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Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] Coming up three weeks into the federal government shutdown, the ripple effects are being felt in our region.

From military families at MacDill Air Force Base to passengers and air traffic controllers at the airports.

Home foreclosures are up nationwide, and Lakeland, Florida is at the top of the list with the highest rate of foreclosure filings since July.

And a grand jury has been convened in the Hope Florida, investigation.

Witnesses with ties to the governor's office have been subpoenaed.

Those stories and more are next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back everybody.

I'm Lisette Campos.

Joining us on the panel this week are Garrett Greco, real estate broker, developer and the host of the Tampa Bay Developer Podcast.

We have Rebecca Liebson, the Tampa Bay Times real estate reporter, Thomas Mantz, the president and CEO of Feeding Tampa Bay, and Mitch Perry, senior reporter of the Florida Phoenix.

We begin with the U.S.

government shutdown.

Now in its third week, the effects are starting to ripple through local communities, from military families and travel at airports to millions of Floridians on food assistance, there is plenty of uncertainty.

Here's a look at how the shutdown is being felt across west central Florida.

Thousands of federal workers in our area are either furloughed or working without pay from TSA agents and air traffic controllers to staff at MacDill Air Force Base.

Tampa International Airport is partnering with local organizations to provide assistance, but also warns extended staffing shortages would impact travel.

Military families are also seeing delayed or inaccurate paychecks, for low income Floridians the concern is food.

Nearly 3 million people in our state rely on SNAP, and more than half a million depend on WIC.

That's food aid for women and children.

Both programs are currently funded, but for how long remains in question?

Doing its part, Feeding Tampa Bay launched an emergency program to help federal workers and military families in the region who suddenly find themselves without any income.

Programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security remain operational, but recipients should expect delays for new claims, changes or requests for support.

And of course, this is just a fraction of the impacts that are being felt by the shutdown.

Rebecca, I'd like to start with you.

You said that you were surprised by the angle of the story.

You did a special report for the Tampa Bay Times.

And, uh, tell our viewers about what you learned in your story.

Yeah, so one of the many programs that's being affected by this is the National Flood Insurance Program, which is how most people in this country get their flood insurance.

Um, in many places in Florida, you need to get flood insurance.

Um, so with this program shut down right now, they're not able to write any new policies and they're not able to renew any existing policies if those are, um, due.

Now, so this is holding up a lot of people's process of buying a home, because you have to have insurance if you're going to close on the home.

So that could affect those people.

And then, um, what's even more than that is if there were to be a hurricane, they may not be able to open any new claims, which could really hurt a lot of people.

And typically when you hear about the government shutdown, you think of the courts, how they're impact you think of the the, our service members who are whether or not they're being paid.

When viewers look at the debates that are going on between the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership.

Mitch, how do you think this is playing out in mainstream mainstream?

Main Street.

USA?

Well, this is a different type of shutdown because the Democrats are the ones doing it this time, right?

That's that's the way it usually works.

Democrats are the party of the government.

You know, some would say big government.

But they you know, they this is different.

But obviously they're trying to make a point about these health care subsidies going away in December 31st.

You know, Republicans have said the leadership has said like, hey, we can deal with that, but let's get this, you know, continuing resolution passed through November.

Obviously Dems, you know, kind of have the wind at their back and that this is a popular issue.

The Democrats have been in the wilderness last year.

You know, this is a good issue for them.

Now the subsidies you know, when we're pretty strong during Covid.

Actually, I was on the ACA a decade ago.

I wish I had the subsidies which people get now, actually, because I had to pay actually a lot.

So they need to negotiate that.

But look, as the piece shows here, you know, people are getting hurt and it's only going to get worse.

We're starting week three right now.

I think people the military did get paid this week, but in a couple of weeks there's no funding mechanism.

We know right now it's going to get a little hairy.

And you know, the last big shutdown I think was 35 days under Trump in 2018.

What you hear from people in Washington is this could go beyond that.

Thomas, you all have basically you're not waiting for the politicians to take action.

You all have started this program specifically to help federal workers in our community.

Um, service members, explain to our viewers the how the impact that you think, how many families will benefit from this.

Yeah, so I think what we've heard so far and what you're discussing is we don't truly know numbers of people impacted, because the clarity of what will and will not be supported is not known to us at this point.

