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

- Coming up next, the whistleblower who revealed the DeSantis administration's plans for the state park system has been fired.

Ben Sasse, who is stepping down as president of the University of Florida, will get a million dollars salary for the next five years.

Democrats start a pro-abortion rights national bus tour in South Florida, and unions are seeing a rapid decline in the state in the wake of legislation from Tallahassee.

All this and more right now on Florida this week.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

Joining us on the panel this week, Stanley Gray is the former president of the Hillsborough County Urban League and is currently a political independent.

Maya Brown is a political consultant and a democrat.

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

And Carlos Guillermo Smith is the Florida State Senate elect Senator Elect for Florida District 17 in the Orlando area, and a senior policy advisor for Equality Florida and a Democrat.

Nice to have all of you on the panel.

Thank you for doing the show.

Well, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee who leaked the information about the state's plans to build golf courses, large hotels, pickleball courts, and more at 9 State parks has been fired.

James Gaddis tells the Tampa Bay Times that his actions were not political and that there were two main reasons he chose to speak out.

First, the rushed secrecy that was behind the park plans and the vast environmental destruction that would be caused if they were to be completed.

Gaddis said the directive for park changes came straight from Florida.

Governor Ron DeSantis office.

According to his firing notice, the state is firing Gaddis over conduct on becoming a public employee, violation of law or department rules, negligence and misconduct.

Without Gaddis leaking the information, there would've been little advance notice of the state's plans, news of the proposals to develop and change the state parks, including - in Pinellas and the Hillsborough River State Park brought massive criticism from park users, environmentalists, democrats, and even some top Republicans.

So, Carlos, let's start with you.

How much damage did this do to Governor DeSantis?

- Well, a lot of damage has been sustained after we saw Ron DeSantis back down from his corrupt plan to pave over our state parks with golf courses and hotels.

The reality is, is that Ron DeSantis got caught by this whistleblower trying to help enrich his cronies by exploiting our state parks.

But the reality is here that the timing of this scandal that Ron DeSantis has been the center of came right after the August 20 local and primary elections where a number, an overwhelming number of his endorsed candidates, especially for school board across the state, including in Pinellas and Hillsborough County just totally bombed voters, rejected his candidates who were obsessed and focused with culture wars, and when you see the bipartisan opposition to these plans to pave over our state parks, not only by Democrats, but by our Senate president Kathleen Pomo, cabinet member Agriculture commissioner Wilton Simpson, that is further evidence that Ron DeSantis power over the GOP and Republicans is really a waning after his presidential campaign failed and voters just summarily rejected his candidates during the August 20th primaries.

- Stanley, were you surprised that the uproar out of the public and do you agree with Carlos that this really sets back Governor DeSantis power over the state?

- Well, I do, but I guess I look at it from a little different vantage point.

I think that right now being that this is his last term, he's working on his legacy and his legacy is really becoming one of untruths and it seems like only when he gets caught, his first mode of action is to back away.

I didn't know anything about that.

Well, I kind of don't believe that, and I don't know exactly to the extent, but I would like to know as we continue to investigate this, how much Tiger Wood and how much Nicholas were paid for their consulting fees.

- Jack Nicholas, lemme put something up on the screen regarding what you just said.

This is what Governor DeSantis said last week.

He said that the proposal to put golf courses in Florida State Parks was something that was leaked.

A lot of that stuff he said was half baked and not ready for prime time.

But PolitiFact says that the department's attempted public rollout shows this proposal was in its final stages, and PolitiFact says that the governor's statement was mostly false.

So Deveron the governor's reputation, what would you say?

How has it been affected?

- Well, I have a huge respect for our Senator elect and also for Stanley.

I would have to respectfully disagree.

When plans are half-baked, first of all, remember this is one side of this story that was in the newspaper from this employee, this former employee, and then the governor made his statement.

And I will tell you, I've been on the other side of that PolitiFact, right?

They got it totally wrong on something related to me personally.

So, I mean, you have to take in all the facts and I think that we don't have all the facts and to make a rush to judgment on what's really happening and to say that this one thing or one particular piece of something related to the state park system is gonna destroy a person's reputation.

We're going too far too fast.

I will tell you that environmentalists are right.

We have people come to Florida to live, work, and play, and especially in our state parks and all the other things.

They love our beaches and other things, so we do need to protect them.

But I think we're just being a little bit hasty in terms of saying a person's reputation and elections were decided because of this one particular piece.

- So Governor DeSantis - We want to see a legislative investigation in that case, that's for sure, because we need to follow the money to see exactly what's behind this corrupt plan.

- Stanley.

Well, and I kind of agree with what you're saying.

I don't think that anyone is ready to make a decision in concrete yet.

And as I said, I think this is just another thing that paints a legacy of untruths.

I do believe it needs to be looked into.

And I also believe the top priority needs to be that would kind of color the whole investigation is to find out how much Tiger Woods and Jack Nicholas were paid for the consulting piece.

