>>This week on NewsNight, a look at the governor's veto of a bill that supporters say would have encouraged the purchase of electric cars for the state's fleet.

Plus, uncertainty in the LGBTQ community amid the ongoing court fight over a law opponents say targets drag shows, but that, supporters say is aimed at protecting children.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort and welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

Well, first tonight, the court battle in Florida over drag shows the state is appealing a judge's decision to block a new law placing restrictions on children, attending what the legislation describes as, quote, adult live performances.

The ruling last month came in a case brought by the operators of a Hamburger Mary's Restaurant in Orlando who claimed the law violates free speech and is too vague.

Well, my colleague Krystel Knowles has been following the case.

And Krystel just remind us what this law does.

>>Okay.

Let's start with how we got here.

Last year, Florida Republicans introduced a bill to prevent minors at adult live entertainment events.

So that bill was signed into law earlier this year.

Now, facility fees that are found in violation of this can lose their liquor license and get fined.

Now, of course, this did not sit well with Hamburger Mary's.

They're challenging that law.

Last year, I got the chance to speak to a Hamburger Mary's performer who says this law can have consequences to performers, especially those in the LGBT community.

And this year, I caught up with him again, and here's what he had to say about the law.

>>I'm feeling a bit beaten.

It's sad that I don't feel as proud of my shows that I used to.

>>Martin Fugate performs as Lee Shannon at Hamburger Mary's.

He's been a drag performer there for 15 years.

But now he says he's afraid history is repeating itself.

>>We were shunned, persecuted in the seventies and we hid and things like that.

And, you know, it's been decades, of course.

I'm married now for 37 years.

I.

The point is, we became just ourselves and proud of it.

And I would say it's regressed in a sense that it's very amazing that within a year or so, a whole culture, a whole group of people can be demonized.

>>This year, he says, the LGBTQ community's rights are rapidly being taken away through a variety of new laws that some opponents believe are promoting homophobia and hate while restricting parental rights.

>>It has been devastating.

I mean, just the feel of this whole situation has been that false things can be deemed true in other people's eyes.

>>On the other side of the debate is Pastor Demensio Barton.

He says drag shows in any capacity are not family friendly and should only be for adults.

>>I do not believe that that is something that we should have put in front of our kids just carte blanche and have given open access to our families.

Drag shows.

I hold them with the same regard that I hold a burlesque show.

It is not for children.

If its women half naked or naked bouncing around in front of our kids, I don't want to see that.

If it's grown men who are doing it, I don't want to see that.

My whole thing is we forgotten the importance of things like innocence.

>>Pastor Barton goes on to say that Hamburger Mary's has the right to operate, but he believes age restrictions on drag shows are necessary.

>>Regardless of the fact that I do not agree with them.

I do respect their right to stand for what they believe for.

In the United States of America.

>>Demensio Barton.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio, Christopher Heath, head of investigations at WFTV Channel 9, also covers a little bit of politics over there at Channel 9.

Thanks so much for coming in, Chris.

Really appreciate it.

And Beth Kassab coming back to the show editor of the Winter Park Voice.

Thanks so much for being here today, Beth.

>>Thank you so much.

>>Appreciate your time today, guys.

Let's try to add some clarity here.

There's a lot of people are confused about this issue.

Drag shows are still legal.

We're talking about the attendance of children at sort of adult live performances, right?

>>Yes.

The judge has put a stay on a federal judge, put a stay on it.

That's going to be worked its way through the appeals process.

We'll see what happens.

We'll see if that stay gets lifted through the appeals process.

Obviously, you know, both sides are trying to make their arguments as to how broad this is going to be going forward.

And then you have to wait and see how far it goes.

But as we sit here right now, yes, it is the issue.

I think what we're seeing is even though there is a stay in place, again, as we sit here right now, there's a bit of a chilling effect out there.

If you're a business that does this, if you're a organization that does this.

You're sitting there saying, do we really want to until we get full clarity, go forward.

And that's kind of where we're at.

>>Beth, Hamburger Mary's filed its response to the state's appeal this week.

The company's attorneys say they expect a decision pretty soon.

So we tape on Thursday morning.

So things may indeed change by air time.

But in the meantime, I mean, how are, as Chris alluded to, the arts groups and others sort of navigating this amid the uncertainty?

