- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(upbeat music) "Florida This Week" is made possible in part by support from the Tampa Bay Times.

- Coming up next, the legislature opens its session, and we'll look at some of the top issues that will be decided during the next two months.

More questions are raised about alleged favoritism in the way the governor has distributed COVID-19 vaccines, and the surprising results of the straw poll at the CPAC convention in Orlando.

Our guests are Florida's Senate President Wilton Simpson, Mary Ellen Klas, the Times/Herald Capitol Bureau Chief, Sean Shaw with the group People Over Profits, and Zac Anderson from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, next on "Florida This Week".

(upbeat music) Welcome back, the annual two months session of the Florida Legislature began this week with the Governor's annual State of the State Address.

- [Reporter] The governor laid out in the agenda that included saying that the state's fiscal outlook is better than forecast last year.

He said, Florida's unemployment rate is below the national average.

He said, he's opposed to cuts in K through 12 education, he touted his proposed anti-riot law.

He criticized big tech for limiting speech and spoke against ballot harvesting.

But DeSantis spent much of his time taking credit for keeping the state mostly open during the year-long COVID crisis and using the term seniors first, he said, Florida has handled the pandemic better than most other states.

- Our efforts have saved lives.

In fact, 40 states have suffered higher COVID mortality for seniors aged 65 and up on a per capita basis than the state of Florida has, and the cases and hospitalizations for seniors in Florida have plummeted as vaccinations have increased since January 30th.

The number of seniors hospitalized for COVID has declined by 80%.

And cases among seniors have declined by 71%.

Florida was right to prioritize the elderly seniors first works.

- [Reporter] But the governor's handling of COVID vaccines is now under scrutiny.

This week more reports came out suggesting that the governor may have shown political favoritism in the way he distributed vaccines.

The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reported that vaccine priority was given in January to residents of the exclusive Ocean Reef Club on Key Largo.

Many major DeSantis donors live there, including one donor who made a quarter of a million dollar contribution to DeSantis.

DeSantis though says a local hospital not the state government made the decision on who to vaccinate.

It's not the first time the governor has been accused of steering vaccines to wealthier communities.

The only Democrat elected to statewide office, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried called for a federal investigation.

- If this isn't public corruption, I don't know what is.

I know that we will get to the bottom of this.

So I am asking the FBI, Public Corruption Unit to be investigating this.

- In order to navigate the pandemic Governor DeSantis has not allowed the Capitol in Tallahassee to be open to visitors.

This comes as he also ordered all businesses to be open in Florida.

Mary Ellen Klas is the Co-bureau Chief of the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times in Tallahassee.

And Mary Ellen, welcome back to "Florida This Week".

- Good to be here, Rob.

- The first question is, is there a hard evidence that the governor has steered vaccines to wealthier communities in the state?

Do we have data?

- Well, the problem is we don't have data at all.

You know Florida may be open for business, but we're not open for a records review.

And so because the governor's and the Department of Health have pretty much kept the criteria for how they select any of these sites for vaccine distribution.

There are places where they just do what they're called pop-up distribution spots, there is no way to know whether there's been certain, you know parts of the state have been given anything other than the anecdotal evidence of favoritism.

So the governor wants to say that there is no favoritism, but they have refused to show us where they have provided the vaccines and when.

And as a result, we really can't, we have to it's you know a trust, they're asking us to trust their word, but we don't have any proof.

- So when the Times and the Herald broke this story this week about the club in Key Largo, the Ocean Reef Club.

Was it just luck that you got ahold of the information that this wealthy enclave got the vaccines?

- So we had some readers write in and say, you know these, I know people and there were people who are very close, let's just say, to the Ocean Reef Club and said that they had received vaccines.

So we started asking some questions, and we were able to get a copy of a newsletter that they had written on January 22nd.

Basically saying that more than 1200 people who live there had been vaccinated for at least the first dose, and they had sufficient supply to give everybody a second dose.

Now this particular clinic is associated with Baptist Health Care.

Baptist Health Care is the largest hospital chain in the southeast, and they have clinics all up and down the southeast coast.

But one of the important things is, at the same time, this particular clinic in the at the Ocean Reef Club was giving vaccinations, Baptist Health was also saying its supply was so short, it had to cancel appointments that had been made by the general public.

So it's raised a lot of questions, and I'm not saying that there is anything that has been done wrong, but we really have not been given answers.

- When Agriculture Commissioner Fried and some other Democrats there in Tallahassee call for a federal investigation.

Is there any reason to believe that the feds would have something to investigate?

- You know if, I think part of their complaint was, at the same time that the governor was doing all these vaccination outreach, his campaign was collecting money, or his political committee was collecting money.