But we have we have probably close to 3000 federal workers that work at TSA, airports, port security, and the military that are contractors.

I think we're still waiting to see what will happen with layoffs.

So our job is always to be prepared.

So as you mentioned in your intro, we're we've already put in place mechanisms to make sure that families can get first and foremost, food on the table, because that's the critical issue.

But we're also working with partners to bring alongside other resources that someone may need, whether it's utility support, mental health resources.

Um, I think the thing that we always understand going through this, whether it is a government shutdown, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a hurricane, the toll on families and communities is significant.

And part of what we want to make sure that we do is that we're standing in and stepping into those moments and providing the resources that are necessary, because generally speaking, in a situation like this, the folks who come into our care would not have been there otherwise.

That's right.

Garrett, when you interview different Leaders, different kinds of folks that come into your podcast.

You're hearing so many different voices.

What are you what are you hearing from the community in terms of concerns about the local impacts of the shutdown?

Well, we honestly haven't talked about it a lot on the show, but in my brokerage business, we're starting to see some effects.

The good news in all of this is the federal government provides certain guidelines during a shutdown with the flood insurance program.

And and you're able to write a mortgage without having flood insurance as long as the buyer completes the application, sends it in, and then you have your elevation certificate and the other caveats that go along with that.

Plus, the seller of a property has a huge incentive to sell their home, right?

They have a vested interest in making the deal work.

So we're seeing a lot of sellers right now work with the buyers and getting the buyer to receive the seller's policy.

So there's temporary solutions that sellers and buyers are working out.

And, you know, we're all sort of waiting for things to open back up and move forward.

Is there anything that our residents can do to communicate with their legislators that they want some sort of resolution, some movement, um, in, in this negotiations?

Well, I'm sure they are hearing from people who are directly affected by this because that's who you know, obviously, the biggest impact is on I know there's some people who just think it's not a good thing that we don't have government working.

Some people may be okay with it, but, um, I do find, you know, again, Democrats are making an issue of, you know, health care, right?

That's the thing that that that.

You hear about.

Yeah, that, that basically this is their leverage point.

Uh, and it's scary.

It's dangerous though, because, you know, we've got Russ vote from the, the white House who's threatening to fire all these people, which they, you know, tried to do earlier this year.

Uh, Trump has backed off on that a little bit.

We'll see what happens with that.

But that's the threat that they knew going into this thing is that, uh, this is a unique white House in terms of the leverage, the huge power they have there.

And one of those is to get rid of people who are right now furloughed, maybe not get a chance to get their job back, which I think would be deleterious to everybody would be concerned about that.

So many layers to continue to watch in this as it develops.

The other story we're following is the government shutdown isn't just affecting paychecks and services.

It's also putting pressure on the real estate market.

It has the National Flood Insurance Program frozen.

That means that thousands of home sales across the state are stalled in coastal communities along the West Coast.

In our viewing area, buyers and sellers are basically in limbo, unable to close in certain cases until this program is reauthorized.

There's a lot of insecurity.

A realtors warned that even a short delay could ripple through the housing market in several ways, slowing down construction appraisals and mortgage approvals.

Meanwhile, take a look at this.

New data shows that almost every Florida metro has a foreclosure rate that is higher than the national average.

Lakeland and Winter Haven topped the third quarter report by Attom Data.

Inflation, high interest and insurance rates, along with the economic uncertainty of our time, are listed as factors in this.

Garret, I'd like to start with you.

When you when you hear this, for you, it's not a surprise, but for, for a lot of us to to hear that Lakeland in the entire country has the highest rate of foreclosure filings.

That's that's kind of surprising.

It is, and it sounds very scary.

And there are real price drops that are happening in certain communities across the country, and especially here in Florida.

What we have to remember is we had an unprecedented level of demand during Covid.

I mean, we had hundreds of thousands of people move here.

I think I looked up recently, I think it was two and a half or more million people have moved here in the last five years.

I mean, Florida has a population of almost 24 million people now.

In Lakeland specifically had a high number of speculators.

So these people would come in.

These were investors.

I believe a lot of that data points to those speculators.

They're trying to get out of their properties.

And so, you know, we have to understand that when you try to get out of a property and there's not enough demand to purchase it, you're going to see some of these foreclosures.

But for the rest of the population, we have to remember the inflation on everything else, right?