>>You know, I think it's a really tricky subject for a lot of arts groups.

There's been a lot of reporting across central Florida about how people are trying to decide what to do, if they should go forward with certain shows, put age restrictions on ticket sales.

I think chilling effect is a really good term because there is a lack of clarity right now.

It certainly doesn't mean that all of these performances have stopped.

But keep in mind that there's a lot at stake for some of the arts groups.

They're the ones that end up getting punished because the venues can have their alcohol licenses revoked.

And that's a huge profit center for the theater groups and arts groups in general.

Everybody knows concessions makes money.

And so I think there's going to be, you know, a lot of angst around this issue until it's settled in the court.

>>And that's, of course, before you just get to the straight fines that some organizations may may face.

Chris, I mean, this law sort of has become a kind of broader rallying cry, right, for the LGBTQ community.

Since this legislative session, advocates point to several new laws that they believe target them.

>>And that really seem to be both a theme we saw in the previous legislative session and in this most recent legislative session is the legislature deciding to go lean as far in on culture wars as they could and LGBTQ trans issues.

All of these kind of got bundled together and became the one thing that the legislature was going as fast as it could after and as hard as it could after.

And so we've seen a lot of these laws, you know, whether we're talking about gender affirming care or whether we're talking about drag shows, you know, one by one by one, we've had all these issues pop up, pronouns in the school, these kind of issues.

And it just it gets it snowballs upon itself.

And it's one after the other after the other.

All of them are now getting litigated.

Some of them are in effect.

Some of them are, you know, half in effect.

It's just a real hodgepodge out there right now.

But it is it's been the last two years the main rallying cry of the Florida legislature.

>>Beth, how does the state push back on that argument that this sort of legislation is a First Amendment violation?

>>Right.

So they are, first of all, asking the courts to allow the law to be enforced, but just not in regard to the plaintiff, which in this case would be Hamburger Mary's.

So, you know, there's a lot of questions.

And ultimately, I think this will be decided on a constitutional basis.

In fact, all of the bills that Chris just alluded to are all being challenged on constitutional and First Amendment grounds.

>>Yeah, US Constitution, but of course, there are state challenges as well to some of these laws.

Chris, the governor's been sort of leaning in to these policies that have angered some of the in the LGBTQ community.

I mean, how does it seem to be playing out beyond Florida right now on the campaign trail?

We saw that that video that the campaign had sort of shared cause a big stir.

>>If it's helping him, it isn't showing up in the polls.

And that is, you know, you can get into whether or not his campaign is approaching this issue in the right way to try and win the GOP nomination.

Whether voters don't care about it, maybe they say they care about it, but they care about other things more.

But, you know, if it's helping him, it's sure not reflecting the polls.

You know, his numbers kind of plateaued, you know, last year in the first part of this year.

And it's been a steady decline ever since.

When you look at his both head to head against Donald Trump and then also him versus the entire field, including Donald Trump, it's just not helping him.

So, listen, if it's working for him, it's not showing up in one thing that he was hoping it would.

And that is pulling towards the GOP nomination.

>>That's an interesting strategy to sort of run to the right of Trump.

>>I don't know how many votes are out there.

I mean, and maybe his campaign does maybe his campaign has done the math better than I have and say that there is a huge cohort of people to the right of Donald Trump who are looking for a Trump alternative.

I don't know that that's out there.

Again, the polling, whether we're talking the FAU poll that came out this week of Florida showing Donald Trump just clobbering Ron DeSantis one after another, we're seeing this.

So I'm not sure exactly how this is playing in the GOP base as far as helping him win the nomination, because, again, if it is, it's not showing up in the polling.

>>Well, we want to hear from you on this issue.

Be sure to join the conversation on social media.

We always want to hear from you.

We're at WUCFTV, on Facebook, Twitter, and also on Instagram.

Okay.

Next tonight, forecasters have revised up their predictions for this hurricane season, taking it from a below average to an above average season.

And by unhappy coincidence, maybe Farmer's Insurance this week announced it would no longer be writing new policies or renewing existing ones in our state.

The move impacts some 100,000 Floridians.

In a statement, farmers wrote, We've advised the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation OIR of our decision to discontinue offering farmers branded auto home and umbrella policies in the state.

This business decision was necessary to effectively manage risk exposure.

