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

- [Host] Coming up right now in WEDU, the double hits from Helene and Milton reveal more problems with infrastructure, preparedness, and regulation.

- Well, I mean, I think the question is should there be more regulation or should there just be more common sense?

- What's next for the Rays' baseball stadium, and more on how the governor's administration is trying to push back against Amendments 3 and 4.

All this and more next on "Florida This Week."

(bright music) Welcome back.

Joining me on the panel this week, Craig Patrick is the Political Editor and Chief Investigative Reporter for Fox 13 News.

Deveron Gibbons is a businessman, vice chair, and trustee at St. Petersburg College and FAMU, and a Republican.

Mark Katches is the editor of The Tampa Bay Times.

Bob Buckhorn is the former Tampa mayor and a Democrat.

And Tara Newsom is an attorney and political science professor at St. Petersburg College.

Nice to see everybody.

Thank you for doing the program.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Well days after Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit Florida, the recovery is still slow in some areas.

Debris piled up, choking some streets as a shortage of crews and trucks created a backlog.

There's ongoing flooding in Pasco and Hernando counties, also in Seffner and Valrico in Eastern Hillsborough County, and Lakeland, where residents say the city pumping system failed to protect them from storm water and sewage.

- We have nowhere to live, and you guys are our only lifeline.

Our homes completely ruined.

Completely, completely, it's uninhabitable.

- So Bob, the first question is, is our storm water protection infrastructure strong enough for the threat that we're facing in the future?

And can we build it strong enough?

- I think the short answer is we could spend all the money that we had and not fix the problem.

I mean, I think we're dealing with the fact that this was a hundred year storm.

I think we are desperately in need of infrastructure investment in many of our cities.

The pipes and the stormwater system is literally a hundred years old, but a storm of this magnitude, and given the topography of where we live, it would've been impossible to stop in many cases what has occurred.

Now we've been making investments in Tampa for probably the last decade.

We've made significant financial investments that have made a difference.

Are we there yet?

Not even close.

Are there issues that occurred during this past storm, whether it was generator failures or pump failures or retention ponds that could have been prevented?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think in Forest Hills and some of the university area, that could have been prevented, I think it will be fixed.

But we need to understand that all the money in the world is not going to storm proof this community.

- So what's the answer if we can't- - I think the answer is incrementally you start making the improvements that you can to the existing system.

You upgrade it, you add to it.

But at the end of the day, we've gotta build a more resilient community.

We've gotta look at building codes and how they are applied in flood-prone areas.

We've gotta make sure that those who live in those floodplain areas pay the appropriate insurance to compensate for this, but to recognize that it's not gonna solve the problem.

- So Craig, is this the new normal because of climate change and can we build our, what do you think?

Can we build our way out of it?

- Well I'm not convinced it's a hundred year storm.

It may have been 100 years ago, but with the accelerating effects of climate change, it could be a five, 10, maybe a two year storm for all we know.

And it's not just that the storm water infrastructure is aging, it certainly is.

It also was not engineered in the first place to handle more than seven and a half inches of rain a day.

You combine that with the more intense rains and storms that we were seeing going well before the hurricanes to June in fact of this year.

And then you combine that with the fact that we have outdated flood maps in many parts of Florida and elsewhere from FEMA.

So people may not know they need flood insurance until it's too late, and those who do have flood insurance are getting heavily subsidized coverage to build and then rebuild and then rebuild again.

It's a confluence of problems that you have to take one bite at each one of them- - A lot of people are rebuilding their houses right in the same spot.

You said the FEMA maps are out of date.

I mean, you can't trust the FEMA maps these days because they are out of date.

Should we be rebuilding in the same spot?

- Well that's a question that Congress is gonna have to tackle on December 20th when you have a lapse in the national flood insurance program.

So the administration currently has proposed changes that include means testing of the costs that you pay for flood insurance, but also disqualifying people who have more than three losses of at least $10,000.

Well, think about that though for a minute.

You've had three storms this year in Debbie, Helene, and Milton.

You have a lot of people in Florida who may already have exhausted that.

So it is very complicated, but it's also a very big problem.

- So Rob, I agree with Craig and the mayor.

I think we have to have a comprehensive look regionally at infrastructure just like we did with water.

