DeSantis Signs $116.5 Billion Florida Budget

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state's record $116.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2023-24 in a ceremony at the Pelican Yacht Club in Fort Pierce on June 15, 2023. Courtesy of the Florida governor's office

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a $116.5 billion state budget into law on June 15.

He highlighted the budget’s environmental spending by signing it in Fort Pierce with a scenic view of the Indian River Lagoon as his backdrop.

The budget earmarks $1.6 billion for water restoration in the Everglades and elsewhere, including $100 million for the lagoon, part of DeSantis’s commitment to spend $3.5 billion over the four years of his second term that began in January. The budget allocates $7.3 billion total for agriculture, environment, and natural resources, DeSantis said.

“This is probably the strongest environmental budget we’ve ever had in the history of Florida,” he said.

A marsh in Everglades National Park in Florida. Diana Robinson Photography/Moment/GettyImages

He did not comment at the signing ceremony on his $510.9 million in line-item vetoes, less than 1 percent of the budget and far less than the $3.1 billion he vetoed in approving last year’s $109.9 billion budget.

He intended, with this year’s vetoes, his office said in a statement, “to maintain Florida’s sound fiscal standing in the face of continued economic headwinds due to ill-conceived federal policies.”

DeSantis highlighted various budgetary achievements. The state is spending a record $26.8 billion on education, with a record $8,648 per student, $405 more than last year.

It creates a record $2.7 billion in tax savings for Floridians. It spends $130 million in raises for public safety employees and $1.1 billion in raises for teachers. It spends a record $635 million on workforce education and a record $711 million on workforce and affordable housing.

Funds For Cancer Research, Care

It earmarks $191 million for cancer research and care, a cause his wife Casey DeSantis, a cancer survivor, has advocated for. It spends $4 billion on the Moving Florida Forward Initiative, which accelerates 20 major highway projects for the fast-growing state to finish within four years rather than waiting up to 20 years.

Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis listens as her husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaks during a press conference at the University of Miami Health System Don Soffer Clinical Research Center in Miami, Fla., on May 17, 2022. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Despite having no state income tax, the state’s large surpluses have positioned it both to spend to address major problems and deliver significant tax rebates to Floridians, he said. That help counter the effects of inflation on household budgets, he said.

The state has created permanent sales tax exemptions on child and baby-related purchases, institutes two-week-long back-to-school tax holidays, and made “Freedom Summer” tax exemptions on recreational items and events during the summer months. It also rebates 50 percent of what Floridians pay to drive on toll roads. DeSantis says this will save some drivers and commuters more than $1,000 annually.

Rural and Family Lands Protection Program

The largest single item vetoed was $100 million for the rural and family lands protection program. A spokesman for the governor’s office said that the program, run by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, pays farmers to permanently keep their lands in agriculture. The farmers continue to own the lands, but the state buys agriculture easements on them, he said.

Workers pick tomatoes at a farm owned and operated by Pacific Tomato Growers in Immokalee, Fla., on Feb. 19, 2021. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

That program received $300 million in last year’s budget, and most of that still needs to be spent, he said, making the new $100 million unnecessary.

The governor left another $100 million in the budget for the Florida Forever project, which can buy land and create easements that variously keep land for agriculture or acquire lands for parks, recreation, and public use. Florida Forever is administered by the Department of Environmental Protection, which received $976 million for that general purpose.

One program supported is Florida’s Wildlife Corridor, the spokesman said, which extends through the state. It creates a web of undeveloped land animals can migrate on and uses the money to buy land linking existing tracts such as state or federal parks and forests, he said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis helps hold a python as he kicks off the 2021 Python Challenge in the Everglades, Miami, Fla., on June 3, 2021. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Other line-item vetoes, over $10 million each, included construction projects at universities, including Florida, the University of South Florida, and a half-dozen other state colleges and universities, plus one for $4 million at Florida State.

Vetoes such as these sometimes occur because the schools sought the money through avenues other than those the governor thought best, a spokesman said.

COVID-19 Grand Jury

DeSantis has been interspersing bill signings and other state business with his campaign for president, which has taken him to states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Oklahoma recently and will take him this weekend to Nevada.

While taking questions from reporters at the end, DeSantis provided an update on the grand jury he launched to investigate governmental actions on the COVID-19 lockdown, treatment, vaccines, and masking policy.

People receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a FEMA vaccination center at Miami Dade College in Miami, Fla., on April 5, 2021. Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

The state applied to the state Supreme Court, which has to approve it, in January to impanel the grand jury, and the grand jurors were seated in February. The grand jury is an investigative body that can issue reports and a criminal one that can indict. The state did something similar on school safety after the Parkland high school massacre, he said.

The grand jury has not yet issued a report, he said, but he expects one about every six months.

DeSantis said he was not apprised of its activities “because it’s a secret proceeding. You know, unlike the feds, we don’t leak this stuff. So it’s actually going on. They’re doing it, and they’re following the rules. So I can’t be involved with it.”

To illustrate, DeSantis mentioned two issues it might address: unfounded claims early on that the vaccine would be 100 percent effective and a disturbing incidence of myocarditis in those vaccinated.

“They’ve never been honest about any of this stuff,” he said about federal health authorities.

“And I think Florida’s Department of Health is the only one that’s even looked at any of the incidents like myocarditis. We’ve seen an increase in Florida, particularly with men under the age of 40. So that’s just the reality.

“And I think the idea that somehow you just sweep everything under the rug when people were not told the truth, that doesn’t fly.”

The federal government, he said, “supported policies that were destructive to this country. And they did it without remorse.”