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Florida's Legislative Lay of The Land · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:13
  Speaker 1: To show you dedication. I present to the jury.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Sal Newsoh, Executive director, Consumers Defense. Good morning, friends, welcome.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It is the third hour of the Morning Show with
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Preston Scott. Day thirteen hundred of us held hostage. Just
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: a moment of silence, please for our nation, Thank you
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: very much, Day fifty two thirteen of the radio program.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Coming up later in this hour, The legend, the story
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: behind Jose.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Can you see? And we will explain Jose's last name,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: but first he's already a legend. Oh, you have no.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Idea, You have no idea. Anyway, We welcome to the program.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Sale News. Oh yeah, good morning. You are are just here.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: You are on your way to other duties, but yet
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you make time to stop by here.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, doing the show and then heading right to the airport.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: No rest for the weary. No, it's been I never
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: thought i'd be in a role where I was traveling
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: more than I was at JMI, but someone figured it out.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I know you're new to the position at Consumers Defense.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It's a nationwide advocacy group, and I'm just curious. Have
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: you gotten a sense of the flow in terms of
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: is this just a year round or are there going
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: to be busier seasons than others.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: I could say this with even for JMI as well
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: as consumers Defense still trying to find the non busy season.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I was told when I started at JMI, like their
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: cycles and it was just you know, all the way,
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: fifth year, the whole time. My dad, may he rest
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: in peace, told me when I got my first job
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: at the age of twenty two, first career job. He said,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: remember something. When you're older, they'll hire you for experience.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Right now, they're hiring you for stamina. And I am
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: now forty nine, going to be fifty, and I'm still
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: waiting to get hired for experience. I apparently, apparently stamina
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: is what I've got going for me.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: All Right, we've got three segments today. Let's start with
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: the Governor.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Governor, so I thought it'd be helpful for us to
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: unpack something that happened a couple of weeks back. We
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: were going to be on last Monday, but the storm
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Governor got a loss in court on the Stop Woke Act.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: And I think this highlights an important distinction that I'm
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: glad we have this backstop and it's a good lesson
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: on the checks and balances because the distinction between the
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: government mandating what might happen in a public employment setting
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: versus what an employer in a private setting is allowed
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: to do as a condition of their employment. So you've
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: got things like mandating vaccines, mandating train mandating certain types
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: of things that can be discussed versus others. And so
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: the governor in the Stopwoke Act had a restriction on
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: DEI training and all of these other things that happened.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: He had it in a public setting, but it also
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: applied to private employers. Now, if I can understand if
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: I am a private employer and I have a particular
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: desire to have any kind of training as long as
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: it's legal, you know, within the bounds of what's currently legal.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: And I want to teach individuals what my perspective is
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: on diversity or whatever it means, whatever it means. And
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: I'm not a publicly traded company. I'm not subject to
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: SEC regulations in those things. That's where the court came
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: down and said, no, as a private employer, you have
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: that right. So that's something where.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And then the employee has the right to not take
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the job exactly, yeah, exactly.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: And so I think this is telling and it may
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: serve as a bit of a balance as the next
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: legislature and those thereafter come forward and say, all right,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: whether it's with this governor or a future one, how
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: are we going to balance a need to you know,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: maintain certain things in the public setting versus you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: not overstepping the line and running the risk of litigation.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Remember the days when times were good and life was simple.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: He still lives there. The Morning Show with Preston Scott
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: on News Radio one hundred point seven WFLA.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Salanders are with me from Consumers Defense, talking legislative related things,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Florida governance and the like, and Florida Governor rhnd Is
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: sant Is. We've said it a few times since he
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: left the campaign trail. It's kind of feels like good
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: to have him back home.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And I mean there's this national narrative that
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: wants to put him in a box where he's just
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: you know, out to pasture lane, duck whatever.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: No, no one is.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: He's got two more or legislative sessions, plus probably an
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: outsize amount of influence on how the campaign to replace him,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: to succeed him goes. And you've got a number of
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: folks in the mix. The other part is he's young.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: I think he's only forty three. Maybe I'm older than
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: the governor. He's got a lot of time left. He
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: leaves office January of twenty twenty seven, which is when
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the inauguration is, which is only a year from the
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: caucuses and primaries of the next presidential cycle. So there's
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of discussion that I think is gonna happen.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: Uh well, you know, yep. But the where does he
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: go from here? Sure question is going to be a