The mayor probably remembers that better than anybody else.

We took a regional approach to water because Jeb Bush and some other folks, Buckhorn, some other folks, were saying the next natural disaster is gonna be turning your tap on, there's gonna be no water.

We're gonna have to look at an infrastructure system that works totally for the region, and we're gonna have to look at how we store water.

And that happens overseas in Holland and in some other places.

We're gonna have to look worldwide to solve our water question.

- Item number one for the legislature when it meets next year?

- I think it could be.

It should be.

It should be definitely one of the issues that is a top priority.

- Okay, but Rob, you cannot place the burden on municipalities to cover the entire cost because we just don't have it.

- It's too expensive.

- We spent $200 million when I was there retrofitting the stormwater system in South Tampa.

Mayor Castor probably spent another $500 million.

We made progress.

I can't even imagine what South Tampa would've looked like had we not done that.

But it's expensive, and we need federal investment into infrastructure, which is exactly what President Biden did.

But we're still a long way from reaching our goal.

- Well a crane collapsed in downtown St. Petersburg during Hurricane Milton, leaving a gaping hole in an office building that houses several businesses, including the Tampa Bay Times.

Luckily, no one was injured, but the damage was extensive.

The day before, Mayor Ken Welch warned residents in the area that the cranes could topple in high winds.

However, as the Tampa Bay Times reports, in Florida, city leaders do not have the power to mandate how contractors prepare their cranes for a hurricane.

In fact, no one in the state does.

Here's what Governor DeSantis said about regulating cranes that are in the path of a hurricane.

- Well, I mean, I think the question is should there be more regulation or should there just be more common sense?

I mean, do we have to regulate everything?

I mean, I think most people take the cranes down, right?

I know Kevin, isn't that the standard practice?

I don't think we've had to mandate that.

- [Kevin] The building officials should do that.

- Yeah, and so you have building officials, you have other people that are there.

And so it's like, do you have to really kind of like crack down from the state to do it?

I would hope not.

And I think most of the time in Florida, that is handled very appropriately.

But I think it just takes a little bit of common sense.

- And Mark, the crane hit the building where The Times is located.

Was anybody injured?

That's my first question.

But the second question is, the governor says, do we have to regulate everything?

- Well, yeah, fortunately no one was in the building.

We're all out covering the storm.

But look, if you've got hundreds of tons of steel hoisted hundreds of feet above your head left to whirl around in hurricane winds, you'd think somebody would be out there trying to protect the public to make sure something bad doesn't happen.

The governor said that the common sense is that people take these cranes down.

Nobody took those cranes down.

Nowhere around Tampa Bay did cranes come down.

He also talks about the common sense solution.

Well common sense didn't prevail in this case, and who's to say it's gonna happen the next time?

Another key point, Rob, is that there's only one government agency that has any oversight over cranes, and that's OSHA, but only as it relates to crane operators and people who work on construction sites where cranes are located.

If you live in a building nearby or if you work in a building nearby, there's nobody there protecting you.

And I have to say here we are two weeks later, and I was just down there yesterday, it looks like a war zone on First Avenue.

- That's why I was gonna ask you, do the photos show the actual extent of the damage?

- They've been great, but they don't do it justice.

It's horrible to see what's happening there.

- What do you think about the governor essentially taking the Republican position that we don't really need to regulate business as much as we do, and we don't need to regulate this?

- You know, the public has a reasonable expectation for the state to help set the standards for public safety, especially during a hurricane.

But I find it really interesting that the governor doesn't wanna regulate the cranes, but he wants to regulate my body and has inserted himself into the whole discussion about bodily sovereignty with the abortion amendment.

So I don't think he's very believable in this way.

And certainly if his donors were related to wanting to regulate cranes, he might have a different interest.

- Craig, there's been a push in Tallahassee to take away power from local government to do any sort of regulation, that's been going on for years.

Do you think there's any will in Tallahassee to maybe regulate and say to crane operators, you gotta take them down before a storm?

- I think that preemption prevails.

Look, this is a case study.

You have a city in St. Petersburg that exists along one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the world to hurricane damage that also is going through a lot of vertical development.

So cities that say they may need more autonomy and are more attuned to particular issues of their community could say they should have that leeway.

