>>This week on NewsNight, preview of the upcoming Florida legislative session.

The panel looks at bill filed so far on issues ranging from refor to the state's constitutional amendmen process, to an expansion of Florida' medical marijuana laws.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top storie and issues in Central Florida and how they shap our community.

First, tonight, a Florida version of DOGE the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency.

Governor DeSantis signed an executive order this week to establish a one year initiative, he says, with the aim of eliminating waste in state government.

A task force will review and audit the state university system and the spending habits of local governments and eliminate boards and commissions with the loss of hundreds of state positions all with the help of artificial intelligence.

>>We look to se what Musk is doing with the DOGE in Washington, D.C.. And the one thing I think tha that they're doing that we need to incorporate, is to utilize and leverage technology like artificial intelligence to be able to police the payments and the operations and the contracts that are done in government.

You know, for example, we have people that review these contracts, and if there's DEI they nix it and things like that.

But this is some high powere stuff and I think would be able to provide us some good information.

So, you know we hav already been doing this stuff.

This will really help enhance that.

>>To note WUCF is licensed to the University of Central Florida, which is part of the State University system.

I talked early this wee about the governor's state level DOGE initiative with Trista Wood, a reporter from our sister station, WFSU Public Media in Tallahassee.

>>What he wants Florid DOGE to do is to audit state government agencies, audit state, universities and colleges, and audi local governments to look for, what he said to cut frivolous spending.

However, a big theme in his address and where we can kind of read the tea leaves to see where the purpose of a lot of this is, is going to be to look for diversity, equity, inclusion or those type of initiatives in those different entities and go after them.

Previously, over past legislative sessions, like in 2023, the state legislature made it illegal for stat universities have DEI programs.

But in DeSantis's address, he said, you know, a lot of those administrators just changed the name of it to something else and is hiding it is something else.

And these, type of audits will be able to look for programs that may be doing that.

>>So what you're saying is that behind this initiative lies one of the governor's priorities, which is trying to rid the government of DEI initiatives.

Is that right?

>>Yes, absolutely.

That's, I would say the questions about balancing the budget.

There is something there because, state funding, through federal grants enduring from that originated in, with the Covid 19 pandemic and othe federal grants are sunsetting.

So cuts do need to happen at the state level.

However, with this Florida DOGE specifically, it's examining, you know, state agencies and state universities and colleges and like, and when what DeSanti talked about for those cuts were those type of culture war typ issues that have been a mainstay throughout his six years in the governor's mansion.

Another interesting thing is that he mentioned wanting to cut 70, state boards.

A lot of those board are created, by the legislature and appointed to roles by the governor to look into things, do more research, make recommendations about policy, and by removing those boards that would basically put their responsibilities, their research, more directly into him, his office personally.

So although he has a lot of sway over those boards now, making appointments and things like that, it really removing them consolidates more power with him.

However, you know, with all of this, an important thing to keep in mind is, you know, he wants, all these audits to happen.

He wants to move other things, but to be able to actually accomplish removing the and accomplishing those things, he needs cooperation from the legislature.

And, in recent, over the last recent months, with the fight on immigration issues and things like that, there seems to be a lot of tension between legislative leaders and DeSantis.

So whether he's going to have the same success with this Florida DOGE task force remains to be seen and is something that we're going to have to see what, what, if any, laws the legislature passes to give certain powers or to help support this task force.

>>I mean, it seems to me from the reading of this, right, that it's short term and advisory, this task force.

>>Yes, absolutely.

It's lasting about a year.

And it, essentially will, you know looking to investigate and give, information and things for essentially DeSantis to use his bully pulpit as governor, to try to pressure the legislature to pass certain policies, as you can see from the type of pressure him and his staff put on the legislature during their fight on immigration, so that that that's primarily what the function of this task force is now.

But that may change based on, you know, what happen during the legislative session.

>>Do you think, from looking at this that this is an example, maybe, of the Trump administration itself having an outsized effect on Florida politics?

>>Yes, absolutely.

I would add with this and the immigration fight, you kind of see the different factions in the Republican Party in Florida fighting to, play on the same terminology and get kind of th the take the same type of credit in collaboratin with the Trump administration.

And a lot of the reason behind that is the the DeSantis is going to term out in 2026.

A gubernatorial race is upcoming.

There's a lot of jockeying within the Republican Party, especially with Florida Democrats, you know, so weak, the next governor of Florida is going to be a Republican.

So, the infighting between, the party at this point of them jockeying, who is the best Trump ally, who's being the champion that's carrying the torch?

