Editorial Roundup: Florida
Palm Beach Post. December 15, 2023.
Editorial: Florida’s future fiscal stability depends on today’s spending decisions
We’re No. 13: You’d think Florida’s fiscal stability ranking would be higher, given the federal funding that has fueled our state budgets in recent years and the competence of Amy Baker, the state’s top economist and her Office of Economics & Demographic Research in monitoring fiscal and economic trends. However, a recent U.S. News & World Report ranking suggests caution, something our elected leaders should keep in mind when it comes to spending state revenue.
Recent spending decisions, made in large part to boost the presidential primary campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have become a part of Florida’s annual state budgets and could impact key state services down the road. Yes, that word “could” may seem iffy to some. But, the state already has opened up the public treasury to some dubious expenditures that state budget analysts say could contribute to tough future budget decisions.
School choice funding is just one example. Unfortunately, the new law that allows just about anyone who wants a school voucher to have it is already showing signs of abuse. A story in The Tampa Bay Times found that money for private school and home school education had paid for Disney World passes, PlayStation gaming consoles and big-screen TVs. The projected costs of expansion, according to the Florida Policy Institute is a little more than $4 billion annually.
State lawmakers next month are expected to pony up more money for school choice, but how long will the Governor and Florida Legislature keep throwing money at vouchers?
There’s more. Thanks to H.B. 1285, the state spends $108 million on the Florida State Guard, not to be confused with the Florida National Guard. The state guard, a civilian volunteer force under the Governor’s control, has police powers and its budget includes money for helicopters, boats, vehicles, storage space and a new headquarters.
State lawmakers also set aside almost $16 million in the recent budget to protect the state from lawsuits, mostly prompted by recent right-wing political initiatives to help Gov. DeSantis. Florida now also spends $1.4 million, though a paltry amount compared to other dubious expenditures, on its Office of Elections Crimes and Security, a 15-member, elections police force that to date has made 20 arrests has had difficulty in filling positions.
Long-term stability depends on today’s decisions
Spending money on questionable initiatives just because the money’s there isn’t a formula for long-term fiscal stability. Stuff happens. A major hurricane, cuts in federal spending, reductions in tourist visits — any of those could drive up costs, reduce rainy-day savings and force state leaders to be more frugal or cut services.
The U.S. News rankings assessed each state looking at how well the state meets its immediate financial obligations and its long-term commitments, while maintaining its credit rating and meeting pension obligations. Utah, Idaho, South Dakota, Washington and Tennessee round out the ranking’s top five states for fiscal stability.
At first glance, the state’s latest long-range financial outlook offers a rosy forecast. Revenue will continue to exceed expectations and surpass expenditures.
However, there’s this caveat: “The Outlook does not account for any new or expanded programs or potential risks, such as hurricanes or other natural disasters. Decisions regarding additional expenditures beyond the levels contemplated in the Outlook should consider the out-year impacts.” There are other red flags, too, from the effects of Florida’s aging Baby Boom population on future budgets to the decreasing year-end balances that suggest projected expenditures are beginning to outpace available revenues.
Big government spending on right-wing causes can only go so far. Now’s the time for elected officials in our state capital to be more strategic in their spending decisions to produce better budgets and improve Florida’s fiscal stability.
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Orlando Sentinel. December 15, 2023.
Editorial: Why do lawmakers keep hammering away at local control of vacation rentals?
By now, it’s as much a part of the Legislature’s annual ritual as the ceremonial hanky drop at the close of every annual session: Lawmakers debate new and worse ways to hamstring local governments’ ability to keep an eye — and a leash — on short-term vacation rentals.
“We have a slightly different product than you saw last year,” bill sponsor Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach, told the Senate Regulated Industries Committee Wednesday about the bill he’s sponsoring ( SB 280 ). “The whole goal is to lay out a uniform set of regulations for vacation rentals. I believe the legislation provides tools for local governments within that registration program.”
Well, sure, if “uniform” means “uniformly weak” and “tool” translates into “a baseball bat upside their heads.” This bill would significantly hamper the ability of cities and counties to shut down the worst violators — the ones that are shattering the quiet of neighborhoods across Florida.
Why won’t lawmakers accept the reality: Different communities have different views of vacation rentals. What is appropriate in the neighborhoods clustered around theme parks — some of them constructed for the purpose of becoming vacation rentals — might not work in a quiet mainland neighborhood in Ormond Beach, or a downtown Orlando high-rise. As more and more properties are converted to full-time vacation rentals, the disruption these revolving-door residences can cause becomes more obvious.
