Gov. Ron DeSantis has made his peace with the modified version of his original plan to eliminate homestead property taxes for the first $250,000 in home value, and says he is going to help get Amendment 3 passed on November’s ballot.
“I think I’m going to be involved,” he said at Cecil Field in Jacksonville.
“I’ll be involved somehow. I don’t know if it’s going to be, like, barnstorming and holding campaign events. I have other ways where I can kind of get this out and do it, and I think we’re going to do it because I think it’s important. But it’s probably going to look a little bit different than some of the things that I’ve done in the past.”
DeSantis told reporters in June that “what the Legislature did wasn’t my proposal.” But he seems to have come around since, even though even now he says he’s not “going to lead a PC and do all this and conduct the fundraising across the state.”
In 2024, DeSantis barnstormed the state to defeat constitutional amendments that would have legalized adult-use marijuana for recreational purposes and rolled back abortion restrictions passed under his watch.
State agencies spent money advertising against driving high, and $10 million of a $67 million Medicaid settlement ended up being routed to the Hope Florida Foundation. It was then distributed to two political committees that ended up funneling $8.5 million to then Chief of Staff James Uthmeier’s “Keep Florida Clean” political committee for media buys to defeat the weed question on that General Election ballot.
Months after the amendment failed, Uthmeier was appointed Attorney General amid a series of promotions for people central to the money-shifting effort.
Speaking of that Medicaid settlement money going to political consultants, DeSantis also addressed Sen. Don Gaetz saying the Legislature should take action to ensure such a thing can’t happen again.
DeSantis defended the settlement, which saw Centene allocate $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, as “legally sound.” He argued that it “did advance the best interest for the state.”
Gaetz took a different tack in his comments last week.
“We already had in the law provisions that I supported provided that no funds could be used to try and influence a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ vote on any matter that may come before the public on a constitutional amendment,” Gaetz said.
“So we already had the law, we just didn’t have people who followed the law.”
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