That's kind of, the backdro behind this legislative session and recent conflicts between the governor and the legislature.

>>Trista Wood from WFSU in Tallahassee.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Stephe Lemongello writes about politics for the Orlando Sentinel.

Another quiet week for you, Steve.

>>Oh, yeah.

Very quiet.

Nothing happen.

>>You've been writing about a lot of things that we're going to be talking about tonight.

So good to see you here.

Cheryn Stone, host of Engag on Central Florida Public Media.

Good to see Cheryn.

>>Thanks for having me.

>>And Matthew Peddie coming to us from WUSF, host of Florida Matters.

Good to see you, Matt.

>>Nice to be back.

>>Thanks, guys, for for coming in.

Steve, let me start with you on this one.

What reaction have you been getting from both sides of the aisle in Florida to this idea of, state level DOGE?

I mean, the Democrats here had already been pretty skeptical right, about the federal DOGE.

>>Oh, yeah.

Like, you talk to Democrat and they say, you know, they're certainly going t look at this now like, oh there's all this waste.

And like, you know, Florida government, lik Republicans have been in charge for Florida government for almost 30 years.

Like it's, there's a lot of sense that this is DeSantis sort of trying to sort of like, hey, I'm still here.

Remember me?

He tried to say that, you know, he was, Florida was DOG before DOGE was cool-- >>Right.

>>Trying to say that I was DOGE first.

You know, don't let Elon Musk and Trump fool you.

Like, you know, I' the cutting government guy.

So, as for Republicans, it remains to see, like, a lot of the stuff needs to be approved by the legislature.

You know, because, you know, those rules still might apply in Florida, where Congress seems to have totally abdicated its duty up in Washington.

But like, I'm sure a lot of Republicans, you know, may want to tweak a lot of this and not have, like, you know, this advisory board go in and just, you know, do whatever in like local communities.

>>Well, let's hear from a couple of lawmakers.

Now, before we continue with this, I talked this wee with a couple of Central Florida lawmakers on this first, Democratic senator, Carlos Guillermo Smith and then Republican state Senato Jason Brodeur too take a listen.

>>Well, I think cutting down on government waste, frau and abuse is always a good idea.

What's interesting is to hea governor DeSantis suddenly jumping on board with cutting state government waste, fraud and abuse when Republicans have actually been in charge of state government and really managing the state of Florida for the last three decades, he's likely going to want to actually focus on attacking cities and counties who already have limited budgets, even though they do provide critical services like public safety, police and fire and a lot of other critical services.

>>Well, I think we should be doing that at all times.

We do have a governmen efficiency task force that I sit on that is statutorily require to meet every few years, and we'll be coming out with recommendations as well.

Typically in that we review all things at the Department of Management Services, such as our fleet vehicle procurement, how many buildings we own, whether or not they're full, where are we leased things.

And so we do a pretty good job of regularly looking at that.

That said, it's $11 billion budget, and I am certain there is some fluff in there that we could cut out.

>>We'll hear from Senato Smith and Brodeur again shortly when we talk about the upcoming legislative session.

Cheryn let me come to you first on this.

I mean, we heard Tristan Woods from WFSU talk about this DOGE task force in terms of it being an example of the Trump administration's impact on Florida politics.

What do you think?

>>I think that that is the overriding theme here.

And there are several examples that that is the goal is to pleas President Trump.

With the immigration we saw several special sessions.

They were all the Republicans and the governor were very outspoke that we want to align ourselves to, you know, go along with Trump's immigration agenda in other proposals.

There's one that would require agencies in the state and schools to update their materials just to rename the Gulf the Gulf of America.

And that is clearly to comply with President Trump's executive order renaming it.

And then I would also just add, practically, there's this impact in terms of the president is taking Floridians with them to the White House.

He already did.

I guess the most prominent example would be Senator Marco Rubio at Secretary of State and Representative Mike Waltz is national Security advisor.

So definitely Florida is being impacted and Florida is impacting the White House.

>>Two way street, for sure.

What do you think, Steve?

>>Oh yeah, definitely.

Though again, there was this sort of idea that maybe DeSantis is feelin sort of competitive with Trump when it comes to like, hey, we can do this too.

We can do this down here.

We can do some of what we've already been doing and call it DOGE or FLOGE and, and sort of jump on that sort of train.

But yeah, like same with immigration.

It's, it's what DeSantis has sort of been wanting to do for a long time.

It's sort of less like we're doing what Trump wants it - it's more of I think, you know, Trump's doing what we've always wanted to do for a while now.