And in the month of February alone, he raised $2.7 million.

There is no evidence that these campaign contributions were part of a pay for play scheme.

But that is the question that the Democrats are raising.

And I think it may be that, it's gonna take somebody who's got the powers of law enforcement to get answers if the Governor's Office and the Department of Health won't give them any.

- And that 2.7 million was a lot to raise so far away from the next election.

One more question that is, there's so many big issues in Tallahassee, what are you watching?

What's moving forward the fastest?

What do you think the public needs to pay attention to?

- So it's really there are things that are moving quickly.

They're doing some things that, you know just in the last week, they passed a bill relating to giving immunity to businesses for COVID liability claims.

But there's other things that are moving really quickly, and I think it's important for people to keep a look at, you mentioned at the top of the show the hurdles to vote by mail.

Also, there's movement for the way publicly, they're creating some new educational savings accounts that will be used for the public for people to use for private tuition, that could really reframe the way we finance public education in Florida.

And so those are really kind of big issues that I think will have long-term implications if they pass the way they're presented right now.

- Mary Ellen Klas, thanks a lot, it's always good to see you.

Thank you for coming on "Florida This Week".

- Good to be here, thank you.

(upbeat music) - Senate President Wilton Simpson is a Republican from District 10.

He's a Trilby Native, and he succeeded another Tampa Bay resident as Senate President Bill Galvano of Bradenton.

He runs an egg farm and an environmental-remediation company and Senate President Wilton Simpson, welcome back to "Florida This Week".

- Thank you for having me.

Rob, it's been a while and as you know, you know I'm busy we are now, but I'm happy to be back.

- I'm so glad you're here.

First of all, let me ask you about Nikki Fried, the Agriculture Commissioner and other Democrats up there Gary Farmer asking for investigation to the way the governor has distributed COVID-19 vaccines.

What do you think of that?

- You know it's really amazing, Rob, that we would even go down this road.

It's completely ridiculous and baseless.

And you know it's politics, it's Washington style politics.

The governor has done a tremendous job, making sure that our most vulnerable had access to the vaccine.

65 and up has been a great policy, you can see other states that are now trying to mimic our policies here.

The governor just announced in Pasco County a day before yesterday that we were now gonna go down to 50 and up for school teachers, law enforcement with the new vaccine that's out.

So we're getting more and more supply, and the governor has got a great plan.

And look, this is not by accident.

From the very beginning, we protected our most vulnerable, which is why Florida's numbers and look one death is too many, and I know we're just a little over 31,000, and that's horrible.

But relative to our other states, the State of Florida has done a great job in protecting his most vulnerable, and this governor has led that action, and anything short of that is ridiculous.

- And Senator, there's that nagging suspicion, though, that some people in wealthier zip codes have seen better treatment than others.

What do you make of that?

- Well, you know to that, I would say that, I know that the governor has worked with church organizations in African American neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods all over this state, it's been distributed widely distributed through supermarkets, whether it's Winn-Dixie or Publix or Walmart.

So this has been widely distributed.

If you live in a neighborhood where you have a lot of 65 year old and ups, the Governor's Office would love to hear from you, if we have not been to your neighborhood.

I have seen him in action firsthand, we get a report every morning saying what percentage of people in your neighborhood are vaccinated.

So if you look at Broward County for instance, it's well over 60% vaccinated for 65 year old and ups, that's all of them.

Broward County is a pretty blue area of the state.

And so Pasco County three days ago was only at 42%.

So I guess I could make the claim that the governor is prioritizing the Democrats in Broward County over a Republican county like Pasco.

That claim would also be ridiculous.

And so that's the reality there, Rob.

- So let me ask you about some of the legislation.

There is the proposal that the governor first made public about heightening the penalties on people that participate in protests that turned violent.

My understanding is that may be Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, who heads two important committees there in the Senate, may not be in favor of this.

What do you think the status is of the anti-riot bill?

- I think the status is that bill will certainly make it to the governor's desk this year.

I am not sure, and I said this earlier, but I'm not sure when protecting our law enforcement officers ever became a political football, doing the right thing people have, the people can peacefully protest.

All they want, no one is ever gonna object to that, we actually would support that 100% as all of our people with.

But when it comes to rioting, when it comes to burning and burning people's buildings, destroying property, and certainly, certainly attacking our law enforcement, we are going to enhance those penalties and make sure that people know that in Florida, that is unwelcome business.

And I believe that bill will pass off the senate floor.

And we will end up with a bill on the governor's desk that we can all be proud of.