But the prevailing sentiment in Tallahassee is one, not to regulate, and two, not to give those local communities those powers.

And the governor is right in saying that there should be more common sense, absolutely.

But the reason that we have safety laws and regulations is because common sense can be in short supply, from top-heavy toddler furniture and people who text and drive probably as we speak.

- Mark?

- Two weeks later here we are.

Not a single government agency is even investigating to get to the bottom of how that crane toppled over.

And I find that astonishing.

- It is.

All right, well another question raised by Hurricane Milton, what to do about Tropicana Field whose roof was destroyed?

Major League Baseball hopes to find the Tampa Bay Rays a temporary home near St. Petersburg, at least for the start of the 2025 season.

The fabric dome over the ballpark was shredded by Milton's winds, which exposed the metal support structure and electrical system to the elements.

So Deveron, first question, how bad is the damage to the dome, and what are the best options for the team?

- The damage is definitely bad.

I live probably 10, 12 blocks from there, and the damage is definitely bad.

I mean, you can literally see where it ripped some of the steel and some other things away.

I think the best alternative is exactly what's been said here is basically to find another home for the beginning of the season.

I'm not even sure we should even repair the stadium where they were talking about redeveloping that site.

It may make more sense to move forward with the demolition process and just find a home for the seasons forthcoming and move in the direction of getting the site redeveloped.

- Mark, do we have any idea what it's gonna cost to repair that roof if they attempted to repair the roof?

We don't know if it's repairable at this point.

- Yeah, no estimates yet.

But some people are saying it's a seven figure number just for the roof, just for the roof.

I got gotta say, I don't think that even if the city wants to repair the roof or fix Tropicana field that they're gonna have the money to do it.

Their insurance policy, one key insurance policy, they lowered from a hundred million dollars to a $25 million limit.

And the way it's set up, the deductible for that to get the $25 million is $22 million.

So I don't think the math works out for them repairing the roof.

You're not gonna be able to repair a roof with $3 million.

- And the roof had already outlived its recommended life.

I think the recommended life was 25 years.

It lasted about 34 years.

It lasted much longer than people thought it was gonna last.

- Yeah, the sad part is that for those who had tickets to the Rays Toronto Blue Jays game in the last game of the season may have seen the last game in Tropicana Field.

- Well the Tampa Bay Times reports that as of a week ago, local governments and utilities across the area had reported more than 160 spills and pollution events as a result of Hurricane Milton.

According to The Times, an estimated 68 million gallons of spilled pollution has been reported so far across seven counties, a number that is likely to go up as wastewater managers learn more.

So Craig, what's the impact on health, recreation, and tourism as a result of these pollution spills?

- Those particular spills, it's an open question.

It takes time, but it's part of an ongoing problem that is significant and conceivably harmful and deadly because what we're talking about here are blooms of cyanobacteria that ultimately spawn and breed from this nutrient pollution.

And they release some of the most powerful natural poisons on earth, among other things, microcystin, which is a liver toxin that's been connected to liver damage in people, and also a brain toxin, BMAA, that has been correlated at least to neurodegenerative diseases.

And what's particularly insidious about this is that unlike red tide, and this contributes to red tide as well, that's naturally occurring, but at least with red tide, you can smell it, you tear up, at least you know you're being exposed.

Here, you don't know perhaps until 10, 20 years later when it can have a very serious impact on your health.

So this is a very serious problem that's been flying under the radar for a long time.

And it's not just the wastewater discharges and spills, it's also the fertilizer runoff and leaking septic as well.

- And Bob, this goes back to what we talked about earlier, is it preventable?

And what do you think the impact is gonna be on health, on tourism, on recreation?

- It does get back to what we talked about earlier.

It's an infrastructure problem, it's a capacity problem, it's a topography problem, it's a financial problem.

I mean we have what's called the community investment tax on the ballot coming up in two weeks, I could not think- - In Hillsborough County?

- In Hillsborough County.

I could not think of a better reason to vote for the continuation of that tax because much of that money will be invested in infrastructure.

We had similar spills going back during Irma and some of the other storms because of generator failures at our pump stations, capacity in our system, high tides that didn't allow the water to be pumped out to the bay.

So it flooded some of our stormwater systems.

We saw it again in Forest Hills and the university area this past storm.