And so we're just going to take advantage of that.

>>It's been a priority.

One thing that really stood out to me, Matt, the governor talked about sending unused federal dollars, back to Washington.

Florida has got a history of doing that.

And it's also got a history of benefiting from federal government largesse.

>>Yeah.

This is a pattern you've seen.

I mean, on the one hand when it's politically expedient, you see politicians saying we're going to not take this money because, we don't want it.

That's it's bad.

I mean, one good example of that is probably high speed rail.

You remember there was a time when we were going to have a high speed train between Tampa-- >>Scott administration.

>>Yes, and Orlando.

And that money was sent back by by Rick Scott.

He's like, no, this is going to just be a boondoggle.

And and we're going to end up paying for it.

Medicaid expansion.

That's another thing that's constantly being rebuffed by Republican lawmakers in Florida.

On the other hand, though, you will have seen, in 2021, $100 billion budget was passed that was including about $9 billion from the American Rescue Plan, which was the Biden era kind of, package to help people to get back on their feet after the kind of the, the Covid pandemic.

So, you know, when when they want to use that money, they'll take it, and say, we're doing a better job at spending than Washingto when they don't want to use it.

They'll say Washington is wasteful and we're not going to spend this because this is a bad deal for the American people.

>>Well, we'll see how much they actually end up sendin back when all is said and done.

You can see my full length interview with Tristan Wood on our website.

We talked extensively about the upcoming legislative session as well.

You can also find a link to the governor's executive order ensuring government efficiency and the governor's budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year.

It's all at wucf.org/NewsNight.

It's been a busy wee for Florida politics hasn't it?

President Trump weighed in on who he'd like to succee governor DeSantis this week.

He's backin Congressman Byron Donalds, who announced his candidacy.

Governor DeSantis declined to back Donalds for the job, though.

Meanwhile, planning is underway for the regular legislative session, which starts on Tuesday.

Lawmakers are likely to discuss a wide range of issues.

A Republican bill was filed on Wednesday, for example, to shake up the rules used to gather signature petitions neede to get constitutional amendments on the ballot in Florida.

Governor DeSantis has called for changes to that initiative process.

Let's hear from Senators Smit and Brodeur again on this issue.

We'll star with Republican Senator Brodeur, he thinks the threshold needed to pass constitutional amendments should be increased.

>>I think it's because of the recent trend that says if we don' get our way legislatively, we'll just g get a bunch of signatures and amend the Constitution.

That's no what a constitution is for.

A constitution is to be the blueprint for how you operate your government.

It should have things in there, like how many supreme Court justices you have, how many members of th legislature, how often you meet.

What it's not fo is pregnant pigs and marijuana.

Those are thing that should be left to statute.

And so I think having a very high threshold is very healthy for the Republic and our democracy, because the Founding Fathers intended for the the Constitution to be the framework by which we operate, not tastes and preferences that come and go over time.

That's what the legislature is for.

And that's why we have an annual session.

I think people that don' get their way in the legislature have then just no tried to co-opt our Constitution for their individual pet projects.

The Constitution is not for special interests.

>>But it's already very hard.

I mean, we saw that last year in the 2024 efforts on marijuana and abortion rights, right?

I mean, it didn't.

It achieved they both achieved a majority, but not the 60% required.

It's not easy as it is.

>>Well, it's easier than most states.

I would submit that it should be two thirds, and having us to have a constitutional convention over one issue, you need 3/5 of the states.

That's, 60% as well.

So I think that is a threshol that everybody should adhere to.

The 60% threshold that we have in the state of Florida for amending the Constitution was chosen by the voters less than 20 years ago.

And so I think that's the appropriate threshold because it was chosen by the voters.

I don't think there's any appetite to revisit that.

>>Senator Brodeur there.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith has filed a bill for this session to do the opposite.

He wants to reduce the threshold from 60 to 50%.

>>Well, it's what the people want.

So many Florida voters were disappointe in this last election cycle when even though the vas majority of Floridians supported amendment three to legalize cannabis for adult use, an amendment four to overturn the state' extreme six week abortion ban, that majority of Florida voters wasn't enough to reach the 60% threshold require for constitutional amendments.

That standard is way too high.

And in addition to that 60 standard being, extremely high, the state government, under the leadership of Ron DeSantis, has thrown up every possible obstacl in front of petition gatherers to make it nearly impossibl to pass citizen led initiatives.

And so that's why we filed this legislation to reinstate, actually, the 50% standard that we used to have before the Constitution was changed.

And what I'll point out, Steven, is the irony.