- What happens if you're in a demonstration and somebody maybe one in 1000 commits a violent act, does it everybody then who participates in that demonstration have to suffer the consequences?

- Now that would not be accurate at all.

When you look at the demonstrators, if you go back to the June and July demonstrations and then turned into rioting, 98% of the people that were there were peacefully protesting.

There was nothing wrong with that, it was a very small group that was actually committing the crime and destroying property throughout other states, not so much in Florida, but throughout other states.

When you look at what happened January 6th through the same lens, same exact thing.

98% of those folks were there peacefully protesting and obviously 2% of them created the problem, we had there in Washington, both groups by the way of rioters, not protesters should be held responsible.

It was really nice to see that the media in January decided that they would be back on the side of law enforcement and law and order finally, the national media, it was a shame that when the rioting was going on in June and July they seem to call that peaceful protesting.

- We're done in the last 40 seconds, I have 10 more questions, I wish I could ask you, but what's your main priority as Senate President, you've got a lot of power this year.

Tell me what your main priority is to get passed in the session.

- The main priority, Rob, is real simple.

What I wanna do is give children that need to be adopted or in foster care the opportunity to get permanency in their lives much quicker.

The sooner we, if we can get a child by three or four years old into a permanent situation, they have an 80-year plus opportunity to have a quality of life other than they would not have been able to have.

And then number two of that I would say, which fits right into it is give parents more choices to educate their children and to have them make their choice to where they get their child educated.

And if you do those things, I think we can finally break generational poverty for once and for all and we can give parents the power to raise their children.

- Senator Wilton Simpson, thanks a lot for coming on "Florida This Week".

Great to see you.

- Thank you, good seeing you too.

(upbeat music) - Proposed legislation in Tallahassee would allow homeowners insurance companies to change the way they cover roofs that are more than 10 years old.

Senate Bill 76 proposed by Republican Jim Boyd, Bradenton would change the way a roof is evaluated by the insurance company.

Attorney Sean Shaw, founded the non-profit group, People Over Profits in 2019 to help fight against corporate influence and for the rights of everyday people.

He's a former state legislator from Tampa and made history in 2018, as for the Florida Democratic Party's first African American Nominee for Attorney General.

Sean Shaw, welcome back.

- Thank you, Rob, great to be here, as always.

- So let's talk about this bill that would change insurance and the way insurance deals with roofs.

What would it do and why are you concerned about it?

- Well, it would essentially, you wouldn't be able to get full price for your, you wouldn't get your roof replaced, it would be depreciated.

And an older roof you would essentially get what the roof had depreciated to, and I don't know what you're gonna do with a 50% depreciated roof check, you can't replace your roof with that.

You get insurance to replace your roof and replace things when you need them done.

I don't get insurance so that I get can get half a roof.

That's not what we do insurance for.

But you know I've been kind of dealing with insurance even before I got into the floor of the house.

And it's just shocking to me that the industry, always the sky is always falling.

Rates are always having to go up because of fraud or lawyers or claims or this and that.

I've never heard a year where the insurance industry says, you know what everything was all right, we're gonna lower rates, never.

You never hear the other side of that coin, you always hear the sky is falling, and it's every single year for some reason, it's always some boogeyman.

Sometimes it's lawyers, sometimes it's too many claims, sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that.

Well, another thing is, we always assume the best intentions from insurance companies up in Tallahassee.

But we always assume the worst intentions from people that make claims and people that defend people that make claims.

So it's just tough, and it's the same story every year.

- So this bill in your mind would be very dangerous to people that are living on fixed incomes, they've already paid off their house, and they pay their insurance every year.

But if they get hurricane damage, this bill could be a problem for them.

- If I've got a roof that's eight years old, and a hurricane messes it up to the point I need a new roof, my insurance company now is gonna give me a check that is going to be depreciated as to whatever an eight-year-old roof cost.

Now how am I gonna replace a roof with eight-year-old roof money?

That is not what I'm paying my premium for.

But that's why there's other things in here that it shortens the time that you can make a claim, it tries to go after lawyers as well, it's just every year there's some sort of legislation like this, and there's always a boogeyman, the consumers is always taken on the chin when it comes to insurance.

- I wanna ask you about the reports that the governor may have shown political favoritism in distributing vaccines around the state?

You think that's going to be a problem for the governor?

- The more I see about this, the more I'd be concerned if I was him, whether it's the Florida Keys, whether it's somewhere in Sarasota-Manatee, we keep seeing instances of very wealthy neighborhoods getting access.

And we also heard in the keys or somewhere in South Florida, they opened up a vaccination place in an African American neighborhood.

