Affordability issues were top of mind for Florida leaders on the first day of the legislative session.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis used part of his Tuesday State of the State address to tout recent insurance reforms, Florida’s legislative leaders took a tough tone against insurance companies in their session-opening speeches.
“We’ll hold insurance companies accountable for the rates they charge and the services they provide when disaster strikes,” Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, said Tuesday. “They aren’t going to manipulate the system. And neither is any other industry.”
House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, said he has asked a subcommittee to investigate insurance companies, including through subpoenas and putting witnesses under oath.
“A couple of years ago, the insurance industry came to the Legislature and said without sweeping reforms companies could not compete in Florida,” he said, referring to a 2022 special session that resulted in legislation that Democrats bashed as company "bailouts.”
“We have since learned of reports – in existence at that time but not disclosed to the Legislature – that may suggest some insurance companies were using accounting tricks to hide substantial profits while telling us they were in a crisis,” Perez continued.
The Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald have reported that insurance companies transferred billions of dollars to affiliate companies despite claiming losses.
Asked about Perez’s remarks during a press conference, DeSantis said, “If there’s things that need to be done to be able to make sure that we have transparency and appropriate oversight, I’m all for it.”
But he added he was against changing the laws passed in 2022 and “opening up the litigation floodgates.”
“We had three significant storms, and five years ago people would've said if that happened the whole market would just collapse,” DeSantis said.
While explaining why he thought the insurance investigation was necessary, Perez, in his own press conference later in the day, said DeSantis was right about the previous bills’ effects on the market: “Both things can be true,” he said.
Democrats shared the concerns Tuesday. House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa even sent Perez and DeSantis a letter last week calling for an investigation.
“I would like to see some real reform,” she said at a press conference. “If they want to take Floridians’ hard-earned dollars … we certainly need to make sure the money is being used in the appropriate way and that homeowners aren’t getting the short end of the stick.”
Insurance not the only affordability issue
In his Tuesday remarks, the governor encouraged lawmakers to put something on the 2026 election ballot targeting property taxes, something he’s been criticizing in recent days.
“Property values have surged in recent years; this has come at a cost to taxpayers squeezed by increasing local government property taxes,” DeSantis said.
Driskell, though, said DeSantis “conveniently fails to explain how our communities would be harmed as a consequence” of losing revenue for services like public schools and police.
That wasn’t the only affordability issue DeSantis brought up. He repeated past calls for changes to be made to recent reforms that have increased costs for condo owners.
Those reforms were made after the 2021 deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside.
Albritton said the challenge was providing relief to condo owners without jeopardizing their safety.
“That’s the eye of the needle, right there,” he said.
Not all of DeSantis’ pitches are supported
The Senate president wasn’t as supportive of pitches DeSantis made Tuesday of allowing open carry of firearms and pulling back Florida’s “red flag” law, which allows courts to temporarily take away guns from people deemed a threat.
“So if this is a tool – and I believe that it is – if we can stop the next Nikolas Cruz, I say we just hold tight and let the thing work,” Albritton said.
Cruz murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. He was 19 years old at the time.
The “red flag” law was created following the shooting. So was another law banning the purchase of long guns by those younger than 21.
DeSantis also called for that restriction to be nixed as well, and Perez says he’s supportive of a measure lowering that age back to 18.
But Albritton is still unsure how he feels about that: “I'm working through that in my mind,” he said Tuesday.
Democrats said those changes are dangerous.
“It seems to me that we are breaking our promise to the parents and students of Parkland,” Driskell said.
DeSantis also called for changes to the citizens’ petition process to prevent fraud.
That process allows citizens to put constitutional amendments on the ballot. Last year, two high-profile amendments would have allowed recreational marijuana and protected abortion rights, but neither got enough votes to pass.
Democrats – as well as voting advocacy groups – have spoken strongly against changes to the petition process, claiming they are ways to prevent reforms disliked by the conservatives in charge.
But like the rest of the legislation, the final product is far from sure.
“We want to make sure that people have the ability to get their thoughts on the ballot but that it's done without fraud, that it's done in the right manner,” Perez said. “Where that bill ends, we'll see. I don't believe that we're all on the same page as of now.”
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