Under the circumstances that led to the 60% threshold in the first place, it was placed in front o Florida voters many years ago.

And that the Florida voters at the time did not reach the 60% threshold that is currently required to pass that new mandate on 60% and actually got somewhere around, 56 or 57%.

And so there's a there is a sad irony here, on how we got to this situation with 60% in the first place.

>>Well, I asked Senators Brodeur and Smith in-depth about their legislative priorities.

We also talked about Florid DOGE as well.

You'll find our conversation on our website, wucf.org/newsnigh and on WUCF's YouTube page.

Okay, everybody, let's g around the horn on this one.

What are you going to be looking for in the legislative session?

I'll start with you, Matt.

>>I mean, besides the big ones like immigration, housing, see if there's anything going on there.

There's a couple of things I'm interested to see what happens in terms of gun legislation.

I mean, gun rights.

There are always kind of efforts to try and loosen those restrictions.

You know, for a constitutiona carry, as they call open carry, being able to carry guns on, on university campuses.

And, and also there's some pressure to-- >>There is a bill to do that, I think.

>>Right.

There's some pressure also to roll back some of those restrictions that were brought out after the parkland shooting, remember, they brought in some rules to restrict the sale of rifles to people under the age of 21 and also red flag laws.

So people who are who are strong on the Second Amendment are always, tryin to sort of push back on those.

And that'll be a big deal, because that, you know, after parkland, that was the first time that Florida had actually enacted any kind of meaningful kind of gun restrictions.

So if those things get rolled back, that's a big deal for Florida.

>>What are you gonna be looking for?

Cheryn what are you tracking?

>>I'm actually super interested to se what happens with flouridation, and we saw a Republican senato out of Tavares introduce a bill that would block adding fluoride to water.

And statewide, we've seen a numbe of local municipalities do it.

So I'm curious if it happens on the state level.

>>Steve?

>>More than anything, I just like to see, you know, how big is the rift between DeSantis and the legislature?

Obviously, a huge fight over, immigration, which you'd thin they'd be together on.

But, apparently not.

And, you know, how much is the legislatur just going to, you know, d what DeSantis wants them to do?

And how much is them looking like he's a lame duck now?

Like, you know, Trump was in power for four years.

Like, you know, mayb we don't have to listen to him.

>>That could be a central theme of this session, for sure.

Let's drill down a bit on the proposals to eliminate property tax in Florida.

There's a bill to study the idea.

He's like a here' the governor talking about that this week in Tampa.

>>How do we perceive o the proper role of government.

And do you think it's fin that you buy property, you buy a home, you own i outright free and clear, and yet you have to continue t pony up money to the government just for the courtesy of using your own property.

That's not we don't tax like that in almost any other instance.

>>Governor DeSantis there.

Cheryn I think your outlets been looking at this.

What are you finding in terms of potential impacts if such a move or to take place?

>>Oh, I'm so glad you brought this up.

I think there was just a shock to it.

Like eliminating property taxes.

Is that even possible?

So I think it's important t remember what these things fund.

Thes are really critical services that they're fundin and communities.

We're talking about police, fire departments, road repair.

It's parks, schools.

And I do want to point out that taxes aren't collected by the state, they're levied by local governments.

And most people would agree that you want to fund these services that I just mentioned and I asked UCF Economist Sean Snaith about this.

What's the practical just really, you know, plausible here.

And he told me that the mos obvious thing would be swapping one tax for another if you eliminate that.

So maybe you increase the sales tax.

He did not say that income tax is on the table though.

Just not to set off any alarms here.

>>Sure.

>>And there was a study ou of the Florida Policy Institute.

It said that Florid would have to find $43 billion to make up if they were to move forward with this idea of eliminating property tax and just more on a local level, property taxes make up about 73% of school district revenue according to that same report.

So it's a lot of money.

>>Yeah.

I mean, the governor is, said you said this week that this is one of the reasons he wants to DOGE local governments is to find ou if there's unnecessary spending or whether certain taxes can be can be eliminated.

Let's talk about immigration a moment, Matt, Senator Brodeur told me he thinks immigration will be central to this upcoming session.

Things like, I guess, E-Verify, college admissions.

That you talked about you've covered this immigration issue a lot and its importance, to Floridians.

Polls show that they think it's important, right.

What have you been hearing so far in terms of how the changes that we've see have been landing with people?

>>It depends on who you talk to.

But people who, in Florida, like in the Tampa Bay region, which WUSF covers without paperwork, they're they're worrie about this, they're scared because they're not sur what that means for them.

