This week on Newsnight.

Following weeks of tense negotiations, Florida lawmakers finally agree on a budget and tax plan, plus lawmakers scrapping effort to allow tourist development tax revenues to be spent on infrastructure and other local priorities.

News night starts now.

Hello, I'm Steve Mort.

Welcome to News Night, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in Central Florida and how they shape our community.

First, tonight, a long awaited budget deal in Tallahassee.

The slimmed down $115 billion budget eliminates hundreds of state government positions, among other significant cuts, but includes a boost for rural Florida, including $140 million for the citrus industry.

There's also new money to tackle food insecurity and an infusion of cash into the state's rainy day fund.

Amid concerns over federal support and the trajectory of the economy follows weeks of heated discussion over the budget, with disagreements between the House, Senate and the governor.

But after reaching an agreement, House Speaker Daniel Perez downplayed the Republican divisions.

>>Senate president, I have had a great session together I think the legislators had a great session.

I think it's, it's easy to jump to conclusion that simply because there's civil discourse or there's a difference of opinion, that all of a sudden your enemies, I don't see that in either my relationship with the Senate President, nor in my relationship with the governor.

>>Daniel Perez there.

The tax package does not include an across the board sales tax cuts initially pushed by Perez during the session, although it provides for sales tax cuts for a variety of specific items.

It also repeals the business rent tax.

Also not in the package property tax relief demanded by the governor, but it does direct a study of the issue.

I asked UCF political scientist Aubrey Jewett about it all this week.

>>The governor and the legislature really weren't on the same page on many issues, including budgeting and taxing through the whole session.

You know, this was something really different this year than, say, the previous five years, when the legislature pretty much fell in line with whatever governor DeSantis wanted.

But then specifically, you know, when it came to the budget, it really became an issue over whether they should try to do something with property taxes, cutting them or cutting sales taxes, or doing something else.

All of them agreed that they were conservative Republicans, fiscally speaking, and that they wanted to have a tight budget, but they really disagreed on exactly what it is that they wanted to do.

>> Aubrey Jewett there.

You can find my full interview with Aubrey on our website ucf.org/newsnight.

A reminder we're recording this program on Thursday morning so things can change by airtime.

They often do as well.

Let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week.

It's been a minute Christopher Heath from WKMG News 6.

Good to see you Chris.

>>Good to see you.

>>Thanks so much for coming back on the show.

>>New studio, I appreciate it.

>>Absolutely.

It's been a while.

Really been a while since you were last on.

Jeff Allen from Spectrum News 13 covers a bit of politics over there at Spectrum News.

Good to see you as well, Jeff.

>>Good to be here.

>>And Scott Martin coming back to the program from WFTV channel 9.

Good to see you as well.

Scott.

>>You as well, happy to be here.

>>Thank you all so much for being here.

Well let's go around the horn to start with.

What do you make of this budget?

Chris.

>>Very conventional.

Conventional.

It started off with, oh, we're going to be very populist.

We're going to, you know, slash property taxes.

We're going to give everyone these great sales tax cuts, you know, and everything that's going to, you know, help out the, you know, homeowners going to help out the average Floridian.

And at the end of the day, we really didn't get a lot of that out of this.

It was a very conventional budget.

It made cuts in places that it had to make cuts, because all the pandemic money that we got from the feds is starting to evaporate.

We've got a pretty sizable cut to the business rents tax, essentially, which is something they love to do.

And then, you know, a nice little sprinkling so that all the members go home to their districts and are happy.

A conventionally conventional budget.

>>The sprinkle list.

Everyone looks forward to that.

What do you think, Jeff?

>>Yeah.

House Republicans, I mean, you know, they they really were prioritizing the, sales tax.

House.

You know, the Senate and the governor really wanted to prioritize the property tax and neither really got what they wanted.

So, you know, their compromise was really for nobody to get there.

They say that they're going to talk about it, you know, and try to get it next time around.

But it seems like that's always what we hear.

