August 13, 2025 • 25 mins
Sal Nuzzo, Executive Director of Consumers Defense, caught us up on all things Florida.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
All right, welcome third hour already of the Morning Show
with Preston Scott reminding you the kids are going to school.
You probably know by now if you're on the roads
with the buses and the multiple stops and the school zones.
Just take your time. Everybody, Just relax. What is it,
(00:25):
Aaron Rodgers said years ago. R E L A X. Relax. Everybody.
Joining me on the program is Salnwzo from Consumers Defense
the website Consumers Defense dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hello, good morning to you.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm doing great. It's a fantastic Monday. The kids are
off to school, headed to Des Moine, Iowa in a
little bit to do some work, and apparently they got
their big state fair. So yeah, get to try out
a I think it's called a brown sugar pork belly
on a stick.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So we'll see if you can't go wrong with pork belly.
I mean, yeah, my wife might have some words to
say about that. But tell me, is this time of
year for legislative want and observer? Is the off season
more interesting to pay attention to than the nuts and
bolts of the session itself.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, I think it's a really cool time right now.
Just normally you have this period in which kind of
the emerging themes are coming up for the next legislative session.
But what's really really unique about right now is that
against the political backdrop and the dynamic of it is
(01:36):
the governor's last legislative session as governor, he turns out
and the election season will hit up. You have the
question of the prior drama with the House of Representatives
and leadership. How does that look? You have all of
these different things. You've got an appointed Attorney General who
(01:57):
will have to run for his first political office, a
ton of different things, and all of these are happening
at a time where we're now beginning to plan out
what gets tackled in the twenty twenty sixth session, which
starts January. I think it's thirteenth.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
What's the bigger liability for Rhonda Santis being a lame
duck or having political adversaries in his own party?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I would say the latter. I think he has shown
himself a formidable policy and political force, so I think
that his policy heft has gone nowhere, So I wouldn't
put as much on the quote unquote lame duck status.
(02:44):
I think the bigger challenge is by all intents and perfect,
we don't have an opposition party. They're they're the Florida Democrats.
Just they're in disirest Yeah, they really just don't exist.
So we do have it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But we do have an adversarial party. It's just the
same one.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, we have the various factions within the Republican Party that,
as we saw in twenty twenty five's session, became a
little bit more public, and there's always debates and dialogues
within different you know, kind of coalitions within the party.
You've got, you know, Republicans who represent different constituencies, different
(03:24):
parts of the state. They have different priorities. So that
has always been the case, but it always happened kind
of in at least one or two layers under the surface.
This year, this past session, it did not what's.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
The bigger issue property tax tax reform, if you will,
How Florida is going to get revenue, how communities are
going to get revenue if there's property tax reform or
insurance reform.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I think on the insurance reform side. And there was
a great op ed piece in the Miami Hera from
former Speaker Paul Renner who talked about the fact that
on the auto insurance side, we're now seeing rates begin
to fall a little bit and they will continue to
do so. I think as long as the House, Senate
(04:16):
and the Governor resist any urge to tinker with the
reforms that were passed when Renner was speaker, I think
we're on the right track. I would say the affordability
problem and the tax in particular the property tax piece
of that is still driving a big wedge in between
(04:37):
kind of the haves and have nots. And a lot
of this has to do with the massive in migration
we have had as a state, particularly over the last
five years. Somewhere in the neighborhood a two and a
half million people moved in to the state with inflated money.
We had a you know, we don't have the inventory
(04:57):
of homes. They get bid up proper. The taxes go
up as a result, and there's your problem.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Wealthiest member of Congress US Senator Rick Scott from Florida
famously flew a banner behind an airplane recently in and
around New York City saying, basically to paraphrase, you don't
like socialism, moved to Florida, and you know you brought
up immigration and its impact state immigration, people moving from
(05:33):
one state coming here. And I always make sure that
people understand when I say immigration, I'm talking to legal
kind anyway. Did they leave their politics behind?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's a great question, and yeah, to piggyback on that,
I try to articulate it very in an enunciated in migration,
which is the people moving state to state, And the
answer is yes, by and large. So when you look
at the numbers, and I'm a data nerd at stats Hound, yeah,
one of the more remarkable ones anywhere I go, and
(06:06):
I tell this in people's eyes bug out. In twenty twelve,
when Barack Obama was running for reelection, there were I
believe it was roughly eight hundred thousand more registered Democrats
in the state than Republicans. Fast forward thirteen years twenty
twenty five, there are now one point four to one
(06:28):
point five million more registered Republicans than there are registered Democrats.