Farmers offers insurance through several different brands, and this decision applies only to policies issued through our exclusive agency distribution channel.

There is no impact to 70% of policies currently enforced for customers in the state.

In a letter to farmers, Florida's insurance commissioner wrote, We want to directly express our disappointment regarding how this decision was communicated.

While the office recognizes companies need to make operational changes to books of business, OIRA always appreciates the opportunity to discuss these complex issues prior to receiving notifications of this nature.

All right.

Well, we have Chris in the studio and we always like to talk about insurance when you're here.

Chris, Florida's insurance industry is in such a state that this particular story has been making national news this week.

How big a deal would you say 100,000 policies is for the market?

>>I mean, in the market scope, it's a drop in the bucket in the continuing narrative of six companies having gone insolvent.

AIG pulling back on what it's doing in Florida now, farmers pulling out of Florida.

It's bad.

It's really bad.

An interview with a former governor, current U.S.

Senator Rick Scott, this morning.

And he was lamenting the cost of insurance.

Now, granted, his house is a little bit nicer than mine.

His roof is probably much better than mine, and he could probably afford his policy better than I can mine.

But the fact that it's cutting across, it doesn't matter where you live, who you are in the state of Florida, whether you're buying or renting, you're paying for this because even if you're renting a house, the person who owns that house is paying for a level mature.

It's not exactly the same, but it's within that same kind of umbrella.

So this is hitting everyone and it's making the state more and more unaffordable.

We got new inflation numbers this week, and inflation in the United States is trending down, obviously a good thing, but Florida continues to be the outlier.

We are above the national average.

So for as much crowing as Florida does about how good our economy is and it is good, we are now the outlier when it comes to inflation because everyone else is heading in another direction.

We're staying.

That's bad.

This makes it worse.

I don't know how this situation resolves itself any time soon.

And I will tell you this.

Having had conversations with both current and former lawmakers, the remarks by the CFO, Jimmy Patronis about going after Farmers for their decision doesn't help the situation, because what that does is, one, Farmers is leaving.

Either way, they're making a business decision, but going after them online and saying, you know, we're going to explore options.

We don't like it when it's handled this way.

The message you're sending to other insurance providers who might be looking at Florida is why would I want to do business there?

If we try and leave the state theyll come after us, we'll take a pass.

>>Well, Beth, let's talk a bit about some of the reaction.

And Chris mentioned the CFO, Jimmy Patronis when there saying Farmers is more interested in playing politics than running a successful company is accused of a virtue signaling well on its way to becoming the Bud Light of insurance is what is what Jimmy Patronis says of Farmers.

But have we heard anything specifically about what the state might do now in response?

>>You know, we havent.

I mean, over a number of years that this crisis has been building and there have been plenty of warning signs about this and very little action taken.

You know, we we knew that it was going to reach this point, but there's still not a true plan.

The legislature has still not fully addressed this.

And the reaction we're hearing from state officials is counterintuitive, because absolutely, if you look back over the last 20 years on any economic development efforts within the state of Florida, the focus has always been on how the cost of doing business is business here is so low, you know, labor costs-- >>Friendly environment, right?

>>Business friendly environment, low taxes.

But these costs are very real.

They're building every year at an unsustainable rate.

And I think Floridians are, you know, going to demand some actual plan and an actual plan and actual action.

>>Yeah.

I want to talk about some of those political ramifications in a moment, Chris.

I mean, any thoughts yourself on what Jimmy Patronis might have been getting out there with this sort of allusion to to to wokeness?

>>Not a clue.

Not a clue what he's after there.

Listen, farmers is making a business decision.

If they could make money in Florida, they would stay in Florida.

If they could expand in Florida and make more money, they would.

They're not getting out of Florida because of woke ideology.

State Farm announced that it's not doing policies anymore in California.

Is State Farm doing that because California's not woke enough?

I mean, at a certain point, businesses are going to make business decisions, especially a company as large as farmers.

And, you know, again, in conversations I've had with lawmakers, they're pointing to what he's saying and they're like, this is not helping.

We need to be attracting anyone and everyone to come to Florida, write policies, pull policies out of Citizens.

Citizens is at 1.3 million policies right now, it could be 1.7 by the end of the year.

That's untenable.

That is dangerous for the entire state.

We need companies coming to Florida, bringing capital in.