Insurance costs more money.

Construction costs more money.

Anyone that owns a home knows.

I mean, if you have to replace an air conditioner today, it costs significantly.

Everything is more expensive.

And so that's only exacerbated the issue with price escalations.

When you look at the data by that company and also by Realtor.com, they listed the five areas with the highest rate of foreclosure filings.

And Lakeland was number one.

Then you had Columbia, South Carolina.

Number three was Cape Coral, Florida.

Then you had Cleveland, Ohio.

And then coming in number five was Ocala.

So what is it about Cape Coral and Ocala that you think landed them on that list?

When you look back at data from the 2008 crash, again, a lot of speculation, I think.

I think a large part of it was speculators who want to buy Florida real estate.

I'll bring up an interesting point, though.

On the upper end, on the high end luxury real estate, waterfront real estate, that's not slowing down.

Um, those buyers typically don't have a mortgage.

They usually watch the stock market more than mortgage rates and so on the higher end.

We're seeing a screaming market.

We're having huge success on waterfront properties.

People moving here from the northeast.

That part of the market is not slowing down.

So it's interesting you have these these negative and positives in the same market.

So so Garrett mentioned the 2008 housing crash.

Um, what did feeding Tampa Bay?

Were there lessons that were learned learn from that housing crash in terms of how that impacted workforce housing, affordable housing.

How did that.

Well, I think, you know, if you look at that, as some might say, that was the bottom of our economic right, uh, floor.

What we've seen since then, though, is a disproportionate I think it speaks to what Garrett's talking about.

Those with economic capability have seen their net worth, capacity and capability rise dramatically.

Those that ended up on the wrong side of all of those expenses have seen their expenses rise dramatically and wages have not been, you know, grown commensurately with it.

And I think that's the long term challenge we're seeing get worse and worse.

When you look at the folks that we serve, some 85% of the folks that seek services from our organization are employed.

Remember, they're consumers.

They're taxpayers.

They're an important part of our community infrastructure.

But their ability to maintain purchase power and for basic expenses.

Boy, that has just cratered as expenses have risen much more dramatically than wages have.

So foreclosures in their world, or maintaining household expenses far more difficult because you're dealing with more expensive housing costs, more expensive transportation costs, more expensive food costs, more expensive childcare costs, which is a hidden, sneaky, huge issue for a lot of families.

And so trying to make all that work is really, really challenging and people are making difficult decisions.

What is the trend when you all in the food industry are looking at these big stories on the housing market and what are what's happening?

When do you start to feel those impacts or see those impacts on the food programs or the families that you serve?

So, you know, we could say we're a bellwether at the front, and we're also an indicator of economic recovery on the back end.

Right?

It could be both, because when we look at something, it's never to a homeowner or to a person in this situation.

It's not just a housing crisis or a food crisis, it is a life crisis.

And so you're now trying to make trade off choices.

And I do want to mention one of the great concerns we have about health care is if health care opportunities are restricted or those resources go away.

You're now talking about a significant new burden on a lot of families financially.

Rebecca, as a real estate reporter, how do you see all of this playing out?

Yeah, I mean, I know the data that we looked at before was about individual homeowners.

I'm really curious to see how the commercial real estate market might be impacted.

Um, as Garrett mentioned before, during Covid, there was a ton of demand.

A lot of these investors were able to come in and get a loan very cheap.

Um, whereas individual homeowners usually have like a fixed rate mortgage.

So your rate is staying the same.

A lot of commercial investors will do a floating rate mortgage so they could see their rates going up.

Now, um, during that time, we had a lot of investors coming in here buying up older properties.

They thought they could maybe flip for a profit and sell them before their mortgage rate went up.

So I'm curious to see if that becomes an issue now, if people were not able to to flip those quickly enough and they're seeing their loans come due.

It's always so difficult to pick which stories in the limited time that we have on the show, because there's so many things happening.

Let's talk about the big stories of the week.

Mitch, I'll start with you.

Yeah, so the last time I was on here a few weeks ago, I said that Jay Collins was going to announce his candidacy for governor.

That has not happened yet.

I think it's still going to.

But interestingly, is that his he has no replacement.

So he's been the lieutenant governor for several months now.

But Ron DeSantis has not announced at all election dates he's actually been sued.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit in recent weeks demanding an election date, but it looks like the way it is now that seat Senate District 14, which is Hillsborough County northwest Hillsborough County, is not going to have representation when the legislature begins in a few months.