That's a net two million swing. That is a remarkable swing.
I don't know that any other state in history has
seen that kind of shift. And it shifted Florida not
from a blue state, but from a purple state into
(06:50):
probably the deepest red state. That exists given its size,
are other potential candidates for the governor her seat save
Casey DeSantis aware of why that's happened. Does Paul Renner
understand why Florida's deep read? Does Byron Donalds understand why
(07:11):
Florida is deep red?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Did they get it?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I would say yes, at least on the Republican side.
And I think anybody who is plugged in enough to
the political atmosphere in the state to be considering a
run for any office in Florida statewide, House, Senate. You
know those numbers, they are a testament to the ground
(07:36):
game of the Republican Party of Florida over that period
of time. That is door to door knocking, that is
getting people registered, that is monitoring where people are moving
and getting your local state committeemen and executive committees in
those counties out and about and getting folks registered. That
is a credit to Evan power. That is a credit
(07:58):
to Joe Gruder's, that is a credit to Blake and Golia.
All of those guys were chairs of the party that
moved those numbers over that period of time.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So let's circle back to the biggest issues here. We've
got insurance, We've got property tax ballot initiative. I mean, well,
and they kind of hit upon a theme and it
really dovetails from what we were just talking about and
that I see from the governor and from many others
as you watch him, in particular with media work, press conferences,
(08:31):
this theme of protecting the state from backsliding.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We have achieved great gains. Yeah, we have not only
achieved a supermajority in both houses and all for statewide
elected offices as well as the US Senate, but we
improved upon those supermajorities in the next cycle after achieving them,
making sure that we do not kind of leave anything
(08:58):
on the field and allow the op position a toe
hold or a crack to plant something in where they
can begin to get progress.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
What of those big issues are the most most vulnerable, Well.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And you kind of touched upon them. I think the
big one that's going to be telling is the debate
that happens on property taxes. That is a heavy, heavy
lift to eliminate them all together. I'm really paying attention there.
The other two are what we talked about in kind
of rolling back any of those insurance reforms. But one
I want to get to is that redistricting piece that's
(09:34):
been in the news. I think that there is a
vulnerability there that I don't know that folks are considering.
But then you also mentioned the ballot initiative process. So
we've got a lot kind of going on that we
can kind of unpack.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Twenty two minutes past seal newso with me from Consumer's
Defense and we follow the legislative action. And this, to me,
this is sort of like when the storm forms. You know,
it's paying attention to the nuts and bolts, the committee
weeks and all of that that intrigues me. We've talked
about some of the issues that really deserve a lot
(10:10):
of attention, and let's start with insurance reform. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Sure, So if you can recall back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And if you may clarify for us, there's health insurance,
there's auto insurance, and there's property insurance.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, and so in the insurance realm, we're generally talking
about what's called property and casualty, so homeowner's insurance and
auto insurance as being some of the bigger cost drivers
for Floridians, in particular because of the runaway litigation environment
that we had had. So twenty twenty three happens. They
(10:45):
pass a series of very big reforms under Speaker Paul
Renner and Senate President Pasadomo. Those reforms inevitably take time,
and so I think Floridians by and large were expecting
a quicker turnaround. The markets are what they are. We
need new insurance carriers to come in. They are been
(11:08):
doing that, and now we're beginning to see a little
bit of fruit from that. However, in this past legislative
cycle or season, you had even members of the Republican
Caucus in the House moving bills that would have turned
back on those reforms, that would have said, no, we
gave the insurance industry everything they wanted. They didn't come through.
(11:31):
Therefore we got to hammer them. The governor wisely, in
my opinion, wisely saw that as a bad idea, came
out against it and really hammered home the points that
I was really just making. Those weren't necessarily just mine.
And so I think one of the things that we're
going to need to pay attention to is does the
(11:51):
House of Representatives in particular take up something along these
lines again, or do they see the data and begin
to tack toward okay, the reforms are working, We've got
to stay the course. I know the incoming Senate President,
Jim Boyd fairly well, and he is an insurance broker,
and he is somebody who has seen it firsthand in
(12:14):
his employment capacity as well. And he's even said that
that the reforms are working. It's just not as fast
as we all want.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay, when we move then to the next topic, and
that's the property tax. Yeah, is there going to be
enough data to really make a compelling case for you know,
Governor DeSantis's plan to eliminate property tax.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I think you can get the data. I think the
question is going to be where do in particular, local
governments make up the revenue that they need to perform services?