We give platforms like Airbnb and VRBO credit for doing their best to crack down on the worst of the worst among the property owners registered with them, including efforts to curb the use of vacation rentals as party houses that sometimes draw dozens of pleasure-seekers into Florida neighborhoods. They’ve also worked hard to ensure that rental properties pay hospitality taxes. Those two companies don’t represent the full array of vacation rentals in the state, however. And their desire for uniformity doesn’t justify restricting local governments’ ability to discipline irresponsible property owners who show no regard (or even knowledge) of local rules.
This bill isn’t as blatant as past attempts, but it’s sneakier. For example, local officials would be allowed to require vacation rentals in their jurisdictions to register with the city or county — but restricted from suspending or revoking those registrations, even for chronic violators. To suspend a particular property’s ability to operate for as little as 30 days, for example, city and county officials would be required to prove five or more violations on five separate days during a 60-day period.
Many smaller cities have only one code-enforcement officer, who sometimes has other duties. They don’t have time to stake out one local property.
Any other enforcement would have to be through the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation. That state agency does have offices throughout the state, but not nearly enough to handle a task of this magnitude.
“There is no indication whatsoever … that any additional resources are going to be given to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and yet you want to take the lion’s share of responsibility and hand it over to an agency that is objectively woefully ill-staffed and underfunded? And you think that your constituents in Indian Rocks Beach and mine in Sunny Isles Beach are going to be better served because of the level of uniformity coming out of Tallahassee?” asked Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat.
So imagine this scenario. A full-time resident of a house in a suburb must abide by the terms of his HOA, or be fined. In many areas, he can’t park too many cars on his front lawn, can’t violate trash regulations, can’t host giant parties that blast music into the night. But local authorities won’t be able to shut down vacation-rental owners who break any of those rules.
Florida communities have already lost the ability to say “no” to vacation rentals if those bans weren’t in place before 2011. They deserve, at least, the right to shut down rule-breakers that make their own residents miserable. The Senate rejected legislation that wasn’t nearly this bad last year. They should shut it down immediately this year.
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Miami Herald. December 14, 2023.
Editorial: Cuba calls them ‘terrorists.’ These Miami exiles have every reason to be proud
Those interested in Cuba-U.S. politics will have to wait until 2024 to possibly learn more about Victor Manuel Rocha alleged spy work on behalf of the communist regime. Two recent court hearings in Miami federal court have been postponed until January.
Rocha, 73, is accused of spying for the Cuban government. While not yet charged with espionage, he has been detained for allegedly acting as a foreign agent while living in Miami’s Cuban community.
While Rocha has not been convicted of anything, Cuba already is having a hissy fit.
A court hearing is an opportunity for us to learn some details about what information Rocha, an ex-U.S. diplomat once assigned to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and who retired to Miami, passed on to the island nation’s government.
What assignments did he complete while among us for his Cuban handlers? And how deeply did he actually infiltrate the Cuban exile community between 1981 to the present?
Facing charges
Rocha was taken into custody on charges of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent to defraud the United States, acting as an illegal agent for a foreign government and using a passport obtained by false statement.
The year 1996 was a crucial year for Rocha’s supposed undercover work As an analyst in Havana’s U.S. Interests Section at the time, Rocha is said to have helped formulate the Clinton administration’s response following the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes. The Clinton administration did little to avenge the lives of the four Miami-based fliers who died when Cuban MiGs shot down their planes in international waters.
If it was done on Rocha’s advice, then the United States’ heft was undermined, unfortunately.
At the same time Rocha was working in Havana, Ana Belen Montes, an analyst and — confirmed — Cuban spy worked at the State Department, also helping with the U.S. response to the shootdown. It’s frightening what influence Cuba had.
Rocha is far from the first Cuban alleged agent captured in Miami since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, but he seems to be one of the longest in service.
His arrest shocked many in the intelligence community, from Miami to Washington, and also local leaders and politicians who lunched with him, believing him to be an anti-communist conservative who liked Donald Trump, as many Cuban exiles in Miami do.
After all, Rocha’s job was to fit into the exile community.
Cuba responded Rocha’s arrest by once again angrily lashing out at being included on U.S. government’s list of nations sponsoring terrorism. Cuba wants off the list, of course.
Like a petulant child, Cuba published its own list not of spies but of wanted “terrorists,” which includes the names of well-known Miami-based Cuban activists, media personalities and influencers who are critical of the regime. It was the first time Cuba made such a list public.
Some exiles view being listed as enemies of the Cuban government as something of which they can be proud, as well they should.