>>Yeah.

What do you think, Scott?

>>Yeah.

And I think, you know, we see this all the time when we talk about the budget.

It's always a big back and forth between the House and the Senate and all of them.

But one thing, two that I noticed is some of the vacancies that they had, that instead of not just looking at some of the things that they could cut, but where could they cut from themselves as far as the vacancies there in the >>in the state government?

Yeah.

That's right.

Well, let's dig into a couple of these things.

On the rainy day fund.

Jeff, I wonder how much of this budget has to do with reining in that spending growth that we've seen particularly over recent years?

And how much has got to do with the economic circumstances we find ourselves in, and the amount of uncertainty about how much federal government support is.

I think it's something like a third of the Florida.

Florida's budget is federal government money.

>>Yeah, it all really wrapped up into it.

In fact, Senate President Ben Albritton was saying, you know, even as they were getting ready to vote on this, last Friday, you know, they they need to be ready for whatever right now.

You know, Florida in a good shape.

It's been turning a surplus in the budget the last several years, but they don't know what's going to happen nationally.

And, of course, they're worried about a recession.

If they're going to get enough, you know, as much revenue in coming years.

And they're talking about doing away with FEMA at the national level.

So they may have to come up with their own money and not get that federal assistance in coming years.

FEMA might not be here this time next year.

So they need to be have the funds ready for that.

>>Yeah.

The president has talked about a phase out there.

What do you think, Chris?

I mean, a lawmakers concern that the state's going to need to to pick up the tab for more things going foward?

>>The last time I spoke to Speaker Perez, he actually used the word recession and that, you know, you cannot look out at the quarter by quarter growth that we're seeing at the federal level.

And sticky inflation that's not really gone anywhere.

And some of the questions and the uncertainty involving tariffs and other things, there's a lot of factors in there.

And so as as the United States goes, so goes Florida.

If the United States starts to move towards a recession, it will absolutely have an impact on Florida and Florida, unlike the federal government, by, you know, by our own, you know, Constitution in the state, we have to have a balanced budget.

So they've got to have that rainy day fund.

It makes sense for them to sock away more cash because they're reading the same tea leaves we all are in saying it doesn't look 100% rosy right now, and there's some pretty big rain clouds out on the horizon.

>>Yeah.

I mean, especially given that we're a tourist economy, we'll talk a bit more about that.

We're pretty vulnerable to those kinds of shocks on the tax package.

And you kind of alluded to this.

Chris, I mean, there are none of those sweeping sales tax cuts that that the House had definitely wanted, but there were sizable tax cuts for businesses.

This was and I think you mentioned this before, a pretty business favorable budget, would you say?

>>Yeah.

And listen, if you're a member in good standing of Associate Industries of Florida, you loved this budget.

You loved this session.

You got pretty much out of it what you want.

There are some things in there for the average person.

We have now back to school sales tax will be the entire month of August.

So you get a whole month to go back to school shopping.

Certain things that you need for hurricanes are going to be permanently tax free.

Although we got rid of the, you know, hurricane tax freeze thing.

But the biggest chunk of this budget was pretty much a, for lack of a better term, give away to businesses in Florida so that they're paying less tax on their rents and the argument goes back to good old fashioned Reaganomics that it will trickle down if businesses don't have to spend as much on their rents, they can hire more employees, they can invest in their business, and that will help everyone.

Whether or not you think trickle down economics is viable is a different discussion, but that's definitely the basis with which they put this together.

>>The age old discussion.

There's been no action, of course, and you mentioned, property taxes.

Jeff, there wasn't any action on that at the end, except I think to fund a study.

There's $1 million appropriated for that.

The governor eventually wants to eliminate property taxes.

This has been a big source of division during the course of this session.

>>They, of course, had to extend the session.

It was only supposed to be 60 days.

Ended up being more than 100 days.

Of course, that cost, more taxpayer money.

And yet they still couldn't come to a compromise on what each side really, really wanted.

Here.

