Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters Dec. 7 that soon he'll unveil a proposed budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year, which will include “higher budget reserves than we’ve ever had in the history of the state of Florida.”
“We are doing things that matter, that are helping Floridians across the board, and we’re being very aggressive on that,” the Republican governor said.
“But yet, at the same time, our budget will come in at less than half of the budget of the state of New York—which is the closest state to us in population—we’re about 3 million more people than they are.”
He made the comments while announcing a proposal that’s part of the budget lawmakers will consider: a plan to spend $270 million on 76 projects across the state designed to combat flooding and “sea-level rise.”
When combined with local matching funds, the proposed projects would have a total cost of nearly $500 million, he said.
In the current fiscal year, the state invested more than $640 million to help prepare for the impacts of sea-level rise, intensified storms, and flooding.
“In Florida, our environment and economy are inextricably linked,” he said. The plan is designed to make communities in the peninsular state more resilient.
When asked by a reporter about the connection to climate change, DeSantis fumed, “What I’ve found is when people start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways. And so, we’re not doing any left-wing stuff.
“What we’re doing, though, is just reacting to the fact that, OK, we’re a flood-prone state, we do have storms.”
As more people move into Florida, having a larger population increases the potential of increased damage in the state, he said. So better, stronger infrastructure is needed now.
