As Florida legislators prepare for tonight’s final budget vote, State Rep. Alex Andrade offered insights into what he calls a “fiscally conservative” $115 billion spending plan that prioritizes tax relief and government accountability.
- The standout feature of this year’s budget is the elimination of Florida’s business rent tax—a tax that generated nearly $1 billion annually. “We were the only state in the country that still charged sales tax on people’s commercial leases,” Andrade explained on my podcast.
- Beyond the business rent tax elimination, the budget establishes permanent tax holidays for back-to-school shopping and hurricane preparedness items like blue tarps and emergency supplies. These measures reflect Florida’s unique seasonal needs while providing ongoing relief to families and businesses.
- The budget also establishes a robust stabilization fund, setting aside nearly 25% of the annual budget into savings. This conservative approach aims to ensure Florida never needs to raise taxes to cover future budget shortfalls, regardless of economic challenges ahead.
The overall spending plan comes in about half a billion dollars below Governor DeSantis’s proposed budget, signaling legislative restraint in an era of expanded state revenues.
Healthcare Budget Reforms
As the committee chair overseeing Florida’s healthcare budget—which accounts for roughly $45 billion or nearly half the state budget—Andrade highlighted several key reforms. Most notably, the Department of Health will lose its decade-long emergency authority over medical marijuana regulations, requiring the agency to follow standard rule-making procedures with public comment and transparency.
- The budget also mandates data-sharing agreements between state agencies and the legislature, allowing lawmakers to hire independent actuaries to review Medicaid managed care programs. This change addresses past issues where mid-year budget surprises required hundreds of millions in additional funding.
Cutting Government Waste
The budget eliminates approximately 1,700 vacant positions across state agencies, with 1,200 cuts in healthcare alone. Andrade describes this as addressing “lazy budgeting” where agencies maintain unfilled positions as hidden revenue sources rather than accurately reporting their staffing needs.
- “We’re not firing anybody, but reducing these positions is a good way to try and reduce the size and scope of government, which I think every conservative campaign’s on.”
Drawing from his experience with the Florida Highway Patrol, Andrade explains how agencies sometimes request new positions while maintaining hundreds of vacant slots, using the empty positions to fund unauthorized pay increases for existing employees.
- “It’s not criminal, but the best term is fraud. I mean, we’re saying we need more employees even though we have a bunch of empty positions, when in reality what they need is general revenue that’s unrestricted for maybe things that they didn’t anticipate or haven’t gone through.”
Hope Florida Program Scrutiny
The budget maintains existing Hope Florida navigators but provides no new funding for expansion. Andrade criticizes the program as essentially “unlicensed social workers doing social work” without proper vetting, training standards, or meaningful metrics.
“It’s essentially someone in the governor’s office, maybe Casey DeSantis herself, had this bright idea. Let’s hire unlicensed social workers to do social work with the whole goal of getting people off of welfare. But at the end of the day, you’re just hiring unlicensed social workers to do social work.”
The lack of accountability concerns the Pensacola lawmaker. “How do I know that a Hope navigator knows what this person qualifies for? I don’t. How do I know that this Hope Navigator is trained or qualified or can be trusted with this member of the public’s private personal information?”
Andrade believes Hope Florida is duplicating existing services: “Best I can tell is a lot of Hope Navigators refer people to career source programs like Career Source, EscaRosa, those people at Career Source who are qualified to help actually get people their federal benefits, get them educational grants, get them into housing and find them jobs. Those people are doing the same thing they’ve always done. And yet somehow we’re trying to give that credit to the Hope Florida as if it was some newer novel idea.”
He added,”We can’t just change the name of social work and act like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread or act like somehow it’s a core conservative principle, like social work is vital… but I mean, we can’t just change the title of it, change the intent of it, and act like nothing’s wrong.”
Looking Ahead
With tonight’s procedural vote expected to proceed smoothly, Florida’s budget reflects a conservative approach emphasizing tax relief, government efficiency, and fiscal responsibility. The elimination of the business rent tax alone represents a significant competitive advantage for Florida businesses, while the substantial savings fund positions the state well for future economic uncertainties.