Again, the governor and, Senate Republicans really wanted to prioritize that property tax exemption.

Maybe a thousand off of, homeowners had that homestead exemption or no property taxes at all.

Didn't get that.

And then, of course, you know, the the House Republicans wanted that sales tax reduction.

Neither happened.

>>We have a DOGE effort, going on on the state level, the governor's office is getting the power right to look into, spending in local governments as part of this package.

What will the office of, Policy and Budget be able to investigate now?

>>Well, Steve, they're going to be looking at potential overspending or fraud in this.

And I think it's important to note, too, that some of these things that they're going to probably be requesting, the general public could request.

Theyre public records.

They're going to look at administrative cost, contracts, different programs, again, just to see if therere any overspending or if there're misspending or fraud going on within the local government.

>>Let's just wrap up by talking about how the governor looks coming out of this.

No money for Hope, Florida.

That was a big contentious issue during the session.

He did get other, priorities funded.

What do you think, Chris?

>>Well, they slashed his legal fund.

I mean, he has had a ton of money flowing into various, you know, for both defending lawsuits through his office and then other offices that report to the executive branch, about $8 million that he had requested for those just got pulled out this time, you're seeing and this is probably downstream of the rift between, DeSantis and Trump and DeSantis running for president and then losing in Iowa and then coming back and being governor.

And also, let's face it, he is at the end of his term.

He cannot run for governor again.

There's not another office waiting for him.

So you start to see the legislature, I think for the very first time, really, since Covid, flexing its muscle and saying, you know what?

We appreciate your input, governor, but we will do what we want to do, and you do what you want to do.

You don't come over here and tell us what to do.

And I think that was a bit of a shock to the executive branch this time around.

>>Especially on the House side.

What do you think, Jeff?

>>Yeah, DeSantis.

He lost a lot of political capital, during his run for the presidency.

And, you know, the legislature legislature has made it clear that they are going to do, prioritize what they want to prioritize.

They're not going to kind of check with him on everything.

So it'll be interesting to see as we move into next year, because that could even further, the legislature could have kind of further their sense of independence from the executive branch.

>>Yeah.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens in the next legislative session.

For sure.

Be sure to find us on social media, meanwhile, or at WUCFTV on Facebook and Instagram.

You'll also find us on X at NewsNightWUCF.

Well, one of the issues discussed in the legislative session was the potential for the redirection of tourist development tax dollars away from tourism related interest and to other priorities.

The idea have been in the works until close to the end of the budget and tax negotiations, but it was eventually taken out.

However, as the legislature and officials study how to pay for property tax relief, TDT could well be a pressing topic moving forward.

As Krystel Knowles reports.

>>it's this kind of dimensionality that's really exciting.

>>Chrissa Baker, has spent the last 20 years studying the business of theme parks.

She says tourism and hospitality are the largest economic drivers in Central Florida, including the recently opened Epic Universe.

>>There have been estimates, that it's going to be about $11.5 billion in economic impact.

I could actually see it even more than that.

Just because there's so many aspects to that, everything from the theme park and its three new hotels, as well as the job creation, the taxes that that they're paying and things like that.

>>To help promote visitation, counties use, tourism development tax revenues, or TDT.

It's sometimes referred to as the bed tax.

It's collected from hotel stays and short term rentals.

Orange County brought in about $330 million in TDT tax dollars last year.

>>It's so much bigger than just a theme park.

>>Alan Fyall from the Rosen College of Hospitality Management says it plays a major role in helping insulate the tourism industry from economic shocks.

>>That tax has been instrumental in building the industry as it is today, so it's a very difficult balance between do you keep building and protecting an industry which is the cornerstone of the economy or do you take a little bit to, address other issues?

>>Current law requires counties to put at least 40% of their TDT revenues into tourism promotion, and money is spent on other projects, such as improvements to big ticket items like the Orange County Convention Center that are seen as key to the health of the tourism sector.

But this legislative session, Florida lawmakers have been rethinking that strategy.