We don't need to be chastising companies that are here because at a certain point, everyone is either going to be on Citizens or we're not going to have insurance in Florida.

>>Of course, California has a lot of natural perils, much like much like Florida could be the reason for that.

I mean Beth, Governor DeSantis has addressed this issue, saying we should knock on wood for the season.

And he believes or hopes that farmers will return after hurricane season.

I mean, this issue has gotten political quickly, right.

As you talked about there.

Are there likely ramifications for Florida leaders from this?

>>Oh, I, I think so.

I mean, this is politicians like to talk about pocketbook issues.

And this is just a classic case of that.

I mean, just personally, I had to renew my policy very recently.

And the costs are astronomical.

And you can't really shop like you used to because you go to another company.

I actually even personally called Farmers before this announcement was made and they tried to push me into Cit - into Citizens Insurance.

>>The insurer of last resort.

>>Yes.

So, you know, that's what people are finding when they're just, you know, at the kitchen table trying to, you know, find a deal, try to save some money.

And ultimately that's going to add up to a huge problem for the state's economy.

But when people feel it and I think they already are with the potential of a lot of worsening out there, that is going to be on the ballot.

>>Yeah, Chris, Beth mentioned before about the actions that the legislature has taken and people agree or disagree about whether they've done enough.

House Speaker Paul Renner says the farmers decision is not about the legislature's recent reforms, which he says haven't kicked in yet in terms of their effectiveness.

Can we say whether those efforts have failed, as critics might say, or is it too early to tell?

Well, Speaker Renner is correct.

The legislative actions they're going to take time.

It when you pass something, it's going to take time both for the existing litigation that was dealing with roofs and insurance to work its way through the courts.

That all is going to happen no matter what, no matter what the legislature does.

The legislature putting $3 billion into reinsurance to basically prop up companies reinsurance as the insurance insurance companies buy, so that if your insurance company goes out of business, your policyholders get made whole.

So putting 3 billion in there obviously helps backstop it.

Also putting in some of these changes to litigation.

One way is attorney's fees.

You could say, well, that's bad for the consumer, but the industry is going to need that.

If it's going to stabilize, those things are going to take time.

The issue I think you're hear from a lot of people is they knew that these were problems five, six, seven years ago.

They waited until it was at a crisis to fix it.

Now we're sitting back and we're saying this might not stabilize till 2025.

>>Yeah, and former state Senator Jeff Brandis, he was very critical when he talked to me about the insurance accountability law that they passed in the last session.

Do you think there's a legitimate complaint that he has there?

>>I don't.

I think he's correct in that.

And that is to say so much of what the legislature needed to do was going to be swallowing a very, very hard pill.

And they they nibbled at it.

They took a little bit here and a little bit there.

This needed bold and decisive action.

And it did not get it.

It got some action both from the previous legislative session before Renner was speaker and then during Renner's time as speaker.

So it has gotten some, but it didn't get quite what it needed to get.

So we're not seeing everything that we could see.

>>Well regardless of what the back story is, a lot of people in our community are now going to be trying to to find a new homeowner's or car insurance policy.

Now that we've had Farmer's announcement, you can find a link to the letter from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to Farmers on our websites at wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay.

Finally tonight, the dissenters administration has touted what it says are its achievements on environmental protection.

The governor says he's prioritized investments in the environment through legislation and executive order.

And in the most recent budget, the state is plowing more than $1,000,000,000 into protecting water resources and restoring the Everglades.

The governor says the budget is probably the strongest for the environment in Florida's history.

>>If you look at the amount of money for water resources and environmental support, unprecedented amount of support in this budget and everything we said we would do in terms of Everglades or water resources, we have followed through on that.

And in almost every instance, we not only met the bar, we exceeded the bar, and we're proud of that.

>>Governor DeSantis there, but some environmental groups are pushing back, pointing to several pieces of legislation to come out of the most recent session, including allowing radioactive phosphate gypsum to be used in road construction in Florida and a recent veto by the governor.

DeSantis vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have modernized the way state vehicles are purchased.

Supporters such as Luigi Guadarrama, the political director of the Sierra Club of Florida, say it would have promoted the use of electric vehicles.

>>It's such a common sense, bipartisan solution to the issues that we're talking about that it seemed like a no brainer, right?

We it's no secret that we clashed with Governor DeSantis on a great deal down here in Florida.

