Here we go again?
Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.
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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.
In late May, aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis awarded a $75,000 deal to design a new state website to Strategic Digital Services, a small marketing firm in Tallahassee.
Sometime within the next 24 hours or so, the state of Florida launched a site promoting a DeSantis-backed constitutional amendment that would slash local property taxes and gut funding for cities, counties and towns across Florida.
Neither the Governor’s Office nor Strategic Digital Services would say whether the firm helped develop the website touting the governor’s tax plan — which uses the same logo that DeSantis staffers are now printing and attaching to his traveling podium whenever he makes a public appearance to talk about property taxes.
But Strategic Digital Services was also the main contractor DeSantis used two years ago to coordinate a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign against two other proposed constitutional amendments — a pair of citizen-led ballot measures that would have overturned a statewide abortion ban and legalized recreational marijuana.
DeSantis and his top advisors — led by James Uthmeier, the governor’s then-chief of staff who DeSantis has now installed as the attorney general of Florida — ultimately burned an estimated $35 million-to-$40 million on that unprecedented ad campaign, blanketing broadcast, cable and streaming channels with so-called “public service announcements” that implicitly attacked the abortion and marijuana amendments.
The governor and his team also bent — and arguably broke — a bunch of laws in the process.
They commandeered $10 million from a Medicaid settlement and turned into political campaign cash by funneling it through a foundation connected to First Lady Casey DeSantis’ “Hope Florida” initiative. They diverted millions more from programs meant to help needy children and sick Floridians, while also dipping into state reserves. They waived procurement rules in order to rush TV commercials onto the air in time for football games. They paid political strategists using hidden state subcontracts.
And now the governor might be gearing up to do it all again — this time in support of Amendment 3, the property tax proposal that he and Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature rushed onto the ballot during a 27-hour special session earlier this month.
The measure going on the November ballot — which, it is very important to note, differs substantially from the proposal DeSantis is currently promoting on his state-sponsored website — would supersize tax breaks for both homeowners and commercial property owners.
But it would also wipe out roughly a quarter of all local government property tax revenue. And it would further concentrate political power in Tallahassee — reducing the decision-making authority of locally elected city councils and county commissions and giving greater community control to the governor and a gerrymandered state Legislature.
DeSantis has, perhaps, already tipped his hand.
As part of the original property tax plan he pitched to the Legislature, DeSantis asked for $5.5 million in taxpayer funds to spend mailing marketing materials to property owners across Florida. The mailers would direct people to a state-run website with a calculator they could use to estimate their potential savings from the proposed property tax amendment, which will need the support of 60 percent of voters in order to pass.
The governor also wanted lawmakers to give him explicit assurances that his website would be legal under a new law that prohibits state agencies from advertising around proposed constitutional amendments. That law was passed in 2025 — in direct response to DeSantis’ spending abuses during his 2024 campaign against the abortion and marijuana ballot measures.
Lawmakers declined to give DeSantis money for the mailers — or explicit permission for his website.
But, then again, this is the same governor who once took taxpayer money set aside to remove undocumented immigrants from Florida and spent it instead rounding up asylum seekers in Texas and flying them to Massachusetts for a Fox News publicity stunt. Then, when he got sued, DeSantis had the Legislature rewrite the law and retroactively approve his antics.
It’s also the same governor who exploited a nearly three-year-long “state of emergency” — and hundreds of millions of dollars meant for emergency response to disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires — in order to build a slap-dash immigrant prison camp in the Florida Everglades that he could show off to MAGA influencers. And then he concealed key details about all the vendor contracts his administration was handing out as part of the rushed project, which proved so ill-conceived that it is now being shut down after a single year of operation.
So it seems unlikely that Ron DeSantis would let a little thing like the law stop him from trying to make Florida taxpayers pay for another political advertising campaign.
*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.
Defunding libraries, dumping on renters: The Florida story
Florida’s historic property tax reform: Libraries and renters fear ‘existential threat’ (WLRN)
See also: Bay County could lose $38 million under property tax plan (Panama City News Herald)
See also: Local officials react to proposed Florida property tax amendment (Lake Okeechobee News)
See also: What property tax cut could cost Hollywood (Axios Hollywood)
See also: Campaign launches to oppose property tax cut constitutional amendment (Florida Phoenix)
This is going to be A Problem
USDA releases Florida’s SNAP error rate. It comes with a $1B penalty (WUSF)
See also: SNAP error rate lowered, but still too high to skirt potential future costs (Florida Phoenix)
And now the vendors get to pocket ‘demobilization fees’
Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” shutting down permanently, sources say (CBS New Miami)
See also: DeSantis says Alligator Alcatraz ‘fulfilled’ its role as he closes it after 1 year (Miami Herald) ($)
See also: ‘Failure by every measure’: Advocates demand accountability for Alligator Alcatraz (Miami Herald) ($)
See also: Miami-Dade mayor wants Alligator Alcatraz site turned over to National Park Service (Miami Herald) ($)
What could go wrong?
Matt Gaetz announces he’s ‘returning to public service’ on Florida nonprofit board (Politico)
See also: Matt Gaetz’s appointment puts spotlight on NW Florida economic development board (WUWF)
It’s almost like he’s a pure political opportunist whose sole polestar is personal ambition
Florida gives millions in tax breaks to data centers under DeSantis-backed law (Tampa Bay Times) ($)
See also: What a Data Center Moratorium Can Buy (Boondoggle)
Perspectives
A Ballot that Buries the Cost (3 Degrees Florida)
Good Riddance to ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ a Cruel, Expensive, and Pointless Authoritarian Stunt (Reason)
The injustice of justices ignoring our rights (South Florida Sun Sentinel) ($)
Lobbyists work for and against Florida governments dealing with PFAS pollution (Florida Phoenix)
"...would supersize tax breaks for both homeowners and commercial property owners." I was not aware that commercial property owners were included in the Amendment. Could you expand on this?
This is why you need to vote out every republican in Florida because they have allowed DeSantis to break many laws and have voted for millions of our dollars to be wasted so he can make millionaires happy and his kick back used to be campaign money and now that he will be out of POWER in November. We need the greedy republicans out of public services!!!!