>>I will return with those tax reforms next year and continue pushing for them >>Among those who push for greater flexibility in TDT spending was Orlando Democratic State Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, who spoke to NewsNight earlier in the session.

Right now, on average, Orange County government invests a $100 million in taxpayer funding to Visit Orlando to run corporate advertisements.

I think that is an inefficient use of public money.

It's why my reforms around tourist development taxes that are supported by a number of stakeholders and community leaders to limit that investment in corporate marketing and instead increase the investment in public transit and other community needs and destination infrastructure is something that's long overdue.

>>Others say the marketing is essential to the local economy.

In the legislature this year, the House had call for sweeping changes to rules on TDT.

They included the dissolution of tourism development councils and allowing for money to be used on property tax relief, a priority for governor DeSantis.

In the end, the changes to treaty were stripped out of the final tax package.

The Orlando Sentinel reports it came after intense lobbying from the tourism industry, but TDT is likely to come up again as lawmakers look for ways to pay for property tax relief in coming sessions.

Fyall hopes the original purpose of the tax won't be lost.

>>If you look at the overall economic benefit, the industry to Florida, it's billions of dollars.

The cost of Visit Florida is minimal.

The cost of Visit Orlando is minimal in comparison to the return on investments.

>>That report from Krystel Knowles.

Okay, let me start with you on this one, Jeff.

I mean, how did the failure to include those TDT changes or at least changes to how TDT money could be spent, go down in Orange County?

It's particularly important here.

>>Yeah, it is not sitting well with Orange County leaders.

In fact, Commissioner Myra Uribe, who's running for Orange County mayor., you know, is not happy about it.

She calls basically a lot of this corporate welfare because she says too much of this money is going to these companies, the tourism industry, when it should be going to helping, you know, pay for things like infrastructure, the roads that these tourists drive on when they're here and to improve those to accommodate for more and more people driving through the Central Florida area.

So they're not happy at all.

They really were looking for that percentage of this to go down for the tourism industry and get more money locally.

>>I mean, I guess some leaders, though, were concerned about those debt obligations, though, right?

Chris, I mean, there's there are concerns that redirecting away from tourism related things might jeopardize those projects that the government is already obligated to pay for improvements to convention center, things like that.

>>Some of that is true.

But I mean, we're talking about such a large pot of money.

We're not talking about stripping all of it away.

We're talking about making kind of really changes along the margins for most of this was, you know, the proposal that was out there and the argument being, you know, can you get by with a couple million less that we can then use for infrastructure that we can use to hire more police officers, more sheriff's deputies?

These are the services that tourists are going to use.

They would also benefit all of us as well.

But at the same time, we're we're we're spending capital to bring tourists here.

But when they come here, they are also using the facilities we have.

It should be a bit of a reciprocal relationship and that's probably why you're seeing this argument continue to flare up, especially here in Central Florida where we are so tourist driven.

>>We heard Carlos Guillermo Smith there on on the Senate side talk about, what he wants.

The House have been pretty aggressive right in its proposals for TDT back in April you guys had covered that.

What would have been looked at there.

>>Yeah, our Ashlyn Webb she did a really good job kind of breaking this down on what this would have looked at and what this would have done was given a little bit more freedom to Orange County.

Currently right now, Orange County is prohibited from spending any TDT funds on things like transit, something that they would really like to do until they spent at least 40% of its overall revenue to Visit Orlando.

So again, putting more of that money in that tourism versus other things that they could revamp.

>>On Senator Smith, he filed that bill to, to shake up TDT this session.

Chris, parts of that were included in the in the Senate's tax package.

News 6 spoke to him as well and I wonder whether, given the industry's high ROI estimates, right for, for for TD, why Senator Smith and others think that spending money elsewhere is a good idea.

>>Well, I would say, as is that when it comes to ROI, anytime you have an industry that's creating their own ROI or economic impact, you want to put a little asterisk next to those numbers, >>3 to 1.