It's money, money, money.

You're not gonna fix it all.

There will be storms on occasion that will caused the overflow, but it's a financial situation that local governments are not equipped to handle because it's just too much.

- Deveron, this is a chronic problem in St. Petersburg.

- Chronic problem in St. Petersburg.

Infrastructure is an issue.

We don't have enough storm water treatment facilities in St. Petersburg, and when you turn one off, this is what happens.

Which is why I say we have to go back to looking at this infrastructure issue as a regional issue and not because we're gonna have to figure out how to do certain things together, but we're never gonna make it.

- Okay, well the Tampa Bay Times reports that the lawyer who sent cease and desist letters that threatened Florida TV stations with criminal penalties if they aired a political ad backing the abortion rights amendment says he did not write those letters.

Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson said he was given pre-written letters from Governor DeSantis's lawyers on October 3rd and told to send them under his own name.

The letters set off a firestorm that led to a federal judge last week ordering the state not to threaten any more TV stations.

Wilson abruptly quit on October 10th.

And this past Tuesday, Governor DeSantis made this claim about Amendment 4.

- [DeSantis] So you will have late term abortions greenlit and performed by non-doctors as a matter of constitutional right if this were to pass.

- So the governor's office is complaining about inaccurate information.

I wonder about what the governor said there, Tara, where he says that you're gonna have people that are really not healthcare experts being able to okay a late term abortion.

- Rob, let's unpack this.

This is like a masterclass in misdirection, maybe even election interference.

And so we really have to look at what Mark Walker said, the district judge, "It's the First Amendment, stupid."

And that goes to of course the lawyer that said, "Hey, I don't wanna send any more of these letters."

And he was right of course, both Republicans and Democrats believe in the US constitution's First Amendment protection of speech and press.

And so he was right to bring that up, right?

But when it comes to the governor and the Florida Republicans' desire to sort of disorient us in our constitutional amendments, we've never seen anything like this.

The governor has directed six state agencies, $20 million, in misdirecting and misinformation about the constitutional amendments.

Remember, this is the best form of direct democracy that we have.

We try to teach our students at St. P College all about getting involved, all about expressing themselves.

The state of Florida citizens have voted they want to vote on these initiatives, and he's going in a flagrant abuse of Florida statute that very specifically says that you cannot in your official capacity interfere or influence an election.

And so it's really curious to me to see how his legacy won't be won of costing the state of Florida and its voters quite a bit of money.

And what's interesting is a couple years ago, The Times put out this amazing report about the culture wars and that they were already costing Florida voters $16 million.

Well if we add onto that the cost of litigation to Disney at $800 an hour and all the other economic costs because people don't want to come here because it's a hostile environment to people of color, hostile to women, hostile to LGBTQ, the DeSantis administration might be go down as one of the most costliest to the state of Florida.

- You say it's illegal, but a judge has already heard a case challenging the legality of this use of state funds and the judge dismissed the case.

- Well what we're seeing is that sometimes, justice depends on who's evaluating it, and I think that appeal will reveal something much different.

- Craig, real quickly, can you imagine in your experience in TV, has any politician gone after a TV station for airing political ads?

- In the past, not that I can recall, but this is not the past.

The world has changed.

I would say everything we've talked about in the last two or three minutes are very on brand in the politics and the government and the times in which we live.

I would be surprised if something like this did not occur.

You cannot take politics out of politics.

That's always been the case.

But especially now in the times in which we live, I think we're going to see more and more insertion of government into trying to purvey a certain point of view.

- Let me bring it back to this point.

We don't know how many Republicans are really MAGA Republicans, and so this might dramatically affect the ballot.

There's a lot of people who haven't voted yet and they might take a look at this kind of political posturing and say that's not the Republican party of limited government.

That's not the party of fiscal responsibility.

And they might just shift their vote.

And there's a lot of Republican campaigns out there that need every vote like Rick Scott, and this might dramatically affect them.

- All right, well the DeSantis administration is also putting out information to try to lower support for Amendment 3.

That amendment would legalize recreational marijuana.

He's enlisted his wife, Polk County sheriff, Grady Judd, and the State's Department of Health as part of that effort.

DeSantis is running into some opposition within his own political party however.

Donald Trump has endorsed the recreational marijuana campaign.

