Taking a detour from his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted “failed” federal policies on Tuesday while hailing Florida as a “refuge for freedom and sanity” during his State of the State speech to the Legislature.
In the coming year, DeSantis has proposed $1.1 billion in tax cuts for families, tax relief for small businesses and more efforts to cut the cost of homeowners insurance. The rising costs of homeowners insurance premiums has been deemed a crisis by some observers, since Florida’s state-owned insurer, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., has been taking on a higher share of policies over the past year.
“Florida’s state-backed insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corp, now holds 1.26 million policies and has the largest market share – 15% – of any Florida insurer,” U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) said in a recent Tweet.
But DeSantis celebrated last year’s legislative accomplishments in his address to the Legislature, noting that the government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in relief to homeowners and instituted reforms that have led to new insurance companies coming into the Florida market.
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner said on Tuesday that lawmakers in 2023 achieved many of their long-standing goals, including reforming legal issues affecting the property insurance market and ending “Wild West litigation.” As a result of those legal reforms, the American Tort Reform Association took Florida off its “Watch List” of states last year.
DeSantis contrasted Florida’s low unemployment, job creation and limited government with what he painted as a litany of crime, homelessness and spendthrift fiscal policies in other parts of the nation run by Democrats.
“It is not surprising that we have witnessed – and continue to witness – a great migration of Americans away from cities and states pursuing these failed policies, with Florida serving as a refuge for freedom and sanity,” DeSantis said.
The governor also touted Florida as No. 1 in both new business formation and in its gross domestic product, compared to the other 50 states.
Florida Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) Executive Director Tom Gaitens said he was thrilled that DeSantis signaled his strong support and commitment to protecting the gains made the last couple sessions in civil justice reform.
“Our activists and small businesses were excited that the governor indicated he supports the goals of requiring disclosure of third-party financing contracts to defendants,” Gaitens told the Florida Record in an email. “Additionally, he has signaled support for prohibitions against lawsuit lenders from directing cases on behalf of plaintiffs.”
But Florida CALA will closely monitor how this year’s legislative session progresses in the event the trial attorney lobby works to neuter past gains, he said.
“They inundated the system with frivolous lawsuits intended to thwart the positive impact of the civil justice reforms,” Gaitens said.
In her response to the State of the State address, state Sen. Lauren Book (D-Davie) pointed to state policies that she said have eroded democracy as well as problems such as housing unaffordability, a lack of health care coverage, unjust abortion bans and curtailed freedom of speech and expression.
In addition, the property insurance crisis is leading to skyrocketing costs and is hurting senior homeowners, according to Book.
And the chair of the state Democratic Party, Nikki Fried, chastised the governor for what she saw as a speech geared more for the presidential campaign trail than average Floridians.
“Ron’s insistence on delivering today’s State of the State address before he returns to Iowa tonight showed he had more to say to Iowa voters than actually addressing the issues that matter to Floridians,” Fried said in a prepared statement.