The speculation is that Republicans think that might be a competitive seat, and so they're in no hurry to put an election up there.

Garrett, tell us your big story that you're following.

So I believe transportation is finally going to be coming online here in Tampa Bay in a meaningful way.

So I've been tracking this for for a few months now.

And with new leadership in the right positions, along with the Regional Infrastructure Accelerator Program, which was a grant by the federal government coming into Tampa Bay and trying to find alternative forms of financing for these big projects like private equity and things like that.

We now have leadership that has experience in finding funding sources that are from different parts of the country that are here now locally.

So I think in the next few months, you're going to start to see some real big news on transportation.

Thomas.

So our big story is public private partnerships.

Just spent the last couple of days in Tallahassee working with legislative leadership across the state of Florida.

We're going to bring in some $30 million worth of economic value to farmers, which then in turn becomes good, healthy produce on tables.

I think what that really speaks to amidst all the other chaos that we talk about, is that when folks sit down and agree upon a basic principle in this instance, making sure families have healthy food, we can find a lot of consensus.

This is a program that the elected officials we deal with, along with everybody else, thinks is a really good idea.

That can be a population health driver further down the road.

Wonderful, Rebecca.

So it's been a year since Hurricane Helene and Milton came through our area and devastated a ton of people.

Um, next week, there's going to be over 800 million available in funding for people who are still struggling to rebuild.

This will be through Pinellas County.

It's open to all Pinellas County residents except for St.

Petersburg.

They'll have their own program.

Um, but yeah, just a really important resource for people as we still kind of work through the recovery process.

Thank you, for those on our final segment, we want to turn our attention to a new chapter in one of Florida's most politically charged investigations in recent history, a Leon County grand jury has convened around the Hope Florida Foundation, the program championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis.

The probe centers on whether public funds meant to help families in need were misused for political purposes.

Take a look at the heart of the grand jury.

How $10 million from a medicaid settlement were funneled into the Hope Florida Foundation.

The settlement money came from Centene, the largest Medicaid administrator in Florida, after it admitted overbilling taxpayers millions of dollars in prescription drugs.

Witnesses subpoenaed by the grand jury include staff with ties to the administration of Governor Ron DeSantis.

Right here on Florida This Week, former Senate President Tom Lee did not mince words on the need for transparency in this matter.

Here's a portion of his remarks on the April 25th episode.

Look, this is this was illegal, this is not a new it's not a new problem.

In 2005, we passed a law that made it illegal to take lawsuit settlement dollars, uh, outside the General Appropriation Act or through the Legislative Budget Commission.

But this money belonged to the taxpayers, plain and simple.

And it should have gone back into the state coffers to be appropriated by the legislature and it wasn't.

State Attorney Jack Campbell's office, which is overseeing the grand jury is refusing comment as subpoenas go out.

The funds in question were part of a $57 million total returning to our state and federal coffers.

Instead, $10 million went to Hope Florida, which then passed it to two nonprofits, and from there went to a political committee opposing the 2024 constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana.

Earlier this year, state Representative Alex Andrade leading the initial investigation under the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee alleged the transfers could constitute money laundering and wire fraud.

Andrade ultimately withdrew, citing legal limitations of the subcommittee, and he referred the matter to prosecutors.

For now, the Hope Florida Foundation continues to operate.

Grand jury proceedings may determine whether criminal charges will follow, and whether key figures in state government will be brought in to testify.

As a senior reporter for Florida Phoenix, Mitch has been covering this all of these developments since April.

Mitch, there is a long list of folks who could be subpoenaed.

When you're tracking all of this, how are you?

Where are you looking?

Well, we know so far through reporting through the Tampa Bay Times, we just had a couple of people we know this week.

One of them that has testified, or at least gone into the courtroom, is a member of Save Our Society for drugs is the name of the group, one of the groups.

The two nonprofit groups that received, I believe, $5 million in this case.

This one group did.

And so that is the question, right?

They got this money, that and this other group that was affiliated with the for the Chamber of Commerce and within a very short amount of time, diverted that almost all of the money they got to keep for to clean, I believe, was the name of the PAC, Political Affiliation Committee that was led by James Uthmeier, who is currently our Attorney General.