I think that will give a true light on the situation.

- Well, there's another number out there I want to ask you about.

Gaddis, who's the whistleblower, had put up a GoFundMe page and said he wanted to raise $10,000 to help with his childcare and other expenses and make a transition to a new job.

He's already raised more than $200,000 on his GoFundMe page.

What does that say about people's concern for the environment here in Florida?

- Listen, I think that it was very clear, and just to push back a little bit on the reputation piece that Deveron said, I can recall when Governor DeSantis was first elected, people thought that he was gonna be a moderate governor because of his commitment to environmentalism.

And so now we see four years later when it is politically convenient for him to, like the senator said, help his business cronies, maybe make some more money actually be in complete opposition to what we thought he was going to stand for.

So I think it is, one, indicative of the fact that he is completely vindictive and he will enact his vengeance on whoever is in opposition to him.

And it is unfortunate that he had to get fired and then result to a GoFundMe page to just sustain and take care of his bills.

But I think that many other Floridians who are having issues paying their bills are probably going to result in having to do the same thing.

- All right, well, Ben Sasse, who is stepping down from his job as president of the University of Florida, is holding onto his big paycheck.

Sasse, who announces resignation last month because of his wife's health problems, will still be paid a million dollars a year until February of 2028 unless he resigns or changes jobs.

His contract states that he can continue to draw big salary because of his continuing responsibilities with the university, including serving as president of emeritus, professor, and an external advisor to the board of trustees.

Sasse has faced criticism for lavish spending during his two-year tenure.

A student-run newspaper found that in his first year as president, the university spent $17 million, that's 11 million more than the year before.

Also, Sasse reportedly hired many of his former staff members from his time as a US senator.

They were paid much larger salaries than the people they replaced and were able to work from home in places like Washington DC.

So Deveron, can the university trustees defend this million dollar salary for the next four years?

- You know, last time I was on the show, I think we were talking about Palestine tee times ago.

We were talking about Palestine and I used Ben Sasse's letter.

I'm a big Ben Sasse fan, I think he's a good guy.

I think this is a huge mistake, I think this happens a lot of times.

People get in positions of power and they tend to overcompensate or try to get their folks in place.

Me being on FAMU's board, St. Pete College and Bethune Cookman in the state of Florida, I get it.

But at the same time, I think you have to be able to control spend.

This is the taxpayer's dollars and we have to be very careful about how we spend the taxpayer's dollars.

And we have to be mindful that folks are struggling, as Maya said earlier, very much struggling in the state of Florida to make ends meet.

And we're spending $7.2 million to hire consultants.

The salary, I can't argue with because we have done it for so long with so many universities in the State of Florida.

I mean, even at our own university at FAMU, Dr. Robinson will be going on sabbatical for a year.

He'll get paid his normal salary and then he'll come back to the research department and be a distinguished professor.

That is kind of the norm for that position.

And it was negotiated.

I mean, I wish the board had done something different.

But in this particular case, I don't think you can argue with the fact that he's going to be paid that unless they wanna do something different or the legislature wants to do something different.

But if you look over history and time, Rob, this is something that has been typically done with presidents.

- Carlos, what do you think about this?

- I think we certainly can argue about whether these exorbitant government salaries for these Republican appointees is an appropriate use of taxpayer money.

Whether it's these lucrative government salaries, whether it's a right-wing takeover of Disney like what happened a couple of years ago, or whether it's the plan we just discussed to pave over our state parks with golf courses.

Everywhere you look in the DeSantis administration, his corrupt cronies are using government to enrich themselves.

And this is just the latest in a long list of Republican appointees and government positions in Florida that are just making absurd amounts of money.

Look at Richard Corcoran over at New College who's basically managing an institution that has the student population of a local middle school, and yet he's making over a million dollars in salary and benefits.

They're just using government to enrich themselves.

It has to stop.

And I know that there's some accountability that needs to come in the next legislative session.

- All right, so how do you do that accountability?

Is it up to the legislature to look into these salaries?

- Well, absolutely, and what the legislature should stop doing, which I think they're in a position to do next session, is to stop rubber stamping these appointments.

You know, in the Florida Senate, we actually do confirm many of these government appointees.

We need to have more oversight.

And as we see Governor DeSantis is continuing to lose his clout with this Republican super majority in Tallahassee, which may change after the November elections.

I think we're gonna see more of that accountability.

- Okay.

I wanna hear from everybody, but, Deveron, respond to what Carlos just said - I would just respond to that by saying you can't say that it's all Republicans.

I mean, I don't think Larry Robinson was a Republican.

So this is a problem in the university system as a whole.

It's a contracts issue.

- [Rob] Are we overpaying our presidents?

We may be overpaying them, but let's not get caught up on saying it's a Republican issue.

It is an issue of contracts.

- Stanley and then Maya.

- Well, I think there's two issues.