And by we I mean the Sierra Club.

Right.

But sometimes common sense wins the day.

Sometimes, as I said, you can't you can't stop the inevitable flow of change.

And we expected this to be a circumstance where that was going to happen.

That he vetoed It was a surprise right.

We we sometimes expect a little too much common sense from people that don't have it.

>>Luigi Gradarrama there.

Okay, Chris, let me start with you on this one.

I mean, the governor's previously championed electric vehicles.

We did reach out, by the way, to the governor's office to find out why he vetoed this bill.

We didn't hear back from them, though, by airtime.

Have you been able to understand why he did it?

>>No, there was usually when you have a veto, you get a signing statement or a reason why the veto came down.

Not on this one.

And the fact that you're not getting a response, nobody's gotten a real response on this one.

The state had in the past leaned in towards electric vehicles.

The state has a pretty good blueprint out there for how to put out an infrastructure so that when you drive your electric vehicle, you have places to charge it.

The state used some of the money it got from the Volkswagen settlement to put a bunch of Tesla quick charge at all of the turnpike stations.

I actually interviewed the governor at one of those ribbon cuttings.

So there is a plan out there for electric vehicles.

That's why this veto is such a head scratcher.

You wonder, you know, what does this serve?

And you've had some people speculate that, well, you know, it's a sop to the Iowa corn farmers who obviously sell a lot of corn that goes into ethanol and electric vehicles don't burn ethanol.

But by the same token, you sit back and say, well, didn't he launch his campaign with Elon Musk, who owns Tesla, one of the biggest makers of electric vehicles?

So, yeah, this is a really real head scratcher and we're not getting an explanation.

>>Electric vehicles have been a pretty popular thing for local governments, right?

I mean, Orlando, the city of Orlando is kind of embraced it.

Elsewhere, places like Winter Park as well.

>>Yeah, Winter Park has embraced it as well.

They've converted part of their fleet to electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles.

You know, and it's it's I want to see an easy way, but it's it's also a really tangible, invisible way to showcase conserving energy and burning of less fossil fuels.

We are starting to see some pushback.

In Winter Park, for example, the budget season.

>>Yeah.

>>And speaking of some of those overall pressures we've been feeling in Florida in terms of inflation and some of the other economic pressures, the city is now saying, you know, that it's very hard for them to get a hold of some of these fully electric vehicles as they're replacing their fleet.

And so we're seeing a push more toward hybrids and some other types of vehicles.

So, you know, it's not always as easy as it as just upgrading your whole fleet in one fell swoop.

>>I mean, it's never easy.

I mean, environmentalists have also criticized a few laws that were passed in the session that preempt local control, placing limits on local ordinances.

For example, a number of issues which the Sierra Club says erodes home rule.

And you've written about some pushback in Winter Park on another piece of development legislation.

>>Yes.

And so that is going to certainly be felt in Winter Park.

But across municipalities in Florida and county governments, too.

And it has to do with something that local people tend to care a lot about, which is the density of new development.

The height of new buildings.

And this particular piece of legislation has to do with affordable housing.

And the legislature essentially created a carve out or a loophole for affordable housing developers, which is a great thing because we all know that's a huge pressing issue-- >>This is the Live Local Act.

>>Yes, the Live Local Act, we need more affordable housing in Florida.

There's no question about that.

But when it comes to how it's built, locals want to have some control over that.

And this bill kind of keeps locals at an arm's length and gives the state more control so that developers would have a lot more flexibility when it comes to how tall the buildings are and how dense they are.

I think over the next legislative session, if not before, we're going to see some changes to that legislation because local governments are not happy.

>>Well, before we go tonight, I just wanted to let you know about a special edition of the program.

Coming up.

Next week marks the 54th anniversary of the first lunar landing.

Now, as NASA prepares a crew to head back to the moon, we'll talk with retired astronaut Winston Scott about how the space agency has changed over the intervening decades, his experiences in orbit, and efforts to diversify America's astronaut corps.

So join us for a special one on one interview with Winston Scott next Friday night at 8:30 right here on WUCF.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Christopher Heath, head of investigations over there at WFTV.

Thanks so much for coming in, Chris.

And Beth Kassab, editor of The Winter Park Voice, thanks so much for coming in today, guys.

Really appreciate your time.

You guys are always busy, so it's always much appreciated.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.