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.