This was a year for the history books in Florida.
"The Florida Roundup" and host Tom Hudson interviewed several reporters at public radio stations and a newspaper about some of the biggest stories throughout the state in 2024, beginning with the November election.
Florida put abortion on the ballot
More than half of Floridians voted to approve a proposal to allow abortions until fetal viability, which usually occurs around 24 weeks of pregnancy. The proposal would have also allowed abortions after that if a health care provider deemed it was necessary to protect the patient's health.
But that 57% vote fell short of the 60% mark required to make the change to the state constitution. That means the current six-week abortion ban remains in effect.
WUSF’s Stephanie Colombini, who covered abortion consistently throughout the year, said an aggressive campaign to encourage voters not to vote for this amendment, spearheaded by Gov. Ron DeSantis, likely contributed to the shortfall of voters needed to pass the ballot initiative.
“The state health agency had launched a website earlier, ahead of the election, encouraging people to vote against the amendment, saying that it threatened women's safety, that the current six-week abortion ban protected women's health.," Colombini said. "(DeSantis) had press conferences with doctors who opposed the amendment. There was one lawsuit after the next tackling different issues and accusing the amendment supporters of petition fraud.”
The state House in Tallahassee now has super majority Republican control, and two new legislative leaders are in place for the next two lawmaking sessions.
Colombini said not much is expected to change on the abortion front in the next couple of years, except some possible clarifications to exceptions.
"Those include to protect the life of the mother, if there's fetal abnormalities, rape and incest survivors," Colombini said. "Maybe we could see the state provide some additional clarity on that front. There were some conservative lawmakers wanting to even further restrict abortion access. We'll see if those measures get brought forward.”
South Florida goes red
The failure of the abortion amendment was just one of the results of Florida voters swinging more conservative.
Wilkine Brutus with WLRN said the “significant right-wing shift” in Miami-Dade County “can't be understated.” President-elect Donald Trump lost Miami-Dade by 7 points in 2020, but won it in 2024 by about 11 points.
Palm Beach County remained slightly blue, with Vice President Kamala Harris beating Trump by less than 1%, a strong indication of a rightward shift.
Brutus said Hispanic voters largely contributed to the shift.
“Trump's approach seemed to resonate with more Latino voters," Brutus said. "He gained an increased number of Black support. The margin of support for Kamala Harris decreased, even though there was still more support for Kamala Harris among the multiethnic Black community, but Trump gained more support in that regard.”
Brutus said there are also more Republicans who are registering to vote in Palm Beach County, and some Republicans are outspending Democrats.
DeSantis' presidential campaign and ‘Making America Florida’
At the beginning of the year, Gov. Ron DeSantis had hoped to be on the ballot in November, running for president, but his campaign stalled out in Iowa in January.
Tristan Wood with WFSU said while DeSantis is still very influential as the governor with the ability to do line-item vetoes and similar decision-making with the state budget, some lawmakers behind the scenes have sour grapes about his bid for president.
Trump has tapped a number of Floridians for his administration. So what does Florida's brand of Republicanism mean for the federal government beginning next year?
“In talking to a lot of state Republican leaders, they're thumping their chest, saying 'we're going to make America Florida, Florida is the center of the conservative universe in America,” Wood said.
“Several of those key people are going to make issues that are pivotal to Florida, issues related to emergency responses for hurricanes, with Sen. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, his relationship with several South American countries, as well as his staunch opposition to China and other forms of communist governments, is definitely going to reign through.”
Ahead of the spring legislative session in Florida, Wood expects proposals to be "more fiscally constrained and fiscally responsible" under incoming House Speaker Daniel Perez.
“A lot of the focus this legislative session is going to be at least from the House side, at reeling that spending in and seeing what ways that there can be cuts. As far as culture war issues. Randy Fine in the Florida Senate, he's running for Congress, but he's already filed three bills and one of them is lowering the gun-purchasing age from 21 to 18.”
Hurricane season was a doozy
Florida experienced three major hurricanes ─ Debby, Helene and Milton ─ with all three hitting areas of the Gulf Coast. Helene and Milton were major storms with high storm surge, and all three brought significant flooding.
“The highest storm surge we saw from Helene was around the Cedar Key area. It got to around 9.3 feet. It was a little over 8 feet in Sarasota with Hurricane Milton, where it was highest there,” said John Davis with WGCU.
With Debby, the major issue was rainfall, with areas pretty far inland in places like Sarasota County where people were not in a flood plain, still getting flooded.
“The people who lived there thought they were covered. The storm didn't make landfall until it was well north of that area. But they had so much rain, their homes were inundated, streets were flooded. A lot of emergency rescues just to get people out of those neighborhoods had to commence almost immediately.”
Davis says thanks to lessons learned by Hurricane Ian in 2022, more people evacuated, and those who stayed did a better job of prepping. Hurricane debris efforts have also been more efficient.
But with climate change contributing to more frequent, dangerous storms, people are seeing a huge increase in insurance premiums.
Places like Fort Myers Beach, which recently lost its Class 5 rating with the Community Rating System that entitled it to 25% discounts for property owners who have flood insurance policies through the National Flood Insurance Program, are being hit especially hard.