They say, >>oh yes, they'll say three, well, they probably say 4 to 1 or 5 to 1. if they thought you if people would believe it.

So ROI is always one of those pie in the sky type things, along with, you know, the economic impact of this is going to be billions of dollars.

Yes.

Tourism has a huge impact on our economy.

It has a huge impact on Central Florida.

The question is, if we didn't pump all of this tax money into it, would it go away?

Or are people going to stop coming to Central Florida if we're not advertising at the rate of $100 million a year and instead just doing $80 million a year?

I think the answer for most people is no.

And it's easy to make the argument, which, you know, Senator Smith is trying to make, which is you don't need all of this cash.

You can get most of it, but let us use a chunk of it for other things, because at the end of the day, yes, tourism pays a lot of the bills around here, but tourists don't vote in his district.

Tourists don't vote in Central Florida.

They come here, they leave, they pay and stuff.

But you know, he's serving the constituents as is.

You would think the other 159 members of the Florida legislature and their constituents want things fixed.

>>Well, Senator Smith says he's going to bring it up in the next session.

So I don't think this one's going away for sure.

I remind you, you can find much more news, like content on our website, wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, we're going to be talking about immigration in the coming weeks, but we wanted to touch on it tonight in the context of the recent anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and the broader No King's protests nationwide last weekend, at which immigration was again a key issue.

The recent protests in California and pushback from that state's leadership against the Trump administration's enforcement methods have caught the eye of Florida leaders, as you might expect.

Here's governor DeSantis.

>>California's a sanctuary state, and so they think that they can just kind of do this and ignore the law.

That doesn't work and so what the Trump administration's doing to enforce the law not only have a right to do it, they have a duty to do it.

You know, that's why you get elected.

That's why you take an oath, to do so.

I see the mayor.

I see the governor making excuses for the people that are causing, you know, all the havoc.

And that's not the way, we roll here.

So, we're committed.

I don't think there's a single law enforcement agency that's not committed.

We also have certain duties that we've imposed through Florida state law.

Because I called a special session, and we work through that, all state and local law enforcement agencies are required, to participate with ICE for immigration enforcement.

>>Governor DeSantis there, the Pentagon this week said 700 military personnel are being sent to Florida, Texas and Louisiana to aid ICE operations.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Orlando Congressman Maxwell Frost this week outlined a bill he says is aimed at strengthening public accountability of ICE detention facilities and protecting due process rights.

>>Plain clothes federal agents are snatching people off of the street wearing masks.

These people are terrorizing our communities across the entire country and terrorizing our people here in Central Florida.

And when they find them, we hear the stories that are completely heartbreaking.

People are being held in detention centers described as hell on earth, where food, water, bathrooms, beds and medicines are sometimes withheld, where basic dignity is being stripped away.

>>Congressman Maxwell Frost there, I mean, President Trump had said he wanted to scale back immigration enforcement.

Chris, in industries that are pretty important to Florida hospitality, agriculture, it seems of as of this recording, though, that that that might not happen, so we'll have to wait and see on that.

Does there seem to be a clash, do you think, between industry leaders, and immigration hardliners in the white House when it comes to the priorities of the administration?

>>I think so, and I mean, that's the practicality of it and it is the fact that it's been a very unspoken rule for a long time that the United States needs immigrants.

And in a lot of industries, the United States needs illegal immigrants to do certain jobs that either Americans don't want to do or just refuse to do.

And this has been kind of an unspoken thing for a long time.

But now you're seeing in many of these industries that you mentioned hospitality, farm working, you know, restaurants, those kinds of things, where they do have a disproportionate number of immigrants who may or may not have legal status and it's causing problems.

You know, we've done reports where you go out to some job sites, especially after a big raid happens in the next day a lot of the workers don't show up because they're scared about what's going to happen.

So there is there is a tension there inherent between both the side that's saying, you know, listen, we need workers and the, the side saying, no, no, no, we need to have a secure border.