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: whole series of things to unpack it. If Trump wins,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: does he get appointed to some cabinet agency? I think,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't see Ron DeSantis as like Secretary
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: of the Interior, some low level thing, but attorney general
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: it could be he is an attorney You've got a
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: number of different ways in which the governor could spend
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: the remainder of his time in public service, which could
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: be several decades depending on what transpires the legislature. Obviously,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: they're all busy trying to get reelected yep.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: And that's not lost on me. So there's really not
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: a lot they're doing right now. Well, they're campaigning right
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and in the next segment. I'll think we'll talk about
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: one potential special session that may pop up just based
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: on some things. But you've got all one hundred and
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: twenty House seats and half of the Senate seats, so
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: twenty of the forty are up for reelection. It's an
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: even number year, So you have a lot of members
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: reaching the end of their tenure due to the term limits,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: So eight members of the Senate termout, so at a
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: minimum you'll have a twenty percent turnover for that chamber.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: But you also have a number of House members that
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: are running for Senate seats, so they'll come in with
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: a degree of experience in the House. There are fifteen
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: members terming out now because of the redistricting maps, the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: vast majority of the House seats are either in safe
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: are d hands. They just that's the way it's transpired
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: over the last several cycles over the decades. Do we
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: see that changing at all with how the demographics are
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: changing and how Republicans now are dominant in the state
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: in nearly all of the counties. I think there's what
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: five counties six counties left that are Democrats.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: There are five counties that went for whoever ran against
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: run to Santaslie. I think it was Charlie cris So
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: you've got those five. I think you will continue to
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: have more. The safe D seats may become lean D seats,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: or the lean D seats may become competitive seats on
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: the House side in the state House, the eight to
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: twenty primary, the August twenty primary, is going to determine
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: the outcome of a lot of those races. So you'll
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: have folks coming in that'll know they're coming into the
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: house basically because of the nature of the seat pretty quickly.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Running basically on a posed from the other side.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for the most part, and in many cases they
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: will run unopposed in the general, So the primary absolutely
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: decides it.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Do you anticipate much change in the plus minus ds
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: rs in the legislative legislative makeup.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: I don't anticipate too many flips there, maybe a couple.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: My guess is the Republicans have likely hit the peak
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: when they got to eighty five in the prior cycle
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: and twenty seven in the Senate. There's a couple of
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: primaries that are going to be a bit telling. So
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Senator Travis Hudson, he's out in the Daytona DeLand area.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: He's turning out. This one's got an intriguing primary because
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: the House leader, Tom Leak, is fighting a guy named
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Derrick David Shore, who's uh, it's a competitive district now,
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: Tom Leaks back by the entire Republican legislature. Just about
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Shore was endorsed by Trump and so that's making this
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: very competitive.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Soumph.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: No, it was just I think David Shore went above
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: and beyond and just got Donald Trump to endorse him.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an intriguing one because it's now competitive and
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Tom Leak, who I thought would have been a shoe in,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: is having to spend a lot of money to get
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: to get across the finish line.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: WFLA on your phone with the iHeart Radio app and
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: on hundreds of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So yes, an iHeart Radio station.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Twenty one past the ap Our Morning Show with Preston Scotts.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Can you see over there in Studio one A, I
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: am occupying Studio one B enjoining me for one more segment.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: This He was just commenting this suddenly turned into a
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  Speaker 2: sprint as opposed to a mid range race.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I know, I got so used to five segments and
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: it's great, we could spread things out, and then all
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, now it's like it's like the forty
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: yard dash. Yeah, I wasn't as prepared as I thought.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Well, actually you might be over prepared the upcoming session.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: When did they you know, obviously, can they start before
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: November kind of doing anything substantial?
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Likely, what they're going to have is their orientation sessions
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: and workshops to get new members acclimated to the process
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: and go through all of that. I'm guessing that may
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: happen in December, but you're not going to see any
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: substantive committee weeks likely until after the holidays, because they
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: don't start until March.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: There may be one in between Thanksgiving in Christmas possible,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: but the lion's share of it is going to be
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: after the new year.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: In your experience, when they have the election year stuff
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: where they bump it up and they hold committee weeks
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: in September October, then there's a bit of a break
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: for the holidays before the session starts in January. Yeah,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: versus committee weeks rolling right into session. Does it change
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the outcome of how things get done or what gets done?