And I emphasize need as opposed to want. And what
(13:00):
we're seeing now and I would love to kind of
dive in a little bit on our new CFO and
a you know, kind of a little bit later today
is what we're seeing is this juxtaposition of the governor
and the cabinet looking very specifically at local governments saying,
all right, you have been living high on the hog
(13:24):
for a long time as property values have been bumping
up and reassessments have been happening, and people have been
migrating in no rollback rates, no rollback rates. And think
about this. If a home is two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars and someone from New York comes down and
bids up that home and now buys it at five
(13:45):
hundred thousand dollars, that increases the property tax revenue of
that local government and it avoids the three percent save
our homes trajectory. So local governments have been getting far
more fattened, so to speak. And we're now seeing that
(14:06):
analysis and that effort go public on all right, what
can we do about this to make that property tax
elimination more feasible?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, and then you have municipalities. I don't know how
many are, like the capital city, but where they also
in essence are taxing people through their local utility as well,
and they're transferring massive sums of money and that becomes
a de facto property tax too.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And what I do know there are a number of
municipal utilities around the state. What I don't know, and
there may be data out there, is how many of
them are doing what the City of Tallahassee does where
they send money from the utilities into the general fund.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And that artificially has been masking property tax issues for
years in the local government.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Oh, absolutely, thirty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
The things we talk about pass the hour here on
the Morning Show with President Scott sal newsa with Consumer's
Defense can suomers Defense dot com is the website to
learn a little bit more about all of that. We
were talking about the different big issues, and we talked
about the ballot initiative thing, and I just want to
bring up that, you know, I know what they passed,
(15:15):
and they said that, you know, they're making it more
difficult to get ballot initiatives on the ballot, and as
well they should, I would say, they're they're making it
more secure and ensuring that the ballot initiative process is
not thwarted by a number of nefarious actors out there. Well,
(15:35):
you got Kim Rivers smooching it up with schmoozing it
up with Donald Trump at a fundraiser, and of course
she wants to get his help and he's lending it
to getting marijuana passed. But sal I've observed personally, on
three separate occasions, people collecting signatures for the marijuana petition
and in none of those cases has anyone been asked
(15:56):
to provide a driver's license, an identification, or the last
four theirs. So they were simply asked to sign, they signed,
and they walked away. That's against the law.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That is a big problem. That is against the law.
The House passed in just this past legislative session, House
Bill twelve oh five, which required one of those things.
And so if any petition signatures are signature gatherers are
out there collecting signatures and they are not getting that,
there will likely be a challenge of a certain number
(16:27):
of signatures. Isn't the idea to make sure that they
are able to sign that petition as a resident of
the state of Florida and they're an eligible voter. Yeah,
I mean, it is a check and balance system to
ensure that everyone who is signing a petition, and it's
not a small number of signatures that are required. At
some are approaching nine hundred thousand, I believe at this point,
(16:51):
and so they we need to ensure that all of
those nine hundred thousand signatures are actually people who are
voters and eligible to vote in the state of Florida.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Let's talk about the CFO appointment of Blazing Golie.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, so big news in between when we were last together,
and now the governor finally made the appointment for Florida's
Chief Financial Officer. Reminder, the prior CFO, Jimmy Patronis, ran
successfully for Congress, and so the governor made that appointment.
And there was a little bit of political dynamic there
(17:24):
because you had had State Senator Joe Gruders had already
announced that he was going to run in twenty twenty
six for that role. He's a Republican, the senator had
the endorsement of President Trump for that role. The governor
has a stalwart ally and blazing goalie in the Senate.
(17:46):
But Blaze had been kind of made it known he
was interested in the role, and the governor and him
got along very well, and so what do you do?
And kind of news went out very early on mid July.
I guess it was Trump all of a sudden came
in and endorsed Joe Gruders to be the head of
(18:06):
the Republican National Committee the RNC, because the existing chair
was vacating that role to run for the US Senate
in North Carolina. So Joe Gruders is now the only candidate.
He's running with no opposition for RNC chair, and it
looks like unless something crazy happens, that Blazing Golia will
(18:27):
have the kind of the role and the only path
forward on the Republican side for reelection or election in
twenty six. De facto incumbency, Yeah, de facto incumbency. Same
thing with the Attorney general. Yeah, you also have our
appointed Attorney general, James Uthmeier. He's been making all kinds
(18:47):
of news since taking on this role. He took action
against a number of ESG players, which, as you could
imagine in my role as music to my years, He's
going after a lot of these asset managers that are
using factors for making investment decisions that lead to poorer
(19:09):
returns to the taxpayer, to the public pension program. He's
gone after target, He's suing a couple of shadowy groups
called the Climate Disclosure Project and another related to it.