In terms of the state budget, I think it is important to remind the people the state of Florida must run a balanced budget, like most Southern states, and unlike the federal government and as for the federal level, the people of Florida voted in favor of balanced budgets, the last time the question was put on the ballot, and this was this century, carried every county in the state, approximately 70% of the vote.
The city of Pensacola has a bright economic future, and people of course would love international celebrities like Irish patriot Gerry Adams to visit the Irish pubs of our city.
Now I am a great great great grandson of Z.L. Bettis, who was Probate Judge of Clarke County from 1856-1866, he left office in early 1866, his brother Jesse was Sheriff from 1871-1873. My great great great great grandfather Josiah Allen Mathews has his cabin restored, he was an early Alabama pioneer.
I state this because you think of generally, feeling free and that to represent freedom you dress up like a Native American in full garb with full Native dress to honor those who of course had the lands of this New World before European settlement and as a descendant of Charles Rochon and Jean Baptiste Baudreau Dit Graveline II I have native blood, this is also the case as a descendant of Charles Samuel Lyons and Elizabeth Rehama, where Creek Indian blood is running through my veins.
I would say we have to organize neighborhoods for the best possible future, and we must organize and generally annex into the city of Pensacola, currently all unincorporated territory, when going west from I-110, Brent Lane becomes the northern boundary limit of the city of Pensacola and thusly this boundary then continues down the road to where as it becomes Saufley Field Road, this remains city line, it then ends at Blue Angel Parkway, this maximum boundary line of the city then travels southward, and then at Lillian Highway you have the boundary on Lillian Highway, moving east, until reaching Fairfield Drive where to the water all east thereof is city of Pensacola territory.
This should bring city proper population to over 100,000.
Any annexation should seek to keep the same residents per district amounts for city council districts that are currently present in the city of Pensacola, but these annexations are needed for the best economic development for our area.
At this time there are approximately 7,700 residents a city council district, and this should generally remain the ratio upon any annexation, which means new seats, but I would point out there were less residents per seats prior to the implementation of the directly elected Mayor and so to the extent that we have more now, the city proper population remained roughly the same for decades, new annexations should keep that ratio, and annexations are needed.
And I think everyone understands what I have said as a descendant of Anderson Clements and Marguerite DeMouy.
At this time I support a redevelopment of University Mall, the general complex, which has an extremely high vacancy rate (to be clear I want all of it in city limits, any area not in that which I have made clear we must annex, we must annex) but which covers a lot of territory, think of that abandoned motel generally in the mall complex area, when one thinks of Dadeland in Miami-Dade County and what it was designed as and how it has been upgraded over the years, consider at one time Mobile had the largest amount of mall space in the world between two adjacent parcels of Bel Air Mall and Springdale Mall, a centralization of shopping, and the Marriott Hotel which at the time was the tallest in Mobile was built there in the Bel Air complex and generally this is similar to the hotel at Dadeland, the world’s largest malls are currently being built outside of the United States, generally when you think of a mall as a bazaar meant to be climate controlled, will always have the best performance where people want to browse in climate control, hence the success of malls in extremely cold climates, extremely tropical climates, and so forth.
We have a climate conducive to mall success, and generally I think the answer is upgrades to University Mall, including, at least 2 new high rise hotels, apartment buildings, and at least two office towers, one considers there was essentially a shopping and high rise area distinct from downtown Tampa built from the ground up in Tampa.
The Live Local Act is the way around height restrictions, and is the only way to build affordable housing in Pensacola, we need to be building taller, so many things being built, in so much of Pensacola city, generally, you cannot build but certain things, other parcels, you can build almost anything, it is important to know what can be built where, density is possible in Pensacola, and appropriate, for some areas ideal, other areas cannot be done.
It is possible to bring a Fortune 500 headquarters to Pensacola