So has Republican State Senator Joe Gruters of Sarasota.

- It's about safety, it's about making sure that people could have access to a safe product.

And the more, if we pass this, it's safety, it's decriminalization.

16,000 people were arrested last year here in the state of Florida on minor possession of marijuana.

It's long overdue that we get rid of that, and ultimately as the legislature, we will control the time, place, and manner that this passes.

- So Deveron, the GOP is split.

Trump and Joe Gruters are on one side, and the governor's on the other side.

Which side is bigger within the Republican party, the pro recreational marijuana side or the anti recreational marijuana?

- Rob, the way I'd answer that question is I don't know the answer to that question, but I will tell you that the question lies in the hands of the people that I trust, and that's the people and the citizens of Florida, they're very smart, they know what they want, and I think we'll see what happens on the ballot.

And I think if I had to sit down and quarterback how this has gone, I don't think I would let it lie anywhere else except for in the hands of the citizens.

- You think it's gonna pass?

- I think it's gonna be close.

I think it's a very close issue.

- All right, well speaking of elections, early voting began this week across Florida, and Republicans so far are leading when it comes to the number of people showing up in person to early vote.

So let's ask the question, Craig, let's start with you.

What's your opinion about what do these numbers mean when we see Republicans have this big advantage compared to previous years with early voting?

- I think it means a couple of things.

First off, there aren't many late deciders, so people aren't thinking about which way they're gonna vote at this point.

Most have locked in, so why not go ahead and vote now?

That holds for both parties.

That's part of it.

Maybe they're fearing, perhaps God forbid, another hurricane, let's hope we don't have that.

But maybe they're displaced, they better get this out of the way now.

And I think the biggest factor is that President Trump in 2020 worked very hard to dissuade Republicans from voting early by mail and otherwise, in effect, that's not happening as much this time around.

And so I think we're just getting back to the patterns that existed before the times of the pandemic.

And remember that Republicans in Florida long had the advantage in mail-in voting and voting early.

It just switched for a little while.

Now it seems to be reverting back.

- Deveron, what's your take on these numbers?

- Well, I think honestly, I think Craig's right on point.

I think that there's gonna be a massive push, and the Republican party knows that they have to get back to their base where there had always been folks that mailed in early ballots and got out early.

I think that they're trying to close that gap.

The Democrats have completely outperformed in a lot of counties across the state of Florida.

And if we don't get out, I think you'll see this red, they're saying Florida's red, I think you're gonna see it turn purple if we don't get smart about, I mean the Republican party getting smart about getting back to the basics.

We had gotten cute for a while.

We need to really just get back to going to vote.

- Tara, do these numbers say anything to you about, for instance, the US Senate race or the ballot amendments?

- You know, I think one of the things that's not revealing is about the younger voter, we're talking to Republicans and Democrats, but they haven't been reporting is that we have a huge push for young voters coming out and they're making up 44% of the electorate.

And so the more we see these young voters come out and flex, some of them have become undecided, they haven't necessarily said an R or a D. And I think that big part of the electorate is gonna be deciding the election.

- All right, Bob, what's your take on this?

- I think what Craig said is absolutely right, but I also think the fact that Florida is not in play means that the resources here are not being deployed at the ground level that they have been historically when there were huge pushes for early vote, absentee vote, and day of voting.

So on both Democratic and Republican side, the money's not there, the sense of urgency's not there.

And so you're not seeing what you would normally see in a presidential election, which is people on the ground knocking on doors.

And so Republicans are going back to what they used to do so well, which is gettting there early.

The key will be whether the Democrats on game day, on election day turn out like they usually do.

- And Mark?

- Well, Craig pointed out that in 2020, this was not what the Republicans were asking voters to do.

They were very skeptical of early voting, and now there's been a definite push.

Does that show enthusiasm or is it just following the playbook that their leadership has asked them to follow?

We'll find out on November 5th.

- Well we certainly will.

Well thank you all for a great discussion.

That's it for us.

Thanks to our guests, Craig Patrick, Deveron Gibbons, Tara Newsom, Bob Buckhorn, and Mark Katches.

If you have comments about this program, please send them to us at ftw@wedu.org.

Our show is now available as a podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and a safe Halloween.

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