He also last week announced he's taking on a lot
of the companies, the tech companies that run these adult
(19:30):
sites because they're violating the age verification laws. And I
believe kind of politically there's a dynamic here where he
absolutely I expect he will run for election is what
would be his first election to public office. He's got
to establish some name recognition. And so I'm not sure
(19:51):
if there's any other individuals on the Republican side that
are looking to challenge him. I haven't heard of any.
I know they'll be a Democrat challenging. And so he's
going out there tackling via his principles those issues that
are going to be important to Floridians. And so those
are two state level cabinet posts that you are doing
(20:14):
a whole lot. And with CFO and Golia, he is
taking on local governments via the Doge audits, and he's
bringing the Doze teams in and he's been to Orlando,
to Jacksonville's plotting Miami Hillsboro. They're tackling that local government
revenue issue like I've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Buy I'm a happy meal if he comes to Tallahassee.
Redistricting is an interesting topic in the news right now,
and even Democrats are pointing out that they have no
moral authority on the subject because they've redistricted Republicans out
of existence in multiple states. You've got the debacle going
(20:56):
on with Texas where they're threatening to arrest Democrats in Texas, Well,
they should they are abdicating their responsibility as elected officers.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Well, they're leaving the state. They're abdicating their responsibilities by
leaving the state. And so where you know, they're considering
going after them and bringing them back.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So where is Florida And all of this redistricting talk, well,
very intriguing. Just in the last week or so, the
governor has put out a desire to have a mid
decade reapportionment just of congressional lines. We're not talking the
State House or the state Senate. And right now the
breakdown is we have twenty eight members of Congress. There's
(21:35):
twenty Republicans and eight Democrats. There was a challenge to
the lines that were drawn after the twenty twenty census
related to District five that was tossed. We eventually want
or the governor won, and so there's talk about can
they do a reapportionment that better reflects population boundaries where
(22:01):
people are moving to And you know, the political dynamic
at play is would it necessarily be better for Republicans
running for office? Would they potentially pick up a couple
of seats? But the thing that you know kind of
is in the back of my head is I always
wonder if and when a particular party, Republicans or Democrats,
(22:24):
overplay a hand. And that's the one that I wonder
where folks begin to say, well, I'm not really comfortable there.
I think that maybe a little bit too much of it.
Maybe it's a power grab, maybe it's you know, you know,
a kick somewhere. I don't know, but that's something that
I'm wondering about. Do they have to settle the issue
(22:46):
about the census first and the undercount that likely took place.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
No, this would be completely separate and apart from that.
This would be a mid decade reapportionment basis.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Doesn't that but congressional seats all base it's on that census.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yes, so this would only be on the lines that
are drawn for the existing twenty eight seats. Okay, so
we would not be adding any now. When they redo
the census in twenty thirty and they release the results
and do reapportionment, which would arguably give Florida another minimum
one congressional seat, maybe even two depending on how the
(23:24):
path goes, we would then redraw the lines again to
add those seats. But right now, this would just be
shuffling deck chairs not on the Titanic. Sure it would
be shuffling deck chairs among the existing twenty eight seats.
Is there ever any argument that can be made, I
know it has been made, but that if you factor
(23:46):
in race at all. We were talking with Hans von
Sbakofsky about this just last week, that any time you
factor race as a consideration in districting, you have violated
the law. Yes, and I remember talking with Hans not
long ago when we were at an event, and I
do believe the Supreme Court is going to take up
(24:09):
a case I believe out of Louisiana. Yeah, that's this
fall in the coming term that will likely decide the
answer to that very question. So much intrigue it is,
and like a funny little anecdote you mentioned, it's not
confined to just Republicans or Democrats. California's redoing their lines.
(24:32):
Texas is considering.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Are they allowed to illegals.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
They would say yes, and they will get challenged on this.
But in the greatest anecdote of this, the governor of
the state of Massachusetts decided she needed to get in
on this action. They want to redraw their congressional lines,
but guess what. There are nine members of Congress in
the state of Massachusetts. They're all Democrats. They have nobody
(24:57):
to reapportion out. So you know the state that gives us,
Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
You gotta love it Focahontas, Yes, indeed, gotta love it
all right, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Salnuzzo. He'll be back in September as we'll catch up
on all things legislative and political and governance in the
state of Florida.