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: I don't really think it does. I think they've gotten
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: it to where they've been doing this for a number
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: of cycles now, and it just seems like there's not
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: too much of a gap in the direction and how
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: they kind of undertake committee weeks versus rolling into the session.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And bear in mind, a lot of that is.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Determined by, you know, what the governor's agenda is, whoever
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: the governor is, and how aggressive they're gonna kind of
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: push that and how early they want to get press
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: conferences out and those kinds of things.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: It occurs to me there are three key people here
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: that will determine a lot of what we're going to
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: get teed up in the session. It's the governor and
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the incoming Senate President and the incoming House speaker.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: You got it.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: So Rohnda Santis will be working with Danny Perez out
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: of the Miami area as the incoming House speaker. He's
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: been in the legislature more than anybody in his class
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: because he was what they call a red shirt freshman.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: He hadn't came in early because they had a replacement
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: election back when he started, so he's had an extra
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: year of learning and kind of the process.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Your impressions of him. Very conservative.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: In discussions with him, he wants to continue to tackle healthcare,
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: look at the housing issues, particularly in the property insurance arena.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I believe he is in the healthcare industry in his
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: full time job, although I may be confused there, but
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: very intelligent, good mind.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Young.
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  Speaker 3: He was the national chair for the ALEC Group, which
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: is the amy Can Legislative Exchange Conference. It is a
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: gathering of thousands of conservative lawmakers from around the country.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: He was the national chair of that last year. Very
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: involved across the country and helping to promote young conservative lawmakers.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: On the other side, in the Senate, you've got Ben Albritton,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: who's a little bit older, but I won't you know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: not that old. Yeah, he's I believe he's from the
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: central Florida area down in Tampa region, if I remember correctly,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: and I have in full disclosure, I've engaged less with
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: a senator all Britain, but a kind of an old
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: fashioned conservative red meat issues and likely going to see
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of the continuation of what the prior legislators
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: legislatures have done. I don't know if it'll be as
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: aggressive as what Paul Renner and Kathleen Pasadomo kind of accomplished,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: but they were doing a lot with a governor with
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: the winded his back, and so that me is going
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: to be the most intriguing piece of this is what
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: is the relationship between the governor and the two chambers
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: in the final two years of his term.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: What do you think of the issues that are going
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: to be the most important that they have to tackle.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: One of the big ones that kind of has popped
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: up is the issue of the impact of the new
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: condo regulations passed in twenty twenty two.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I believe in.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Last year they actually gave complexes condos until twenty twenty
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: five to implement the new changes.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: So under the new.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Law, any building over thirty years old has got to
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: be is required now to have a full blown architectural
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: and engineering structural assessment that had been kind of put
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: on the back burner by a prior law under the
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: christ era where they allowed the condo board to say
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: we're not going to do that. Well, that changed, so
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: those inspections, along with the bill for any repairs to
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: address problems, get passed to the condo owners in special
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: assessment and they can be in the tens or even
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars. So think
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: about this, what if you're a retired person, you're on
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: a fixed income, all of a sudden you're faced with
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: the prospect.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: You thought you were retiring and that place is paid for,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: but it's not.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Suddenly, And what is happening is people are unloading those condos.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: So a company named ISG did some digging. Ninety percent
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: of the properties listed in Miami data over thirty years
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: old that are being actively listed, So people are trying
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: to unload these. It creates a flood in the market.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: The prices are dropping. It's a challenge. And so one
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: of the things that I think may pop up. And
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: a former Senator, Jeff Brandis, is calling for lawmakers to
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: have a special session on the state trying to aid
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: this in some way. Okay, in the same way that
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: you have septic to sewer can kind of the state
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: helping mitigate those costs. They may need to somehow figure
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: out how to get people over the hump in this
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: first round when it pops.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Something to keep an eye on. Definitely will probably be visiting.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely this is something we will come back to at
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: least one or two times over the course of the
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: next several months.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: All right, see you next month, see you next month.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Good to be with you.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Sir Salnwsoh with US twenty seven, almost twenty
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: eight past the hour