DeSantis signs $116.5 billion state budget, vetoes $511 million while ripping Washington

TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a $116.5 billion state budget Thursday after vetoing $510.9 million in programs and projects from the blueprint approved last month by state lawmakers, with the Republican presidential contender casting Florida's financial strength as reflecting his leadership.

The spending plan takes effect July 1.

DeSantis signed the budget at Fort Pierce's Pelican Yacht Club against a waterfront backdrop, drawing sharp contrasts with other states and the federal government under President Joe Biden.

DeSantis, who is far behind GOP frontrunner and former President Donald Trump in most polls, has spent much of the past month out of Florida campaigning in early primary states.

“If you look at our performance, particularly since COVID, we’ve outperformed the country dramatically on just about all these metrics,” DeSantis said, just before signing the budget.

What got vetoed

Several Florida lawmakers attended the event, along with a roomful of the governor’s supporters. But DeSantis, who in years past has touted his "robust" vetoes as a way to target "overspending," made no mention of any items or projects he may have eliminated with his veto pen.

Last year, he vetoed a personal record, $3.13 billion from a budget that came to rest at $109.9 billion. This year, the $510.9 million excised from the budget wasn't revealed until hours later by the governor's office.

The single biggest vetoes came in environmental programs, on which DeSantis, otherwise, spent heavily and drew generally high marks from conservationists.

But the governor vetoed $100 million from the state's rural and family lands program, in which the state compensates farmers for limiting the use of their land to preserve its conservation value.

Similarly, $30.8 million was vetoed after being tucked into the budget to acquire Pasco County's Kirkland Ranch for land and water conservation. The move was likely viewed by the governor as side-stepping the land-acquisition role reserved for him and the Cabinet.

Two separate vetoes by DeSantis also may have been a veiled swipe at the Biden administration. Federal money amounting to $24.1 million for local governments to promote energy programs and another $5 million to offset inflation costs for local energy efforts were killed by DeSantis.

Dozens of smaller spending items wound up erased by the governor, who shared no details about why some issues survived and others didn't. Lawmakers had a bounty of revenue at their disposal this year, and spent freely on hometown projects – with many not making the final budget cut.

State money for more than 40 local water and sewer projects – out of some 268 included in the budget – were killed by DeSantis. Several buildings and construction projects at colleges and universities which may have skirted the state's approval process were excised, including $34 million at St. Johns River State College for its science technology campus and $20 million at the University of South Florida's Sarasota-Manatee campus.

Money for public radio stations, fairgrounds, and more than two dozen city fire and police stations also were pared back by DeSantis.

"This budget was written and passed unanimously by the Florida Legislature, and while no budget is ever perfect, this one did a lot of good for the people of Florida," said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa. "Unfortunately, DeSantis cut half a billion dollars from projects to keep Floridians healthy, protect us from storms, and improve our schools and roads."

"Ron DeSantis and his veto pen made Florida worse off today," she said.

A House Democratic Caucus analysis showed that about 40% of the 188 projects sought by House Democrats in the budget were vetoed by DeSantis. That compared to 16% of the 1,301 projects members of the House's Republican majority had eliminated by the governor.

The delayed rollout of the veto list also drew criticism from Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, who labeled it "shady."

“We’ve known for years that Ron is an enemy of transparency,” Fried said. “Refusing to release a list of line-item vetoes – like every other governor before him – is an unprecedented attempt to bully members of the Legislature into supporting his presidential campaign.”

DeSantis actually has been endorsed by 99 of the state’s 113 Republican legislators.

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Presidential politics on center stage

While touting state dollars for schools, the environment and pay raises for teachers and law enforcement, DeSantis also sought to make a play for the national stage, ridiculing pandemic lockdowns, heightened federal spending, inflation and rising debt.

“Washington has borrowed, spent and printed trillions and trillions of dollars since March of 2020,” DeSantis said in a nod to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. “You can’t just do that and think there’s not going to be any ramifications for that kind of mismanagement... We know there’s no free lunch.”

Despite DeSantis’ complaints, Florida’s budget benefited from billions of dollars in federal aid during the pandemic years, helping fuel some of the governor’s top priorities, including pay raises, tax breaks, including a voter-friendly, pre-election gas-tax holiday last year, and dozens of new construction projects across the state.

Even with the vetoes, the $116.5 billion budget is a sharp spike from last year’s $109.9 billion spending plan, mirroring both Florida and the nation’s fired-up economy and the impact of inflation.

The state also will have $10.9 billion in reserves, almost half of it in unallocated general revenue that could be tapped for any emergencies in the budget year beginning next month.

The money flowing into the state treasury helped lawmakers dish out 5% pay raises to state employees, $1 billion for teacher pay hikes, and a $1.3 billion package of tax cuts which DeSantis cited Thursday in his messaging about Florida’s go-go economy.

Fielding questions after he signed the budget, DeSantis pivoted into campaign mode – promoting the state’s investigation of COVID vaccinations, deflecting criticism he’s drawn from California Gov. Gavin Newsom for sending two flights carrying migrants from Texas to Sacramento, and condemning the FBI’s investigations into Trump’s connections to Russia

“We’ve already put out a lot of plans about what we’ll do starting Day 1,” DeSantis said at the yacht club. “With me, you don’t have to worry about it. You have a new FBI director on Day 1, you have a housecleaning on Day 1 in these agencies.”

Although he didn’t address Trump’s latest indictment for failing to return classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago club, DeSantis borrowed some of the language used by the former president’s allies, ridiculing the “weaponization of government.”

“I can tell you, when there’s a new sheriff in town on January 20, 2025, accountability is going to be the order of the day, so buckle your seat belts,” he said, striding off the stage.

What's in the Florida budget?

DeSantis, though, did spend some time detailing budget highlights: among them, major increases in money for schools.

The 9% hike in K-12 dollars is partially prodded by a new, open-to-all, statewide private school voucher program DeSantis recently signed into law, representing what is considered the nation’s largest expansion of taxpayer money to private schools.

All told, average per-pupil spending will climb to $8,648, up $405 from last year, a 5% boost.

Also, environmental programs get a big bump, with increases in state spending on projects to improve water quality and to help cities and counties contend with flooding caused by sea level rise.

In a legislative session where DeSantis’ presidential ambitions helped drive an agenda filled with divisive issues targeting Florida’s LGBTQ community, Walt Disney Company and public employee unions, along with imposing new limits on abortion, the state spending plan also steers an unprecedented almost $16 million toward expected lawsuit costs.

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The state’s robust cash flow also led lawmakers to include 1,540 so-called member projects worth $3.2 billion.

Florida TaxWatch, the business-backed government oversight group, determined that each legislator was able to bring home roughly almost 10 member projects worth an average of $20 million for their district.

Many of these were vulnerable to DeSantis' veto pen. TaxWatch recommended that DeSantis veto almost $600 million in dubious programs and projects, with the governor coming close to that mark.

In putting the final touches on the state budget, DeSantis continued pitching Florida as a place that should be the envy of the nation. This weekend, he'll be campaigning in Nevada, another presidential battleground state.

“The state’s going in a great direction,” DeSantis said. “You’re not going to see us have the type of problems that these other states have with fiscal insolvency, driving people away.

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: DeSantis signs Florida budget, vetoes projects with eye on presidency