And, you know, that could be but the folks have kind of come here without paperwork.

It's also, you know, people who are here and, you know, the the parents, you know, maybe came here without paperwork.

They kind of have their dispensation to be here legally for now.

I mean, they're worried about it as well.

And there's also the question of how far is, local and state authorities going to go to back up this new federal push to basically round people up and throw them out of the country?

So still quite a lot of uncertainty.

I guess we just have to wait and see, you know, how it's actually played out and how how far along.

As I said, local authorities want to go along with this, this new federal push to to be a lot stronger on immigration enforcement.

>>Yeah, Cheryn.

>>And I would just add to that, I don't know if you found it in your reporting, but some people within Central Florida's immigrant community, they're scared to use their full names with me just on background, because out of legitimate fears of being deported.

>>Yeah.

And also scared to kind of go about their business so they won't be seen outside because they're worried, you know, like an ICE agent or, you know, local authorities deputized by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement might knock on the door and say, hey, we're rounding you up.

>>I wanted to move on to talk a little bit about what we heard the lawmakers talk about just now, and that's the constitutional amendment process.

And, Steve, I'll come to you on this one.

The governor and Republicans have pressed, of course, for changes to the constitutional amendment process.

Democrats, as we heard from Senator Smith, are pushing their own proposals.

I wonder, how much of this has to do with the constitutional amendments three and four that we saw on the ballot in 2024 on abortion and marijuana?

Well, yeah, a lot of it, they didn't pass, but it got, you know, very close a little too close to comfort, probably for Republicans who, you know, pretty much swept across the board there looking at that, said, like, you know, a few things go differently.

And, you know, 60% of the population could just sort of like overdo a lot of our, you know, main priorities so that they do not want that at all.

And, the irony is, when you talk about Smith's, proposal for 50% is there was a lot of Democrats and liberal backing back in the 2000s to make it 60%, because there was concern back then that conservatives would push through a bunch of stuff at 50%.

So, you know, things change.

>>Isn't that the way in politics?

I wanted to talk about marijuana itself briefly, Cheryn, I mean, that does seem to be despite the opposition to amendment three last year.

That does seem to be quite a lot of bipartisan agreement, particularly on medical marijuana for this session.

>>Yeah, that is a popular program within Florida.

When medical marijuana was passed by Florida voters, it was passed by over 70% back in 2016.

And we're seeing a lot of bills filed this session actually aimed at expanding it.

Just to give a couple examples, one would expan the eligible medical conditions.

It would add addiction or dependance to opioid drugs as a qualifying condition to be able to be a medical marijuana patient.

And I'm oversimplifying this, but another would allow medical marijuana patients to grow their own plants with restrictions, obviously, and another one would allow telehealth appointments for initial and renewal processes.

In terms of keeping that medical marijuana card.

>>Interesting I did want to wrap up by talking about one important resiliency issue, Matt, and this is something tha we deal with in Central Florida and also in the Tampa Bay area, and that is flooding.

We've seen this issue arise several times in recent years in both of our areas.

There has been her at least significant work done to improve storm water systems, in our region.

And there's a proposal to increase scrutiny of that infrastructure.

>>Yeah.

I think Senator Danny Burgess has a bill that he wants to put out there to, to increase scrutiny, as you say, on stormwater.

I mean, scrutiny is one thing but then just kind of actually maintaining the stormwater systems is another.

And you find that, you know, especially at the last yea where we had those back to back hurricanes, like at Tampa Bay, we had long, you know, flooding for days and days and days, weeks even in, places like the Withlacoochie River and Hernando County and also even further south, like Sarasota County, they're looking at things like maybe imposing levies on stormwater for people in stormwater districts to try and raise some more money to, to pa for infrastructure improvements.

They're looking at things like floodable parks and other kind of engineering workarounds.

But yeah, it's a big issue.

And, you know the more of these strong storms that come in these, these counties and cities that have increased development are going to be facing it and then having to figure out how to deal with it.

>>Yeah, certainly a really important issue for our coastal regions.

No doubt.

And a lot to follow in this upcoming legislative session.

I'm sure you guys will be doing a lot of reporting in the coming weeks for sure.

Meanwhile, be sure to join the conversation on social media.

We're at WUC TV, on Facebook and Instagram.

You'll also find us @NewsNightWUCF on X.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Stephen Lemongello, Cheryn Stone, and Matthew Peddie.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Really appreciate it.

Good conversation today.

NewsNight will be taking a break next week, but we will return the following Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime for all of us here at NewsNight.

Take care and have a great week.