All right, welcome third hour already of the Morning Show
with Preston Scott reminding you the kids are going to school.
You probably know by now if you're on the roads
with the buses and the multiple stops and the school zones.
Just take your time. Everybody, Just relax. What is it,
(00:25):
Aaron Rodgers said years ago. R E L A X. Relax. Everybody.
Joining me on the program is Salnwzo from Consumers Defense
the website Consumers Defense dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hello, good morning to you.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm doing great. It's a fantastic Monday. The kids are
off to school, headed to Des Moine, Iowa in a
little bit to do some work, and apparently they got
their big state fair. So yeah, get to try out
a I think it's called a brown sugar pork belly
on a stick.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So we'll see if you can't go wrong with pork belly.
I mean, yeah, my wife might have some words to
say about that. But tell me, is this time of
year for legislative want and observer? Is the off season
more interesting to pay attention to than the nuts and
bolts of the session itself.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, I think it's a really cool time right now.
Just normally you have this period in which kind of
the emerging themes are coming up for the next legislative session.
But what's really really unique about right now is that
against the political backdrop and the dynamic of it is
(01:36):
the governor's last legislative session as governor, he turns out
and the election season will hit up. You have the
question of the prior drama with the House of Representatives
and leadership. How does that look? You have all of
these different things. You've got an appointed Attorney General who
(01:57):
will have to run for his first political office, a
ton of different things, and all of these are happening
at a time where we're now beginning to plan out
what gets tackled in the twenty twenty sixth session, which
starts January. I think it's thirteenth.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
What's the bigger liability for Rhonda Santis being a lame
duck or having political adversaries in his own party?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I would say the latter. I think he has shown
himself a formidable policy and political force, so I think
that his policy heft has gone nowhere, So I wouldn't
put as much on the quote unquote lame duck status.
(02:44):
I think the bigger challenge is by all intents and perfect,
we don't have an opposition party. They're they're the Florida Democrats.
Just they're in disirest Yeah, they really just don't exist.
So we do have it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But we do have an adversarial party. It's just the
same one.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, we have the various factions within the Republican Party that,
as we saw in twenty twenty five's session, became a
little bit more public, and there's always debates and dialogues
within different you know, kind of coalitions within the party.
You've got, you know, Republicans who represent different constituencies, different
(03:24):
parts of the state. They have different priorities. So that
has always been the case, but it always happened kind
of in at least one or two layers under the surface.
This year, this past session, it did not what's.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
The bigger issue property tax tax reform, if you will,
How Florida is going to get revenue, how communities are
going to get revenue if there's property tax reform or
insurance reform.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I think on the insurance reform side. And there was
a great op ed piece in the Miami Hera from
former Speaker Paul Renner who talked about the fact that
on the auto insurance side, we're now seeing rates begin
to fall a little bit and they will continue to
do so. I think as long as the House, Senate
(04:16):
and the Governor resist any urge to tinker with the
reforms that were passed when Renner was speaker, I think
we're on the right track. I would say the affordability
problem and the tax in particular the property tax piece
of that is still driving a big wedge in between
(04:37):
kind of the haves and have nots. And a lot
of this has to do with the massive in migration
we have had as a state, particularly over the last
five years. Somewhere in the neighborhood a two and a
half million people moved in to the state with inflated money.
We had a you know, we don't have the inventory
(04:57):
of homes. They get bid up proper. The taxes go
up as a result, and there's your problem.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Wealthiest member of Congress US Senator Rick Scott from Florida
famously flew a banner behind an airplane recently in and
around New York City saying, basically to paraphrase, you don't
like socialism, moved to Florida, and you know you brought
up immigration and its impact state immigration, people moving from
(05:33):
one state coming here. And I always make sure that
people understand when I say immigration, I'm talking to legal
kind anyway. Did they leave their politics behind?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's a great question, and yeah, to piggyback on that,
I try to articulate it very in an enunciated in migration,
which is the people moving state to state, And the
answer is yes, by and large. So when you look
at the numbers, and I'm a data nerd at stats Hound, yeah,
one of the more remarkable ones anywhere I go, and
(06:06):
I tell this in people's eyes bug out. In twenty twelve,
when Barack Obama was running for reelection, there were I
believe it was roughly eight hundred thousand more registered Democrats
in the state than Republicans. Fast forward thirteen years twenty
twenty five, there are now one point four to one
(06:28):
point five million more registered Republicans than there are registered Democrats.