At the time, he was Ron DeSantis chief of staff, and he was leading that effort.

As you as you noted in the setup here.

So in terms of big names, I mean, Upmeyer is the biggest name that I could see possibly, you know, being part of this.

And he seems to be the one with the biggest risk as we look at all this, because of what has been previously reported in terms of having contact with that group, Save Our Society for drugs.

Um, in terms of what we have this thing happen here and that money moving around so quickly.

And this settlement is something that is not new.

This is a settlement that the state of Florida had been in negotiations with Centene since 2021.

Centene was also in negotiations with other states.

20 other states.

After they had admitted to overbilling taxpayers for for prescription drugs.

And so it's interesting to see all the layers that came to the surface, came to the public's attention during this legislative session.

Yeah, and it kind of came up before the Centene announcement came.

Or maybe the money came through was, um, reporters were looking at because Hope Florida, I think, was officially put in the governor's office in 2023, and they had to go get legislative approval.

And so part of that, and actually anybody could have seen that when there was actually a bill, legislative bill, I believe Danny Burgess from this area was sponsoring it in the Senate.

Uh, and it reported in the analysis that, uh, that it hadn't completed some of its tax returns, basically tax forms and like, what's up with that?

And so people were asking that that's when, you know, kind of the snooping began about what's going on with Hope Florida.

And then you learn about this, you know, the return of the $67 million and then, you know, and then the money, you know, had it go over here to Florida, uh, who didn't never really receive that much money in the past or that much with it.

And then all of a sudden they just move it over.

It just just as unusual.

And on the, on the, on the surface of it, it raised a lot of questions.

And then of course we did.

Have you mentioned Alex Andrade who had the committee there.

And you know, you had you had friction, as everybody knows, in this legislative session for the first time, really, since Ron DeSantis has been governor.

And this has been obviously the biggest win because.

Members of his Republican Party, right, because the Democrats have been critical for six years, it hasn't gotten anywhere.

It's Republican versus Republicans here.

And so Andrade's committee did a lot looked into it as much as he could do.

He tried to subpoena some folks who didn't show up.

And then, like you said, you know, late April, it's like, okay, it's all over now.

And it's like, is that all there is here?

uh, and nobody really knew.

You know, would Jack Campbell pick this up or a federal investigator pick it up?

And the comments from fellow Republicans have been really stunning.

Um, Alex Andrade said when he announced that he was dropping the issue, he said that he would leave the rest to the FBI and the Department of Justice.

We just played the clip by Tom Lee, who was the Senate president from 2004 to 2006, and he also had strong words.

Um, it who are some of the other players that we might hear from in this, do you think?

Well, I don't know, but we should say, you know, Casey DeSantis, right?

This was her baby.

Uh, and, you know, there was a lot of talk that maybe she was we talked about in the show, that maybe her potential candidacy as a governor to succeed Ron DeSantis.

And, you know, that's probably not going to happen.

I don't know if it would ever really have happened, but this, obviously, on a political front, is really just, you know, doomed that candidacy.

I would dare say, even though in polls consistently, even now, she does very well compared to Byron Donalds because of the name factor.

She's well known.

Um, the governor has been super critical.

He has said this is a political witch hunt that nobody would have cared about, except that Casey was involved with it.

Pointed to the timing of.

Yeah, and he has also said that like, this is I believe he said 33,000 people.

This has helped got off the government rolls, uh, and saved the state $100 million.

He's throwing those numbers out there that haven't really been verified like that.

But yes, other you know, again, the tension between Republicans and Tallahassee was really pronounced by this.

Uh, the governor hasn't really talked about.

I don't think he since he's been this the grand jury has began the last week.

Anybody's really asked him about this.

He gets very upset about when people talk about it.

And, um, you know, it's it's it's happening.

Though we do know Jack Campbell.

I mean, he doesn't necessarily have to have come up.

Maybe the grand jury doesn't come up with anything.

At the end of the day, that usually doesn't happen.

It's certainly something that we will continue to follow.

Thank you for your perspective and thanks to all of you for coming in.

Again, many thanks to our panelists sharing their time and their expertise with us.

Garrett Greco, Thomas Mantz, Mitch Perry, and Rebecca Liebson.

That's all our time for now.

On behalf of the entire team here at WEDU.

Thanks so much for watching.