“So now, as folks are working to rebuild, dealing with all the flood damage, on top of that, their flood insurance premiums are just about to jump 25%.”
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is the first to feature multiple Category 5 hurricanes since 2019 and one of the costliest in history. It was also the deadliest in nearly two decades.
School boards and book removals
In Jacksonville, Duval County voters elected three members to the school board endorsed by the conservative Moms for Liberty group, giving it a majority.
Right out the gate, they already have started to discuss things that it seems will turn the school board a little bit more conservative, said Megan Mallicoat with Jacksonville Today.
“For instance, we've got policies coming up for a vote in January on sex ed. The new members are kind of pushing to make it more of an opt-in policy, rather than an opt-out policy that there currently is.”
Duval, like a lot of large school districts, have seen a drop in student enrollment. Mallicoat said charter schools and school vouchers have contributed to that by pulling from students who might otherwise have been enrolled in public schools.
“Where you'll see the members kind of diverge is in how they should fix that problem. And so some of the more conservative members are unabashedly a fan of charter schools, and they would like to see charter schools receive more funding. However, others would like to see the traditional public school enrollment go back up.”
Clay County removed the most books of any school district in Florida in the last school year, 287. Florida also lead the nation in the number of book removals.
“Most of those were driven by one man who has complained about these books,” Mallicoat said.
State lawmakers and rule-makers have made some changes around the complaint process for a book after so many objections from one source or sources that don't have children attending a school in that district.
UF and university Palestine protests
The big story out of higher education this year with students at the University of Florida and other campuses across the state: protests near the end of the last school calendar against Israel's military action in Gaza.
Many protesting students were arrested, and those who were enrolled faced expulsion. Áine Pennello with WUFT said many of those students can't afford to go to private school and don't have the means to study or live outside the state, and they are not eager to apply to another public university in Florida on a campuswide level.
“At the beginning of this school year, UF interim president Kent Fuchs posted on social media telling the students that they do have a right to express themselves, but they also need to follow state and university laws. And there really have not been a lot of protests since then, things have really died down.”
Ben Sasse was the president of the university during the crackdown on these protests. He was hired in 2023 and resigned 17 months later, citing his wife's health.
Pennello said Sasse will be remembered for two things: One, when he was hired, UF was ranked the fifth best public university in the country by U.S. News and World Report, and Sasse was hired to bring that ranking up even further. Instead, UF dropped to No. 6 and then to No. 7.
“Now, there are a lot of things that go into those rankings, but Sasse was known for not putting a lot of stock into them, and that seems to have built up a lot of tension with the UF Board of Trustees.”
The second thing she thinks Sasse would be remembered for is his presidential office spending. In his first year in office, he spent a little over $17 million, that is more than three times what his predecessor spent in his final year.”
“A lot of the money that Sasse spent on consulting contracts and hiring his former GOP allies and giving them high-paying remote jobs. There's also been a lot of reporting on what's being called his lavish catering expenses. He reportedly spent $1.3 million on private catering, including a sushi bar that cost $38,000.”
In mid-December, during a Board of Trustees meeting, committee members passed new policies to make sure spending like this doesn't happen again without approval.
There is a 15-member search committee that is in charge of choosing UF's next president. Their timeline to complete that search is not known, but back in August, UF interim president Kent Fuchs said he expected a new president to be selected by the middle of next year.
A new, controversial homelessness law
In October, a new state law took effect banning sleeping on most public property in an effort to prohibit encampments of people who are homeless. The law comes as many communities across the state are dealing with a housing affordability crisis.
“Finding land to build a shelter is hard, and finding communities or people willing to do these things is hard. When you do find a building that's empty and perfect for shelter, then communities and neighborhoods start complaining that they don't want it there. Nobody wants these places in their neighborhoods,” said Lillian Hernández Caraballo from Central Florida Public Media.
“Some places have had to resort to criminalization because they don't have these shelters. So those are the responses that we've seen from the community so far, is either really trying to ramp up shelters, expand them, align with one another, trying to really build new programs, or in a lot of cases, they're having to criminalize the homelessness because they just need to comply with the new law.”
Hernández Caraballo said issue of criminalizing homelessness is nuanced and multi-pronged. For example, in the city of Orlando, when they have an arrest of a transient person, a lot of times the charge is public urination, public defecation or whatnot, or maybe you're washing up in public, maybe you're just trying to sleep.
“So what we're seeing is not like criminalization of homelessness per se, but people are trying to survive out there, and in order to do so, sometimes they have to break the law. But at the end of the day, as of Jan. 1, 2025, residents and business owners will be able to sue counties and cities that are not enforcing this law. So they're against a rock and a hard place in a way.”
The housing affordability crisis will continue into the new year, and not just for folks who are currently houseless or unemployed.
The Kissimmee and Orlando areas are seeing the revamp and adaptive reuse of a lot of hotels and motels, and tiny homes are starting to make more conversation, as are manufactured homes.
In Brevard County, they just started 3-D printing homes.
“It cuts the cost of labor — there's a labor shortage, apparently, in that industry. It cuts on time, it cuts on a lot of things. So we're seeing a lot of innovation and a lot of different approaches to this because people know that it's necessary, so it's getting imaginative.”