That's a net two million swing. That is a remarkable swing.
I don't know that any other state in history has
seen that kind of shift. And it shifted Florida not
from a blue state, but from a purple state into
(06:50):
probably the deepest red state. That exists given its size,
are other potential candidates for the governor her seat save
Casey DeSantis aware of why that's happened. Does Paul Renner
understand why Florida's deep read? Does Byron Donalds understand why
(07:11):
Florida is deep red?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Did they get it?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I would say yes, at least on the Republican side.
And I think anybody who is plugged in enough to
the political atmosphere in the state to be considering a
run for any office in Florida statewide, House, Senate. You
know those numbers, they are a testament to the ground
(07:36):
game of the Republican Party of Florida over that period
of time. That is door to door knocking, that is
getting people registered, that is monitoring where people are moving
and getting your local state committeemen and executive committees in
those counties out and about and getting folks registered. That
is a credit to Evan power. That is a credit
(07:58):
to Joe Gruder's, that is a credit to Blake and Golia.
All of those guys were chairs of the party that
moved those numbers over that period of time.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So let's circle back to the biggest issues here. We've
got insurance, We've got property tax ballot initiative. I mean, well,
and they kind of hit upon a theme and it
really dovetails from what we were just talking about and
that I see from the governor and from many others
as you watch him, in particular with media work, press conferences,
(08:31):
this theme of protecting the state from backsliding.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We have achieved great gains. Yeah, we have not only
achieved a supermajority in both houses and all for statewide
elected offices as well as the US Senate, but we
improved upon those supermajorities in the next cycle after achieving them,
making sure that we do not kind of leave anything
(08:58):
on the field and allow the op position a toe
hold or a crack to plant something in where they
can begin to get progress.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
What of those big issues are the most most vulnerable, Well.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And you kind of touched upon them. I think the
big one that's going to be telling is the debate
that happens on property taxes. That is a heavy, heavy
lift to eliminate them all together. I'm really paying attention there.
The other two are what we talked about in kind
of rolling back any of those insurance reforms. But one
I want to get to is that redistricting piece that's
(09:34):
been in the news. I think that there is a
vulnerability there that I don't know that folks are considering.
But then you also mentioned the ballot initiative process. So
we've got a lot kind of going on that we
can kind of unpack.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Twenty two minutes past seal newso with me from Consumer's
Defense and we follow the legislative action. And this, to me,
this is sort of like when the storm forms. You know,
it's paying attention to the nuts and bolts, the committee
weeks and all of that that intrigues me. We've talked
about some of the issues that really deserve a lot
(10:10):
of attention, and let's start with insurance reform. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Sure, So if you can recall back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And if you may clarify for us, there's health insurance,
there's auto insurance, and there's property insurance.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, and so in the insurance realm, we're generally talking
about what's called property and casualty, so homeowner's insurance and
auto insurance as being some of the bigger cost drivers
for Floridians, in particular because of the runaway litigation environment
that we had had. So twenty twenty three happens. They
(10:45):
pass a series of very big reforms under Speaker Paul
Renner and Senate President Pasadomo. Those reforms inevitably take time,
and so I think Floridians by and large were expecting
a quicker turnaround. The markets are what they are. We
need new insurance carriers to come in. They are been
(11:08):
doing that, and now we're beginning to see a little
bit of fruit from that. However, in this past legislative
cycle or season, you had even members of the Republican
Caucus in the House moving bills that would have turned
back on those reforms, that would have said, no, we
gave the insurance industry everything they wanted. They didn't come through.
(11:31):
Therefore we got to hammer them. The governor wisely, in
my opinion, wisely saw that as a bad idea, came
out against it and really hammered home the points that
I was really just making. Those weren't necessarily just mine.
And so I think one of the things that we're
going to need to pay attention to is does the
(11:51):
House of Representatives in particular take up something along these
lines again, or do they see the data and begin
to tack toward okay, the reforms are working, We've got
to stay the course. I know the incoming Senate President,
Jim Boyd fairly well, and he is an insurance broker,
and he is somebody who has seen it firsthand in
(12:14):
his employment capacity as well. And he's even said that
that the reforms are working. It's just not as fast
as we all want.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay, when we move then to the next topic, and
that's the property tax. Yeah, is there going to be
enough data to really make a compelling case for you know,
Governor DeSantis's plan to eliminate property tax.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I think you can get the data. I think the
question is going to be where do in particular, local
governments make up the revenue that they need to perform services?