But guess who was coming in to get the shot, it was the wealthy people from down the street that were getting access to the actual shots, regardless of where the location was.

So I'm very concerned that these gated communities are getting access.

At a minimum, the governor needs to explain what's going on there.

But I think where there's smoke, there's fire, and there's enough of these instances of these wealthy enclaves getting access to the vaccine that, you know this is not vaccine by capitalism, this ought to be transparent, it ought to be equitable, it ought to be fair, and right now, it certainly doesn't seem like it.

- Sean Shaw, thanks for coming on "Florida This Week".

I wish we had more time but please come back.

- Always, thank you.

(upbeat music) - In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Orlando last week, and former President Donald Trump repeated false claims of election theft.

He also declared that, he is considering another presidential run in 2024.

Zac Anderson is the Political Editor at Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and he's been covering the events.

And Zach, welcome back to "Florida This Week".

- Thanks for having me.

- Let's take a look at the straw poll that was taken at CPAC last weekend.

And this has Donald Trump with a 55% preference among the people who attended to run for president again.

Then Ron DeSantis comes in with 21%, that's a pretty good showing, and our US Senator Rick Scott comes in with less than 1%.

Tell me what's your take on that poll?

- Well, two things, one that Trump obviously still has a lot of support among Republicans, You know this is you got to take the poll with a little bit of grain of salt because it is just a poll of people at one political conference.

So I mean, it's not like a representative slice of the Republican Party, but these are people who are very in tune, they're influencers, and you know this poll does get quite a bit of attention.

So it does show that obviously, Trump still has vote among republicans, and it shows that Ron DeSantis is having a bit of a moment here, right now.

You know he's been very aggressive in his rhetoric concerning the coronavirus pandemic and you know being very much against lockdowns, very much in favor of keeping things open, limiting restrictions on businesses, opposing a mask mandate here in Florida.

So it seems like that is resonating with conservative voters right now, with conservative activists.

You looked at the poll that shows that includes Trump, but they actually did a poll that didn't include Trump, and DeSantis was leading in that poll.

He was getting 43% with the South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem far behind him.

So he is having a bit of a political moment here, and it does seem to be based a lot around his Coronavirus policies.

- You and other reporters around the state have been pointing out though, that Ron DeSantis has pop-up vaccine programs around the state a lot of these programs end up going to wealthy communities.

And those wealthy communities also contain a lot of donors and supporters of Ron DeSantis.

Could it come back to haunt him, if it's shown that he's shown favoritism for the elites?

- Yeah, you know the governor does continue to face plenty of questions about his pandemic response, and if you look at it, you know public health professionals have questioned things like him not instituting a mask mandate, there are plenty of concerns that remain among you know a number of voters.

But maybe the biggest issue for him right now are these pop-up vaccine clinics, and whether the vaccines are being fairly distributed to people because that is something that people are watching very closely.

You know these vaccines are a hot commodity, they're a life saving drug, they're vitally important, and people want them to be handed out fairly, you know there's not enough vaccine to go around right now, the supply is getting better.

And we're seeing it ramp up more and more.

But you know especially early on, there was very limited vaccine and a ton of people who wanted this.

And so these pop-up clinics where certain communities got special access, were only residents in those communities, they were only residents and a handful of communities could get access to this vaccine.

And they were basically allowed to move to the front of the line while everybody else had to wait.

They've raised some questions, questions about whether the pop-up clinics have gone to communities that had political connections that were developed by donors to the governor or had other connections that allowed them to be favored to get these vaccines.

And that is a concern amongst a lot of people who want to see these vaccines distributed fairly, and everybody have an equal shot.

- Zach, one last question, we only have 40 seconds, but Rick Scott is in the bottom, either in a head-to-head matchup with Donald Trump or in an open field.

Rick Scott got very low numbers, he's got a very high profile, he's on Fox all the time, why such low numbers?

And we only have 30 seconds.

- Well, I think the pandemic is the big issue right now.

So voters are really paying attention to the governors who have much more control over pandemic policies.

You know Rick Scott, even though he is known here in Florida, I don't think he's nationally known as Governor DeSantis has become during this pandemic, but you can't underestimate Scott.

You know people have been doing that for a long time, and he's won three elections, he is very wealthy, he's used his money to get his name out there, and he certainly seems to be ambitious going forward.

So we'll see, it's quite possible that he could put himself in the mix regardless of where he stands right now.

- Zac Anderson, always great to see you, thanks for coming on the show.

- Thanks for having me.

(upbeat music) - Thanks for watching.

Your comments are always welcome, please write us at FTW@wedu.org.

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(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU, who's solely responsible for its content.

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