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Fact-checking DeSantis on insurance rates, education and gun laws

WLRN Public Media | By Jeff Cercone and Sara Swann | PolitiFact
Published March 5, 2025 at 12:02 PM EST
Senate President Ben Albritton, right, and House Speaker Rep. Daniel Perez, left, react as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives his State of the State address to a joint session on the opening day of the 2025 legislative session, Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at the state capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
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AP
Senate President Ben Albritton, right, and House Speaker Rep. Daniel Perez, left, react as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives his State of the State address to a joint session on the opening day of the 2025 legislative session, Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at the state capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

PolitiFact fact-checked DeSantis’ statements about Florida’s insurance rates, workforce, education policy and gun laws. For the Democrats’ response to DeSantis, we fact-checked state Sen. Jason Pizzo’s statement about law enforcement salaries, human trafficking and homeowners insurance.

WLRN has partnered with PolitiFact to fact-check Florida politicians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning team seeks to present the true facts, unaffected by agenda or biases.

In his annual address to the Florida Legislature, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis touted the state as a U.S. leader on the economy, education and immigration.

DeSantis repeated talking points about Florida being No. 1 in entrepreneurship, new business formation and gross domestic product growth among large states — all of which we fact-checked last year. He also sought to align himself and Florida with President Donald Trump’s agenda, highlighting sweeping immigration legislation he signed a few weeks before the address.

"Thanks to the recent legislation, it is now a crime to enter Florida illegally, the days of catch and release are over, and all state and local law enforcement have a duty to assist in interior immigration enforcement efforts," DeSantis said.

PolitiFact fact-checked DeSantis’ statements about Florida’s insurance rates, workforce, education policy and gun laws. For the Democrats’ response to DeSantis, we fact-checked state Sen. Jason Pizzo’s statement about law enforcement salaries, human trafficking and homeowners insurance.

"S&P Global rated Florida as having the lowest (homeowners insurance) increase in all 50 states."

This needs context.

Florida homeowners insurance rates can vary widely depending on the insurer and policy. A report from Insurify, a national insurance data collection group, found that Florida homeowners pay the most of any state for insurance, with an average annual rate of nearly $11,000 in 2023.

When asked for evidence to support this statement, a DeSantis spokesperson pointed to a Jan. 21 S&P Global report about U.S. homeowners insurance rate changes. The report found that Florida had an effective rate change of 1% in 2024, the lowest of any state that year.

However, this analysis excludes rate changes from Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida’s state-run insurer for people who are no longer able to buy insurance from private insurers. Although intended to be a last-resort insurer, Citizens became Florida’s largest homeowners insurer in 2023 with 1.4 million policies. The company has dropped to 847,000 policies, as of Feb. 28.

"We are the top state in America for school choice."

A DeSantis spokesperson said this refers to rankings from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which works with mostly Republican state legislators to pass conservative legislation.

The group, also called ALEC, in January released its second "Index of State Education Freedom" that ranks states based on availability of different kinds of educational environments, such as charter schools, homeschooling, virtual schools and public schools with open enrollment policies. It also looks at how many families are able to use the programs and how much funding the state provides.

Florida, which ranked first overall, received an A+ grade in the report, and received A’s in educational freedom programs, charter schools, virtual schooling and open enrollment.

"Florida has also been ranked number one for Education Freedom by the Heritage Foundation and number one for Education for two consecutive years by U.S. News and World Report," DeSantis spokesperson Corey Adamyk told PolitiFact.

DeSantis’ school choice push has led some of the state’s largest public school districts to close schools because of declining enrollment, Politico reported in May 2024.

"We have the lowest number of state government workers per capita in the country."

Mostly True.

The Florida Department of Management Services, which handles state employee matters, said in an annual 2021-22 workforce report that Florida had 96 state government workers per 10,000 residents, which was the nation’s lowest rate. The national average was 198 workers per 10,000 residents.

We found if you count state and local government workers, as the American Legislative Exchange Council did, Florida had 409 state and local employees per 10,000 population, the third lowest nationally.

Those numbers may soon decrease. DeSantis signed a Feb. 24 executive order to create the Florida State Department of Government Efficiency task force, which he said in a press release would work to "further eliminate waste within state government, save taxpayers money, and ensure accountability in Florida."

DeSantis said in a press conference announcing the task force that he hopes it will eliminate about 900 state jobs, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

Florida’s red flag law doesn’t follow "due process."

DeSantis said he wanted the Legislature to revisit a 2018 "red flag" law passed after the Parkland school shooting that allows law enforcement to seek a judge’s order to bar a person deemed dangerous to themselves or others from possessing or buying guns for up to a year.

DeSantis elaborated to reporters after the speech, saying, "If you look at this red flag law that was passed … They can go in and say, ‘This person’s a danger. They should have their firearms taken away,’ which is property, in addition to being something connected with a constitutional right. And then the burden shifts, where you have to prove to a court that you are not a menace or a threat. That's not the way due process works."

This argument has not held up in court challenges of Florida and other states.

Florida courts say petitions for such an order must provide evidence that a person "poses a significant danger of harming himself or herself or others by possessing a firearm or ammunition." The evidence must be "clear and convincing" for an order to be granted. These are civil proceedings where individuals can testify and face no risk of incarceration, then-Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg told PolitiFact in 2022. Prosecutors are involved only if someone violates an order, which is rare, Aronberg said.

In 2019, a Florida appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge that argued the state’s red flag law was vague, overbroad and violated substantive due process. The court said that the statute requires a hearing within 14 days of a petition being filed "thus affording a respondent due process" and "incorporates an added due process safeguard by requiring proponents to meet the heightened ‘clear and convincing’ burden of proof standard."

State Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood: "The only rankings we’ve held steady on during the last six years are nearing the bottom in law enforcement salaries and near the top in insurance premiums and human trafficking."

It depends on which law enforcement positions are considered. State’s police and sheriff’s patrol officers had an annual mean wage of $78,480 as of May 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was better than 33 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. The data shows 16 states paid higher wages than Florida for those jobs.

Though Pizzo spoke more generally in his response to DeSantis, he sent PolitiFact a Feb. 11 Miami Herald editorial that said Florida Highway Patrol troopers, who now will be tasked with immigration enforcement, have a starting salary of $54,000. The Herald previously reported that the department said in its budget request to the state Legislature that the starting salary was the "third-lowest among similar agencies in 49 states."

Pizzo is correct that Florida ranks near the top in the nation in human trafficking, according to a national group that tracks such cases.

Pizzo sent us a bill analysis of a state Senate anti human trafficking bill that said, "Florida is ranked the third highest state of reported human trafficking cases in the United States."

That analysis cited the Florida Alliance to End Human Trafficking, which got that statistic from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The Hotline said it identified 680 trafficking cases in Florida in 2023, third-highest in the nation, trailing California (1,128) and Texas (900). Those are also the three most populous states in the nation, U.S. Census Bureau data shows.

Florida ranks near the top in the cost of homeowner insurance premiums. In addition to the Insurify report that said Florida homeowners pay the highest premiums in the country, Pizzo sent us an article from Realtor.com which said U.S. Census Bureau data shows that in Florida, "20% of homeowners are paying at least $4,000 per year for home insurance, the highest share of any state."

Our Sources

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Tags
Politics PolitiFact Florida2025 Florida LegislatureRon DeSantisState of the StateHomeowners InsuranceProperty Insurance
Jeff Cercone and Sara Swann | PolitiFact
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