And I emphasize need as opposed to want. And what
(13:00):
we're seeing now and I would love to kind of
dive in a little bit on our new CFO and
a you know, kind of a little bit later today
is what we're seeing is this juxtaposition of the governor
and the cabinet looking very specifically at local governments saying,
all right, you have been living high on the hog
(13:24):
for a long time as property values have been bumping
up and reassessments have been happening, and people have been
migrating in no rollback rates, no rollback rates. And think
about this. If a home is two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars and someone from New York comes down and
bids up that home and now buys it at five
(13:45):
hundred thousand dollars, that increases the property tax revenue of
that local government and it avoids the three percent save
our homes trajectory. So local governments have been getting far
more fattened, so to speak. And we're now seeing that
(14:06):
analysis and that effort go public on all right, what
can we do about this to make that property tax
elimination more feasible?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, and then you have municipalities. I don't know how
many are, like the capital city, but where they also
in essence are taxing people through their local utility as well,
and they're transferring massive sums of money and that becomes
a de facto property tax too.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And what I do know there are a number of
municipal utilities around the state. What I don't know, and
there may be data out there, is how many of
them are doing what the City of Tallahassee does where
they send money from the utilities into the general fund.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And that artificially has been masking property tax issues for
years in the local government.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Oh, absolutely, thirty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
The things we talk about pass the hour here on
the Morning Show with President Scott sal newsa with Consumer's
Defense can suomers Defense dot com is the website to
learn a little bit more about all of that. We
were talking about the different big issues, and we talked
about the ballot initiative thing, and I just want to
bring up that, you know, I know what they passed,
(15:15):
and they said that, you know, they're making it more
difficult to get ballot initiatives on the ballot, and as
well they should, I would say, they're they're making it
more secure and ensuring that the ballot initiative process is
not thwarted by a number of nefarious actors out there. Well,
(15:35):
you got Kim Rivers smooching it up with schmoozing it
up with Donald Trump at a fundraiser, and of course
she wants to get his help and he's lending it
to getting marijuana passed. But sal I've observed personally, on
three separate occasions, people collecting signatures for the marijuana petition
and in none of those cases has anyone been asked
(15:56):
to provide a driver's license, an identification, or the last
four theirs. So they were simply asked to sign, they signed,
and they walked away. That's against the law.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That is a big problem. That is against the law.
The House passed in just this past legislative session, House
Bill twelve oh five, which required one of those things.
And so if any petition signatures are signature gatherers are
out there collecting signatures and they are not getting that,
there will likely be a challenge of a certain number
(16:27):
of signatures. Isn't the idea to make sure that they
are able to sign that petition as a resident of
the state of Florida and they're an eligible voter. Yeah,
I mean, it is a check and balance system to
ensure that everyone who is signing a petition, and it's
not a small number of signatures that are required. At
some are approaching nine hundred thousand, I believe at this point,
(16:51):
and so they we need to ensure that all of
those nine hundred thousand signatures are actually people who are
voters and eligible to vote in the state of Florida.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Let's talk about the CFO appointment of Blazing Golie.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, so big news in between when we were last together,
and now the governor finally made the appointment for Florida's
Chief Financial Officer. Reminder, the prior CFO, Jimmy Patronis, ran
successfully for Congress, and so the governor made that appointment.
And there was a little bit of political dynamic there
(17:24):
because you had had State Senator Joe Gruders had already
announced that he was going to run in twenty twenty
six for that role. He's a Republican, the senator had
the endorsement of President Trump for that role. The governor
has a stalwart ally and blazing goalie in the Senate.
(17:46):
But Blaze had been kind of made it known he
was interested in the role, and the governor and him
got along very well, and so what do you do?
And kind of news went out very early on mid July.
I guess it was Trump all of a sudden came
in and endorsed Joe Gruders to be the head of
(18:06):
the Republican National Committee the RNC, because the existing chair
was vacating that role to run for the US Senate
in North Carolina. So Joe Gruders is now the only candidate.
He's running with no opposition for RNC chair, and it
looks like unless something crazy happens, that Blazing Golia will
(18:27):
have the kind of the role and the only path
forward on the Republican side for reelection or election in
twenty six. De facto incumbency, Yeah, de facto incumbency. Same
thing with the Attorney general. Yeah, you also have our
appointed Attorney general, James Uthmeier. He's been making all kinds
(18:47):
of news since taking on this role. He took action
against a number of ESG players, which, as you could
imagine in my role as music to my years, He's
going after a lot of these asset managers that are
using factors for making investment decisions that lead to poorer
(19:09):
returns to the taxpayer, to the public pension program. He's
gone after target, He's suing a couple of shadowy groups
called the Climate Disclosure Project and another related to it.