An ‘honor’
Among them is long-time Spanish-language radio personality and fierce anti-Castro activist Ninoska Pérez Castellón, of La Nueva Poderosa 670 AM WWFE Miami.
“Being on the list is a confirmation that my work has been effective in denouncing the atrocities of Cuba’s brutal regime. The Cuban government made it official this time,” she told the Editorial Board.
Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, author, spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate and a member of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, echoed Perez’s sentiments, he told the Board.
“I am honored to be on this list because it shows us the effectiveness of our international advocacy and support for Cuba’s internal freedom activists.,” he said, calling on the United States to denounce Cuba’s baiting of the exiles. “The Biden administration should take action against this systematic use of harassment, threats, indictments and even physical assaults undertaken by the dictatorship in Havana against U.S. citizens in this country and in this hemisphere.”
Gutierrez, who writes an occasional column for el Nuevo Herald, says Cuba’s “terrorist list” is distributed to its friendly countries. When traveling to those countries, their names sometimes pop up during security checks, prompting questioning on behalf of the Cuban government.
The truth is that for decades, Cuban exiles who fought against the oppressive communist regime in Cuba have been labeled as terrorists by officials in Havana.
Perez and Gutierrez should be praised for standing up to Cuba and its harassment .
While the Cuban government seeks to portray such exiles as dangerous radicals, the reality is they are fighting for a free Cuba. They refuse to stand by as their homeland is ruled by a brutal regime that has imprisoned or killed countless innocent Cubans for the past six decades, not to mention sending 1 million into exile.
Being called a “terrorist” — who uses words and will to fight — by the Cuban dictatorship is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, it is a badge of honor.
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Tampa Bay Times. December 15, 2023.
Editorial: Florida Senate’s health plan falls short
It’s great on workforce development, but weak on improving access for the uninsured.
The health care plan that Senate President Kathleen Passidomo rolled out this month would fill some gaps in Florida’s safety net and help plug critical shortages of doctors and nurses. But let’s be clear: This is more about developing Florida’s medical workforce than improving access and health care outcomes for struggling Floridians without insurance. That would require doing what 40 other states have done: Expand Medicaid.
Passidomo, R-Naples, and two top lieutenants proposed a wide-ranging package to train and retain more medical professionals, shift patients away from costly emergency rooms and incentivize the private sector to find innovative ways to improve Florida’s health care system. Two bills that sailed unanimously through a Senate committee Tuesday would commit nearly $900 million to increase medical residency slots in Florida, offset the costs of education and training, expand health care screenings and rural medical care and broaden access to telehealth and mobile behavioral health programs. Senate leaders said additional legislation would be filed in advance of the 2024 session that begins Jan. 9 that would, among other things, expand services to people with disabilities, make medical pricing more transparent and streamline the inflow of out-of-state providers to Florida.
These bills have much to like. The workforce investments are an especially timely and meaningful response in a growing state where too few providers already constrict access to care. State and federal data show a shortage of health care professionals in Florida and nationwide, a crunch that’s only expected to worsen as America’s population ages. A 2021 report prepared for Florida’s hospitals estimated that while the supply of physicians will increase 6% overall between 2019 and 2035, the demand for physician services in Florida will grow by 27%. About one-third of physicians in Florida are age 60 or older, and nearly 10%, or 5,429 practicing physicians, plan to retire in the next five years.
This all translates into the need for thousands of doctors, dentists, nurses and other health care professionals to refill the ranks. To that end, the legislation would create 700 new medical residency slots and new pathways for out-of-state professionals to practice in the state. The Senate would also expand and enrich student loan repayment assistance for doctors and nurses who remain in the state and provide in exchange a modest amount of volunteering in free clinics or underserved areas.
The package brings a welcome focus to expanding mobile and home-based services, which is essential to improving access to care in a state where barely 2% of practicing physicians work in Florida’s 31 rural counties. The Senate would expand eligibility for lower-income Floridians to access free and charitable clinics. The state would also provide more medical screenings and work closer with hospitals to divert people away from emergency rooms toward less expensive primary care settings.
While strong on workforce development, the package falls short in meeting Florida’s need to give uninsured residents truly better access to quality, affordable medicine. That’s what happens when politicians devise health policy through a rigid ideological prism. Florida is among only 10 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Its uninsured population, at 11%, is the worst of all but four states. But Passidomo again this month dismissed the Democrats’ call to expand Medicaid, claiming the issue was “just a talking point” and that “Medicaid expansion doesn’t work.” A Republican Senate leader echoed that stance Tuesday, declaring that any expansion of Medicaid “would be a stand-alone bill.”
