Gov. Ron DeSantis announces his proposed budget from the Capitol on Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
Gov. Ron DeSantis is rolling out an ambitious yet smaller spending plan for the coming year that includes familiar priorities for the Republican governor, including generous tax cuts, another round of teacher pay hikes, and more money for Everglades restoration.
But it also includes some new items, such as an $8 million tax holiday for the purchase of guns and ammo, more than half-a-billion for immigration enforcement, and new restrictions on arts funding that would mandate that money only go to groups that mount programs appropriate for people of all ages.
The governor’s budget request has often been a cornerstone of DeSantis’ agenda but this time he’s delivering it at a time of strained relations with the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature. The two sides are at odds over how to handle immigration enforcement now that President Donald Trump is in office and has promised mass deportation of migrants, although DeSantis suggested on Monday that there may be a deal in the works to end the impasse.
This is the seventh set of recommendations released by DeSantis and sent to lawmakers who are charged with passing a new budget during their coming annual session. Florida’s fiscal year begins July 1 and ends June 30.
DeSantis’ overall budget for state fiscal year 2025-26 calls for spending $115.6 billion, a drop of roughly $3 billion from the current year, but last year’s budget included spending on many one-time items fueled by the last round of COVID-19 recovery funding from the federal government.
“Our budget is called a focus on fiscal responsibility because that is what we are doing. We’re showing that you can be fiscally responsible, respect taxpayers, and yet still deliver on the main promises that you made and the main public needs of our people,” DeSantis said during the Tallahassee press conference announcing his proposal.
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The governor’s budget calls for creation of a Liaison for Faith and Community in the governor’s office “to better connect, communicate with, and resource Florida’s faith and community organizations.”
The position would identify bureaucratic or regulatory burdens within the state government that unnecessarily “restrict, impede, or otherwise burden faith and community organization involvement, collaboration, or service to vulnerable people and populations in Florida.”
The governor’s budget also proposes to redirect money now targeted to four National Cancer Institute-designated centers to all Florida providers. DeSantis has made cancer funding a priority since First Lady Casey DeSantis’s successful treatment for cancer and has increased funding by tens of millions of dollars. The proposal will be met with opposition from the four centers now receiving the funding.
Specific to education, DeSantis’ budget proposes a $1.3 billion increase for the Florida Education Finance Program, allocating K-12 funds, up from $28.4 billion to $29.7 billion.
His proposal would allocate $200 million less, a total of $3.9 billion, for the State University System than it received in the current budget, $4.1 billion, while maintaining the same $1.7 billion for the Florida College System. The governor did not propose increased tuition, consistent with his previous six years in office, and called for fully funding $632 million in Bright Futures Scholarships.
“We are very proud of the fact that if you’re a good student and you want to attend one of our state universities and you got the grades and you got the board scores that you can get a free ride or 75% depending on where you’re ranked,” DeSantis said. “That makes getting a quality education without going into debt something that is attainable for all these talented, hard-working students.”
“So what we want is, we don’t want to underwrite things that our taxpayers are just going to reject. So there needs to be some some standards there, and then, we also said on this is we are going to provide a preference to folks who are supporting or doing things to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.”
– Ron DeSantis
Second amendment summer
DeSantis announced his plans for increased homestead exemptions, but the budget has additional tax breaks, including the “Second Amendment Summer” proposal to waive taxes on the sale of ammunition, firearms, and accessories commonly used for firearms between Memorial Day and July 4. When asked about this, DeSantis played down the notion that the $8 million proposal could meet opposition from the Republican-led Legislature.
” I think this is going to be wildly popular. I mean, why would they want to fight back on that?” DeSantis said when asked. “This is something that their voters would expect them to support. “
Standards for the arts?
Included with his budget recommendations are new restrictions on arts funding that would mandate that money only go to groups that put on age-appropriate programs.
When asked about art funding, DeSantis said he vetoed arts money in the current budget because he “thought it was too much into the DEI and into the woke stuff.”
“So, what we want is, we don’t want to underwrite things that our taxpayers are just going to reject. So, there needs to be some some standards there, and then, we also said on this is we are going to provide a preference to folks who are supporting or doing things to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.”
Other tax proposals include creation of a Research, Innovation, Science, and Engineering (RISE) Investment Tax Credit Program to increase venture capital investment in the state.
His budget calls for a back-to school sales tax holidays from July 28 through August 10, and two disaster preparedness holidays — one from June 2 through June 15, and the other from Aug. 25 through Sept. 7.
His budget waives taxes on purchases for cultural and sporting events, movie tickets, and concerts during the month of July. Tickets can be purchased for events in advance.
Phoenix reporter Jay Waagmeester contributed to this story.
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