He also last week announced he's taking on a lot
of the companies, the tech companies that run these adult
(19:30):
sites because they're violating the age verification laws. And I
believe kind of politically there's a dynamic here where he
absolutely I expect he will run for election is what
would be his first election to public office. He's got
to establish some name recognition. And so I'm not sure
(19:51):
if there's any other individuals on the Republican side that
are looking to challenge him. I haven't heard of any.
I know they'll be a Democrat challenging. And so he's
going out there tackling via his principles those issues that
are going to be important to Floridians. And so those
are two state level cabinet posts that you are doing
(20:14):
a whole lot. And with CFO and Golia, he is
taking on local governments via the Doge audits, and he's
bringing the Doze teams in and he's been to Orlando,
to Jacksonville's plotting Miami Hillsboro. They're tackling that local government
revenue issue like I've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Buy I'm a happy meal if he comes to Tallahassee.
Redistricting is an interesting topic in the news right now,
and even Democrats are pointing out that they have no
moral authority on the subject because they've redistricted Republicans out
of existence in multiple states. You've got the debacle going
(20:56):
on with Texas where they're threatening to arrest Democrats in Texas, Well,
they should they are abdicating their responsibility as elected officers.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Well, they're leaving the state. They're abdicating their responsibilities by
leaving the state. And so where you know, they're considering
going after them and bringing them back.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So where is Florida And all of this redistricting talk, well,
very intriguing. Just in the last week or so, the
governor has put out a desire to have a mid
decade reapportionment just of congressional lines. We're not talking the
State House or the state Senate. And right now the
breakdown is we have twenty eight members of Congress. There's
(21:35):
twenty Republicans and eight Democrats. There was a challenge to
the lines that were drawn after the twenty twenty census
related to District five that was tossed. We eventually want
or the governor won, and so there's talk about can
they do a reapportionment that better reflects population boundaries where
(22:01):
people are moving to And you know, the political dynamic
at play is would it necessarily be better for Republicans
running for office? Would they potentially pick up a couple
of seats? But the thing that you know kind of
is in the back of my head is I always
wonder if and when a particular party, Republicans or Democrats,
(22:24):
overplay a hand. And that's the one that I wonder
where folks begin to say, well, I'm not really comfortable there.
I think that maybe a little bit too much of it.
Maybe it's a power grab, maybe it's you know, you know,
a kick somewhere. I don't know, but that's something that
I'm wondering about. Do they have to settle the issue
(22:46):
about the census first and the undercount that likely took place.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
No, this would be completely separate and apart from that.
This would be a mid decade reapportionment basis.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Doesn't that but congressional seats all base it's on that census.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yes, so this would only be on the lines that
are drawn for the existing twenty eight seats. Okay, so
we would not be adding any now. When they redo
the census in twenty thirty and they release the results
and do reapportionment, which would arguably give Florida another minimum
one congressional seat, maybe even two depending on how the
(23:24):
path goes, we would then redraw the lines again to
add those seats. But right now, this would just be
shuffling deck chairs not on the Titanic. Sure it would
be shuffling deck chairs among the existing twenty eight seats.
Is there ever any argument that can be made, I
know it has been made, but that if you factor
(23:46):
in race at all. We were talking with Hans von
Sbakofsky about this just last week, that any time you
factor race as a consideration in districting, you have violated
the law. Yes, and I remember talking with Hans not
long ago when we were at an event, and I
do believe the Supreme Court is going to take up
(24:09):
a case I believe out of Louisiana. Yeah, that's this
fall in the coming term that will likely decide the
answer to that very question. So much intrigue it is,
and like a funny little anecdote you mentioned, it's not
confined to just Republicans or Democrats. California's redoing their lines.
(24:32):
Texas is considering.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Are they allowed to illegals.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
They would say yes, and they will get challenged on this.
But in the greatest anecdote of this, the governor of
the state of Massachusetts decided she needed to get in
on this action. They want to redraw their congressional lines,
but guess what. There are nine members of Congress in
the state of Massachusetts. They're all Democrats. They have nobody
(24:57):
to reapportion out. So you know the state that gives us,
Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
You gotta love it Focahontas, Yes, indeed, gotta love it
all right, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Salnuzzo. He'll be back in September as we'll catch up
on all things legislative and political and governance in the
state of Florida.
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