When it comes to government spending, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking a cue from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
As his second term nears its end, DeSantis is spearheading a campaign to slash property taxes<\/a>, which provide around 30 percent<\/a> of local government revenue. He\u2019s also looking to dramatically pare down state-funded programs, and he\u2019s commissioned a state-level version of Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d to do so. DeSantis\u2019s DOGE will be run by his hand-picked chief financial officer, the creator of a YouTube show called \u201cGovernment Gone Wild.\u201d In a signal of his seriousness about cutting spending, the governor\u2019s proposed budget for this year is 10 percent lower than his 2019 budget in inflation-adjusted and per-capita terms.<\/p>\n To make these cuts happen, the Sunshine State\u2019s climate programs are in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n The DOGE report<\/a> that the governor\u2019s office published last month singled out local efforts to confront climate change as examples of the \u201cirresponsible spending\u201d that Florida must end. The state task force targeted Jacksonville\u2019s efforts to purchase electric vehicles, St. Petersburg\u2019s hiring of a \u201csustainability and resilience officer,\u201d and Miami\u2019s efforts to build out buses and rail systems. The report directed specific ire at Palm Beach County\u2019s Office of Resilience, which had a mandate to \u201creduce resident, business, and natural resource vulnerability\u201d to disasters that \u201cinclude flooding, more frequent and intense storms, extreme heat, [and] saltwater intrusion.\u201d<\/p>\n DeSantis\u2019s DOGE justified this criticism by appealing to a controversial report from the federal Department of Energy<\/a>, which concluded that \u201cscientific evidence does not support claims of a long-term increase in so-called \u2018extreme\u2019 weather events, including hurricanes, tornadoes, [and] floods.\u201d Yet laws signed by DeSantis himself take the opposite view \u2014 and, perhaps as a result, the state\u2019s largest climate resilience program is proving itself immune to the governor\u2019s purge.\u00a0<\/p>\n During his first term as governor, DeSantis inaugurated a grant program known as \u201cResilient Florida,\u201d which doles out millions of dollars a year to ward off flooding and sea level rise. The statute authorizing the program<\/a> even \u201crecognizes that the state is particularly vulnerable to adverse impacts from flooding resulting from increases in frequency and duration of rainfall events, storm surge from more frequent and severe weather systems, and sea level rise.\u201d It requires that the state conduct a regular assessment of these threats.<\/p>\n In the five years since its inception, the Resilient Florida program<\/a> has become one of the country\u2019s most robust climate adaptation programs \u2014 rivaling not only those of any other state but also federal resilience efforts spearheaded by FEMA. Florida has distributed well over $1 billion in resilience money to local governments who then match the funding. By comparison, FEMA\u2019s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program<\/a> has distributed around $5 billion to the entire country.<\/p>\n Resilient Florida has funded the construction of \u201cliving shorelines\u201d<\/a> to prevent erosion at the Pensacola naval base and the relocation of an island wastewater treatment plant<\/a> in Fort Pierce to prevent flooding during high tide events. Palm Beach County, the same jurisdiction that Florida\u2019s DOGE singled out for criticism, has received tens of millions of dollars in state funding. That money has helped raise an island park to protect against sea-level rise and has funded the construction of a $30 million storm drain system on a major road that\u2019s seen routine flooding. (However, DeSantis vetoed an additional tranche of money for that project last summer.)<\/p>\n Jim Mooney, a Republican state legislator representing the Florida Keys, said the program represents an example of smart state spending. Local governments must match each dollar of state grants, and Mooney said he believes the arrangement is a wise use of local property tax dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is you need to have shovel-ready projects, because getting these grants is hard,\u201d said Mooney, one of the leading supporters of Resilient Florida. \u201cThat\u2019s what you\u2019re collecting people\u2019s property taxes for, to some extent \u2014 to get that stuff done.\u201d In Mooney\u2019s island district, Resilient Florida has funded subterranean drainage pipes that reduce residential flooding from high tides.<\/p>\n Resilient Florida was originally set to expire in 2025, but the state legislature renewed it last year without any controversy; the bill that reauthorized the program passed both legislative chambers in less than a month and without any \u201cnay\u201d votes<\/a>. Even as DeSantis is proposing to shrink the state budget by about 10 percent, his administration has firmed up the revenue source for Resilient Florida. The program will now draw its funding from the Seminole gaming compact, an agreement between the state and the Seminole tribe that governs revenue from online sports betting. It will be funded next year at $150 million. This time, it does not have an expiration date.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it would\u2019ve continued to be funded [without the gaming revenue], it would\u2019ve just been more of a rollercoaster ride,\u201d said Mooney. \u201cThere was really no thought that it wasn\u2019t going to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Such programs are facing challenges in other parts of the country. The Trump administration has sought to terminate a key federal resilience grant program<\/a>, and the Department of Homeland Security has paused almost all FEMA hazard mitigation spending<\/a>. In Louisiana, which has long led the nation on state-level adaptation to climate change, a new governor, Jeff Landry, has halted efforts to fight sea-level rise and prevent coastal erosion. Landry last year canceled a massive sediment diversion project <\/a>that would have built new coastal land, and the Republican has also meddled with governance<\/a> for the landmark levee system<\/a> that protects New Orleans.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mathew Sanders, a policy expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts who helps states plan for disaster resilience, says the Resilient Florida\u2019s durability comes down to economics. The Sunshine State\u2019s coastline is an integral part of the state\u2019s economy, and future growth depends on functional roads and sewage plants in beachfront towns. Even if the state wanted to cut Resilient Florida spending, it probably couldn\u2019t afford to.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a direct connection in Florida between the ecological health of the coastline and their ability to generate revenue,\u201d said Sanders. \u201cIt\u2019s so reliant on ecotourism, the pure beautiful beaches and the Everglades. The calculus is just different.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to government spending, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking a cue from the Trump administration.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-474764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474764","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=474764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}