{"id":349370,"date":"2025-12-15T03:40:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T03:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/349370\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T03:40:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T03:40:25","slug":"florida-leads-nation-in-cuts-to-environmental-jobs-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/349370\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida leads nation in cuts to environmental jobs: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Florida has cut more environmental protection jobs than any other state in the past 15 years, despite the challenges posed by increasingly intense hurricanes<\/a> and sea level rise, according to a newly released national report.<\/p>\n

The state cut 394 jobs, or 19% of full-time positions, at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from 2010 to 2024, according to the Environmental Impact Project\u2019s latest report, released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Florida also saw environmental spending cut by 7% during that same time frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has a huge impact on Florida\u2019s ability to protect and preserve our state\u2019s unique and iconic natural environment, not to mention preventing toxic pollution from impacting public health,\u201d said Susannah Randolph, Sierra Club Florida chapter director, in response to the report. \u201cBudgets are reflections of priorities. If protecting Florida\u2019s environment and public health is a priority, it would be funded, not cut.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cuts reflect policy changes in the state under two Republican governors, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s authors say 27 states made budget cuts to their environmental protection agencies. That is a worrisome trend, they argue, when the Trump administration wants to make deep cuts to the federal Environmental Protection Agency with the idea states can take over those oversight duties.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of fulfilling their responsibilities to protect residents, too many states like Florida are leaving a vacuum of leadership, which is leaving communities vulnerable to deadly pollution,\u201d said Drew Ball, southeast campaigns director for the National Resource Defense Council, in a statement released along with the report.<\/p>\n

Florida has emphasized spending money on restoring the Everglades and opposing offshore drilling, but it has been criticized for cutting back on enforcement and inspections, rolling back regulations and de-emphasizing the impacts of climate change even as the state has been battered by severe storms that caused record flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpposing offshore drilling and supporting funding for the Everglades are important but without protection of our rivers, springs, wildlife, and wild spaces, those efforts will ultimately be undermined,\u201d Randolph said. \u201cEverything is connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DEP did not provide a comment for this story.<\/p>\n

In 2024, DeSantis signed a bill eliminating most references to climate change from state law, reversing 16 years of policy with new legislation that critics say also undermined efforts to develop alternative energy sources.<\/a><\/p>\n

Around the same time, the state also advised textbook authors that they would have to remove references to the phrase \u201cclimate change\u201d<\/a> or their books would be rejected for use in Florida\u2019s public schools. They were also told to include citations to back up statements that \u201chuman activity\u201d caused climate change and cut a \u201cpolitical statement\u201d urging governments to take action to stop climate change.<\/p>\n

Also, in August of that year, many Floridians raised alarm bells when DEP plans, leaked to the press, showed the agency was considering \u201cThe Great Outdoor initiative,\u201d which called for large-scale commercial development \u2014 hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts \u2014 within several state parks. It was scuttled in the face of public outcry, and DeSantis signed a bill this year prohibiting golf courses and resorts in state parks.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter last year\u2019s massive statewide protests calling for protection of our state parks, it doesn\u2019t take much to see that Florida voters of all walks of life want environmental protection prioritized,\u201d Randolph said.<\/p>\n

Roughly two-thirds of the states cut 3,725 jobs from 2010 to 2024, the report found. While Florida had the largest number of jobs eliminated, dropping DEP\u2019s full-time workforce from 2,096 to 1,702, the highest percentage cuts were made by North Carolina at 32%, Connecticut at 26%,\u00a0Arizona at 25% and Louisiana at 24%.<\/p>\n

Seven states steeply reduced their pollution control budgets \u2014 including Texas, with its rapidly growing oil and gas industry \u2014 when adjusted for inflation. Mississippi led with 71%, followed by South Dakota with 61% and Connecticut at 51%.<\/p>\n

Not all the cuts broke neatly along political lines. Connecticut, New York and Illinois are strong Democrat enclaves that saw double-digit cuts in environmental protection budgets.<\/p>\n

But seven of the 10 states with the largest percent cuts to their environmental agencies had Republican governors for most of those 15 years.<\/p>\n

Some blue states saw huge increases in environmental protection funding and staffing. California grew its budget by more than 350% while its greenhouse gas emissions fell and its economic productivity grew, the report said. Colorado and Vermont each increased their environmental spending by more than 100%.<\/p>\n

Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said enforcement of environmental regulations depend on robust state agencies \u201cthat have the resources they need to do their jobs.\u201d The cuts documented by the study and more cuts at the federal level \u201cwill only put more Americans at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Florida has cut more environmental protection jobs than any other state in the past 15 years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,2808,2558,983,3,79,5262],"class_list":["post-349370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}