Imagine If Florida Government Shut Down. Would Floridians Even Notice?

By Diane Roberts

While the Florida Legislature exhibits nowhere near the level of bile-spitting, brainless dysfunction you get in Washington, they haven’t exactly been a model of a sleek, responsive government machine.

For weeks, there was no budget. No hint of a budget.

Instead of getting done the one thing the Constitution says they have to get done, they’ve been indulging in that sure-fire negotiating tactic: insulting each other.

Then last week: a trickle of white smoke emanating from the Capitol.

Habemus budget!

A budget framework, anyway.

It’s a bit short on details, other than “permanent sales tax exemptions targeted toward Florida families,” elimination of sales tax on commercial leases, and a boost to the state’s rainy-day fund.

Money for education, health care, environmental restoration, culture, roads — little stuff like that — has yet to be spelled out. Seems House and Senate leaders will be meeting this week to thrash out details and plan, they claim, to hold a vote by June 16.

Things remain contentious, and that’s not counting the wild card in the process: our congenitally angry governor.

He can veto appropriations he doesn’t like or, knowing him, appropriations he thinks his legislative enemies particularly care about.

The state budget is not yet a done deal. If it’s not passed by June 30, we could even have a government shutdown.

Thought experiment: Would you notice?

Bears might: Shuttered FWC offices could slow down final approval for bear hunting, passed by this year after passionate lobbying from the Davy Crockett Caucus.

State workers might: Their paychecks would be suspended.

Holders of state contracts might: They’ll be in limbo.

Anyone wanting to visit a state park might: The gates will be locked.

Hated Canadians

Still, most Floridians probably wouldn’t realize their government isn’t working.

It often doesn’t. Work, that is.

Instead of addressing our numerous problems, from unaffordable housing to unaffordable insurance to inflation to flooding, elected officials prefer to spend much of their time worrying about pronouns, boasting about helping Trump’s storm troopers arrest brown folks, or trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Floridians don’t expect much.

And not much is what we’ll get.

The Senate wanted sales tax “holidays” for clothes, tools, hurricane preparedness, and “Second Amendment Summer items,” i.e. cross bows, firearms, ammo.

The House wanted to slash state sales taxes from six percent to 5.25%.

Who knows which, and in what form, these proposals will survive the process.

The governor hates all of it. He’s been stomping around the state throwing tantrums about how lower sales taxes only help tourists and “foreigners,” railing, “I don’t want to give Canadians a tax cut.”

He might not have to worry about tax relief for those sinister Canadians much longer: They’re selling their Florida condos and taking vacations in Mexico and Portugal instead.

DeSantis’ plan? Give every homeowner a $1,000 rebate.

Then work up to abolishing property taxes altogether.

Awesome! Lower taxes! Maybe no taxes! We hate taxes, right?

Problem is, most of us love schools, sidewalks, roads, garbage pick-up, parks, police departments, fire departments, municipal pools, good drinking water, bike paths, animal shelters, electricity, and emergency medical services.

Florida cities and counties depend on taxes to fund these. The House and Senate plan will reduce the state budget by $2.25 billion.

That’s likely to hurt everybody.

‘Streamline’ destruction

No surprise. A number of measures passed this session are not exactly citizen-friendly.

One example: Given our increasingly strong hurricanes and the floods they bring, the state should encourage people to rebuild more resilient structures.

But no: A bill approved this session will block attempts to strengthen construction after storms.

The idea is to “streamline” the process (translation: Help developers who can sue if a local government institutes “burdensome or restrictive” rules) so you can build your house or your business or your school back under the same outdated codes that failed to protect it last time.

The bill also raises the price of flood insurance.

Nice, huh?

Another example: In a fit of good taste, the Senate refused to confirm some of DeSantis’ more appalling University of West Florida board nominees, including yahoos who think the GI Bill was a bad idea or that women don’t belong in higher education.

Good for them. But legislators had a chance to do even more for higher education by putting college president searches back in the sunshine where they belong.

Bills stopping the governor installing his hand-picked faith followers sailed through various committees, but in the end they were withdrawn.

Fear of a gubernatorial melt-down? Line-item vetoes of pet projects?

Presidents will still be chosen in secret subject to the whims of the governor and his tame boards of trustees.

To be fair, the Legislature did decide to forbid oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of the Apalachicola Estuarine Reserve, and passed a bill to shield state parks from the kind of boneheaded nonsense the governor wanted in 2024: You know, “improving” the parks with golf courses, pickleball courts, and luxury hotels.

Why can’t we have nice things?

DeSantis actually realized (for once) he’d screwed up big time last year and signed the bill.

This year, he demonstrated he hadn’t quite learned his lesson.

A secretive outfit calling itself Upland LLC wanted the state to give it 600 acres of preservation lands on the Guana River in St. Johns County in exchange for 3,000 acres of non-contiguous, less environmentally significant property scattered around four counties.

Apparently, that swap sounded good to DeSantis. The state Acquisition and Restoration Council served up a report claiming there was nothing special about the Guana River land, no historic sites, no amazing habitat, nothing like that — never mind the ancient Native American shell middens, wood storks, roseate spoonbills, and old oak hammocks — and rushed the required public comment meeting.

Genuine Floridians (the ones their government ignores) rose up on their hind legs and said hell, no. Loudly.

Upland, its feelings hurt, pulled out of the deal — no thanks to DeSantis and his Department of Environmental Prostitution.

Why, you ask, is this state so self-defeating?

Or, to put it another way, why can’t we have nice things?

Florida has one of the most regressive taxation systems in the country, what the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calls an “upside down” model. The rich pay a far smaller percentage of their income than the middle classes and the poor.

If the state decides to deprive itself — us — of tax dollars, we will all suffer.

Florida’s social safety net is already tattered.

Twenty percent of children live in poverty. The state ranks 40th in child health and 45th in economic well-being.

Children don’t vote

You’d think lawmakers would figure out helping to feed, educate, and take care of children is worth the money: Healthy, educated people contribute to the economy.

But children don’t vote. Or write big fat campaign checks.

It’s bad enough our so-called representatives can’t do their jobs in a timely manner and must keep coming back for special sessions to decide which taxes to cut and by how much while simultaneously costing the taxpayer around $50,000 every day they hang around in Tallahassee.

The governor, the most mobility impaired of waterfowl, his political career in the dumpster, his wife’s charity under investigation for possible money laundering, still wants to abolish property taxes.

Maybe he thinks that will give him a nice slogan to run for president on if we have an election in 2028.

The Legislature wants to curry favor with their voters by giving them a break on stuff they buy.

Everybody loves a bargain, right?

But it’s not much of a bargain if your quality of life goes to hell.

Cities and counties are staring into the abyss, wondering how they’ll fund everything citizens expect.

School roofs won’t be repaired, parks won’t be maintained, bad water pipes won’t be fixed, new cops won’t be hired, EMS will be cut, potholes will proliferate.

But hey, it’s a small price to pay for a sales tax break on batteries and backpacks, right?

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.