just a correlation or is there causation to some of the prior decisions that have been made, including some of the spending decisions under prior management at the University of Florida?

That's something we have to flesh out, but that's something that you have to very, very carefully watch as a parent and as a student.

Stanley.

Well, I think that there's a strategy in place here, and I believe I truly believe that they want to combine schools.

And I think also you mean by that what I mean by combined schools is, look what the rumors that you hear about new college look.

And in other words, I think they want to combine schools like give an example like in Texas, you used to have West Texas.

Now it's a part of Texas A&M.

I think that that really is what's going on.

And for the viewer at home who may not be familiar, there's talk of new college combining with the University of South Florida St. Pete campus.

And at the same time, I don't really get hooked up on conservative and and and liberal.

The real big issue is that there's a lot of transferable skills.

And when you look at the president of a university or college, one of the biggest jobs is fundraising.

And when you take the graduates of those schools who are no longer going to donate money, that is a problem.

And I think that you saw that at New College.

And I think that you're going to see this at the other colleges.

And the other thing that I would say is that these moves, are they going to like, bring us closer towards equity.

And specifically, when you look at Florida A&M State School, you compare that to Florida State.

And the same there is nowhere close to being equity.

You know and it's a real issue.

And I and the other side of the coin is the person who says, well, this is more of a correction that perhaps they.

There's a group of people who feel that perhaps the universities went too far to one side.

And so this brings them more to the center.

Jake, would you say that's that's the case?

Yeah, I think that, you know, when we talk about universities taking a conservative direction, if you look at, by any statistical measure, all of the teachers, you know, they donate to Democrats, they are registered Democrat professors up and down.

It doesn't even matter what state you're in.

It is like you're talking in the 90 percentile of of liberal professors and leadership in these, you know, in these different departments, in these colleges.

So having a conservative or Republican registered president of a university, I don't think just gets rid of that.

And I think, like you said, it's a bit more of a correction.

And I wanted to make a point.

You said about the value of the degree possibly going down.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, University of Florida just won the basketball championship.

That that just gave more value to the degree of the University of Florida than anything else could possibly have.

The same thing happened when they won the football championship years ago with Tim Tebow.

You know, getting a conservative president there is not going to make the value of the degree go down.

I just don't think it's going to happen.

Jennifer, in the short time that we have left.

Real quick, I'm going to go back to what Craig mentioned about Ben Sasse and UF, and that might have had a bigger impact on UF than a basketball game or championship.

And, you know, you can look at FIU, I believe, where they had a new person take over and within a couple of months, the faculty is, you know, filing grievances and having massive issues.

You can look at New College and look at all of the professors that left.

It isn't, in my opinion, having a good effect on our universities.

Thank you for weighing in.

Very wonderful discussion.

We're going to go on to letting our viewers know that in the next two weeks, we're going to run two special Florida This Week programs to help you prepare for the upcoming hurricane season.

And we would love your suggestions and your input on Martin in.

S.t Pete wrote to us and told us a few years ago in Irma, I learned I needed a generator, had ten gallons of gas for the generator last year, but after Milton there was no gas in a 20 mile radius of Saint Pete.

Lesson learned have at least 25 gallons on hand.

Thank you, Martin, for that.

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

Email us your thirty second video or your responses.

We will include some of those suggestions in our upcoming programs.

And before we go, we certainly want to get to that big story of the week.

The other stories that each of you have been following.

Jake, I'd like to start with you.

Sure, so the Tampa Bay Young Republicans have been working all year on a weather modification ban bill that that went through up in the legislature this year, and the governor has is about to sign it.

It would take place July 1st.

So that is something that's really big for us.

And then to go into the hurricane issue, we also worked on a permitting bill that would allow, if you're having if you're struggling, getting the permitting to rebuild your homes and things like that, it would actually allow you to go to a third party to to finally get that if the county is taking too long.

So some of the things that we're working on that do not make the news, that do not make big national stories or anything like that are really important to speaks to the advocacy that you can do as just an individual with with a little bit of hope and.

Certainly not things that have gotten the attention of folks who are following the legislative session.

And that's always a shame.

Jennifer, what would you say is the other big story that we should be looking at this week?

My personal big story this week is David Jolly and his potential run for governor.

Um, I've been following him now.

He came in to the Democratic Party at the end of the year.

Last year, his wife switched to becoming a Democrat.

And it's been a it's been a long process for him.

And I am going to say he's giving me something really to look forward to.

The crowds that are coming to see him, 600 people, 200 people, club meetings that we typically have 50.

There's 200 people standing on their feet.

When he's done speaking.

I think he's really speaking to what Florida needs to hear affordability, education, the things that we're all most concerned about.

And I'm really looking forward to what can come next month.

Yes, so many other candidates yet to jump into the race.

Stanley, what was what is your big story?

Well, I think here in the county we have a real big issue.

And that is the cost of like rent and home ownership and the fact that our county commission wants to stop the funding for low and moderate income citizens, I think is appalling.

And I'm surprised that we're not hearing more about it in the news.

They voted, uh, last this week to to to stop the funding.

And now we're going to have another hearing next week and then they're going to vote again.

But I think that this is.

A Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough County Commission.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

We cover so many different counties.

I want to they.

Want to basically stop the funding for, uh, home, home, well, ownership as well as rent for low and moderate income.

I think this is appalling.

Craig, what is your big story of the week?

This not getting the time and attention that it deserves statewide?

I would say the children with severe developmental Mental disabilities are not getting the home based services that they qualify to receive.

They are eligible to receive because they are stuck on this state's waitlist for care.

There are more than 21,000 people stuck on this waitlist.

Many have been waiting for years with no prospects of ever getting off.

We're talking about kids with also very acute health conditions and needs who are languishing without this support.

And yet, at the same time, the state has run up multibillion dollar reserves and surpluses at the same time.

The legislature has allocated a fortune to reducing the wait list to the point that the agency that manages it, APD, has left that money unspent.

And when it gets rolled over in a rolling surplus year after year after year, when combined with what would have been federal matches, would have been more than $800 million to reduce that wait list, which at this point you still have 21,000 people waiting for those services.

Legislative leaders are keying into that.

They're making some some slight steps in the right direction, but more need to be taken for sure.

And thank you all for bringing these really important stories to the table, so that our viewers can get a view of different perspectives and different things that are going on.

So appreciate having you all here.

Thank you again.

Thank you to our panel members this week, Jennifer Griffith, Stanley Gray, Jake Hoffman, and Craig Patrick.

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

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Have a great weekend!

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