We won’t hold our breath waiting for a stand-alone bill. But Medicaid expansion is “a talking point” that “doesn’t work”? Hundreds of studies on Medicaid expansion since the coverage provisions of the ACA went into effect in 2014 have demonstrated it has improved patient access to care, made it more affordable, saved states money and spurred economic growth. Expansion states have reaped tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies while saving money in other areas, such as state costs for substance abuse treatment and traditional Medicaid. Hospitals and clinics in expansion states have lost less in uncompensated care. Research also shows an association between expansion and healthier results.
Better triaging who belongs in the emergency room is smart, but pushing the uninsured off to a walk-in clinic falls far short of providing the continuum of care so essential to good health outcomes. So does relying on free and charitable clinics as a safety net for Florida’s uninsured. For those already in Medicaid managed care plans, this legislation requires that hospitals help patients connect with a primary care provider. That alone underscores the importance of enrolling more in Medicaid.
This legislation isn’t bad; it’s just one aspect of what Florida needs. And supporters need to be candid about what it would and wouldn’t do.
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South Florida Sun Sentinel. December 18, 2023.
Editorial: Mr. and Mrs. Hypocrisy of the Florida GOP
When once persuaded to join a social club that disappointed him, the comedian Groucho Marx resigned, saying half in jest: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
Christian Ziegler, 40, of Sarasota, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, should follow Marx’s logic and resign — and his case is no laughing matter.
For Ziegler, the club — that is, the party — doesn’t want him.
The party executive board made that clear at a meeting in Orlando Sunday when it suspended Ziegler as chairman, demanded he resign, stripped him of all duties and cut his $120,000 salary to one dollar. The board then set a Jan. 8 meeting in Tallahassee for the full party committee to fire him.
It is stunning that Ziegler would compound his personal embarrassment and the party’s sullied image by refusing to go quietly.
Any news story that combines sex and politics is very hard to resist, and this one has the deeply disturbing possibility of sexual assault.
Each day brings new lurid headlines and reports (denied by Ziegler) that he wants a lavish buyout — “to loot the joint on his way out,” as a former party official told NBC News. The network reports that two former Trump administration officials, Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski, have urged Ziegler to hang tough and refuse to resign.
Granted, Sarasota police have said nothing lately about their investigation of a woman acquaintance’s claim that he raped her. So Ziegler at the moment is not even charged with a crime, let alone convicted. But that doesn’t mean he’s still fit to be the public face of anything.
A dead-weight liability
It is what he has admitted that makes him a dead-weight liability to a political party that claims to promote family values and is so closely identified with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture war agenda, which Florida Republicans wage with a vengeance reminiscent of the Puritans of early New England.
Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget, an elected School Board member and Moms for Liberty co-founder who sought to impose a moral code on her community, have confirmed the other woman’s claim that she took part in a three-way sexual encounter with them last year.
The accuser said she agreed to another, but that when Ziegler said he would be visiting her apartment alone on Oct. 2, she told him not to. That’s when she says he showed up anyway and assaulted her. Her interest in a threesome had been in her, not him, she told police.
The Zieglers are hardly the only prominent political figures caught up in a sex scandal. Dozens of women have accused former President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct and a jury awarded $5 million to one of them. He’s accused of arranging a hush money payment to a porn-movie actress with whom he cheated on his wife, Melania.
Hypocrisy is not a crime, either — even when it’s of staggering proportions, as in the Zieglers’ case.
The height of hypocrisy
But innocence of a crime doesn’t necessarily erase conspicuous tawdriness and hypocrisy. The leadership of a party so deeply invested in moral posturing is no place for a man whose penchant for threesomes has been exposed.
Nor is a county-wide school board any such place for a woman who has used her elected office to demonize LGBTQ people and to banish offending books from school shelves and libraries.
But Bridget Ziegler won’t see the light, either. Her four school board colleagues called for her resignation last week. She voted against their motion and is staying put.
Notably, though, they didn’t ask DeSantis to suspend her, even though he has a reputation for doing that to elected Democratic officeholders who haven’t been charged with crimes. But he hasn’t made a move toward suspending Ziegler either from the school board or from the board of his Disney oversight district, to which he appointed her. It’s time for Republican caucus-goers in Iowa to demand an explanation from DeSantis.
No discussion of the Zieglers’ hypocrisy is complete without mentioning how Trump, the most flagrant lecher in American political history, continues to rule his party like it were a personal cult.
Perhaps his example is why the Zieglers are trying to ride it out. Notably, Trump, who helped Ziegler become state party chairman, has had nothing to say about his scandalous personal life. Trump’s silence speaks volumes about him and the sordid state of Republican Party politics.
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