We need to have people in this country.

And if they're here, we need to know, are they a U.S. citizen?

And if they're not a U.S. citizen, what is their documentation status?

>>And at the same time, I put this one to you, Jeff, that the president has said he wants to ramp up enforcement in Democratic led, cities.

Is there a political calculation here, do you think, beyond the desire to increase deportation numbers?

>>Yeah.

President Trump has long criticized, large Democratic cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago.

Is he feels like, Democratic leaders there have, let the immigration, situation get out of hand and have been too lenient, on illegal immigrants.

So, that is something he has long criticized and at this point, you know, obviously, he feels like that there's no political repercussions.

He believes a lot of, you know, there is a political calculation there.

They don't believe that, you know, voters will turn against them.

They feel like those voters they didn't have in their corner anyway.

So, he sees at this point, you know, this is this is a war that he's he's willing to wage.

>>Let's talk a little bit about, the protests, before we wrap up, as we heard from the governor just now, Florida leaders have responded to the recent immigration protests elsewhere.

I want to play in a clip of Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey speaking after the immigration protest in L.A., but before the No Kings protests last weekend.

>>If you throw a brick, a firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at.

Because we will kill you, graveyard dead.

We're not going to play.

>>Wayne Ivey there in Brevard County.

Scott, Florida has an anti-riot law that was passed in 2021, right?

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.

Remind us what that legislation does exactly.

>>Yeah.

So this basically talks about is for folks who violently riot if they're caught looting or destroying property.

This law looks at giving them harsher punishments.

You know, the define the line between a peaceful protest and something that turns violent.

>>Yeah, all your teams had, crew at those No Kings protests.

So let's go around the horn just to finish off, how did things go over the weekend?

Scott?

>>Yeah, we had crews spread out all across Central Florida from Orlando to, other smaller communities that had some No Kings protests.

And there was a big turnout, at all of those protests that were peaceful.

>>Yeah.

What do you think, Jeff?

>>I think there was some people surprised, maybe the amount of people, even in smaller areas, like up in, Lake Mary Heathrow area, the people who did show up for that, especially in the hot Florida sun, noon, you know, people were saying, you know, you got to be pretty maybe angry and motivated out there to be out in those, those, conditions, I think outside of a, some arrests up in Ocala, everything seemed to be pretty peaceful, though.

>>Yeah.

What do you think, Chris?

I mean, up until this point, there hadn't been a large amount of protests, during this current Trump administration.

Is something happening here?

>>I think we've kind of reached a bit of a tipping point.

It's a question of how the public is going to react.

And this is one of those questions you see bandied around a bit about will the Trump administration follow court orders?

How closely will they hew to when the Supreme Court or a lower court gives them an order?

And I think there's a question of going too far.

You know, if you look at the polling on Trump's approval rating, one of the few areas he's still above water is on immigration.

I think, you know, for the most part, writ large, Americans want immigration laws to be enforced.

The question I think that is now presented before the public, and we saw this manifest with some of these rallies is, yes, immigration enforcement, but no to sending in the United States Marine Corps, no to sending in armored, you know, vehicles to surround, you know, federal buildings.

That is the kind of thing that I think still leaves a bit of a bad taste in people's mouths when they see that, They're fine, I think for the most part with actual immigration enforcement.

But when it starts to look militarized, when it starts to look like we are dispatching the first Cavalry Division to go out there, I think people recoil from that.

And that may be part of what we saw on the weekend.

>>Well, as the Pentagon does indeed send military personnel into the states to try to aid these ICE raids, we'll see how that progresses.

But that's all the time we've got for this week.

My thanks to Chris Heath from WKMG News 6.

Good to see you today, Chris.

>>Good to be back.

>>Jeff Allen from Spectrum News 13.

Good to see you, Jeff.

>>Good to be here.

>>And Scott Martin from WFTV channel 9.

Thanks so much for coming in as well.

Good conversation today guys.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight.

Take care and have a great week.