I do believe that there is a taint of Republicanism in this, but I think there's a bigger problem, and I do think our legislation is not doing their job.

I mean, just to give you an example, you look at New college, they have under 900 students and his base pay is 900,000.

You look at FAM, they have under 8,000 students, his base pay is 400.

Again, equity needs to be into this.

Okay.

Now, there needs to be some kind of like a range, a salary range based upon the size of the school, the colleges within the universities.

But right now, it seems to be very subjective.

And when you're subjective, you can kind of lend to titles to whatever you want to, to a Republican part problem, democratic problem.

- Maya, let's bring you in on this.

What do you think?

- You know, I think it's interesting that we are framing this in terms of partisanship because we wouldn't be here having this conversation about university presidents, but for the fact that we changed how university presidents in the selection process actually takes place in the state of Florida.

So folks like Dr. Robinson and folks who have advanced degrees who are qualified to serve in these positions, we haven't had this analysis or questions whether or not they should get these salaries previously, but for the fact that the governor and his Republican cadre changed the process, made it a shadow process to make sure that Ben Sasee, a senator for somewhere else to come down and lead the University of Florida.

So this is a problem that I think we wouldn't be here, but for the fact that this is partisanship.

- And, as you said, there's much more secrecy in the process of selecting these college presidents than there has been before.

- [Deveron] Go ahead, Rob.

- Okay, on Tuesday.

- [Deveron] We'll come back.

Democrats launched a 50-stop national reproductive, freedom bus tour starting in West Palm Beach, near former president Donald Trump's home.

The Kamala Harris campaign said reproductive rights storytellers will join campaign surrogates along the route to help show the difference between her and Trump's policies.

Women's reproductive rights are a key voter issue, especially for suburban women and have been a major issue since the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed abortion rights for 50 years.

Former President Trump's position on abortion has become more cloudy in the past week.

He says he will vote against the abortion rights amendment that's on the Florida ballot this November, but he also said current Florida law outlawing abortion after just six weeks of pregnancy is too short.

Maya, does the abortion issue give Democrats any cause for hope that they might win some other down ballot races here in Florida or even the presidential race?

- I mean, we've seen in election cycle after election cycle when folks are in lockstep with the majority of Americans and Floridians on the issue of reproductive access that these folks win.

Tom Keen, we saw it also in the Jacksonville mayoral race.

Right?

And I think that that's gonna show up on the November 5th election results.

Folks believe that the six week ban is too extreme.

And now we even see that former President Trump found himself in a little kerfuffle because he first said that this amendment was something that he was considering and then had to quickly walk it back because again, he is seeing the writing on the walls that this ban is way, way too restrictive and that folks want to make sure that government interference is out of our healthcare decisions.

- Carlos, do Democrats have a shot at maybe making some surprises in the November elections because of the issue of abortions on the ballot?

- Absolutely.

I mean, this is a issue that crosses party lines.

We see an overwhelming majority of Floridians oppose the extreme six-week abortion ban in Florida that was made possible because of former President Donald Trump.

You know, I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you to hear that he's going to oppose Amendment 4 to keep this extreme abortion plan in place.

And the reason you see this waffling from Donald Trump on this issue is because he doesn't stand for anything, but himself.

He knows that this extreme abortion ban is extremely unpopular in the state of Florida.

And now Republicans are doing everything they can, whether it be election interference with the petition signatures that have already been verified, or the use of state resources, taxpayer resources to oppose Amendment 4.

They're doing everything that they can to try to stop it, but ultimately, I don't think it's gonna work.

We're gonna vote yes on Amendment 4.

We're gonna overturn this extreme six-week abortion ban and we're gonna restore freedom for all Floridians.

- So, Deveron, is there a ripple effect for Democrats?

Do Democrats pick up any seats because abortion's on the ballot?

- Rob, thanks.

I mean, I love the enthusiasm that Maya and the senator elect have, but this is a red state.

It will be red on November 5th.

- There was a poll out this week from Emerson College in the Hill Newspaper.

They said that MacArthur Powell is within one percentage point of Rick Scott in the US Senate race.

I've talked to Republicans experts and they say Scott's gonna blow MacArthur Powell out of the water.

- I don't know about a blowout but I can tell you this, Rick Scott's not afraid of that, number one.

And number two, look at every race he's had.

It's come down to a razor thin margin where he's won.

- And she says this is the first time he's on during presidential year, so the turnout's gonna be bigger.

- One thing that I know about Rick Scott, whether you like him or not, he is a very responsive guy.

I think if you talk to people all across the state, he's everywhere.

That's number one.

Number two is, the other thing is he will spend as much as he needs to spend to win.

- [Rob] And he's got the money.

- And he has the money.

- Yeah.

All right.

- Listen, if I had millions of dollars in my bank account to go up on TV for the last week, I think we'd be in the same position as Rick Scott.

- Okay.

More than 63,000 public employees across Florida have had their labor unions de-certified and closed down by the state since a sweeping anti-union law went into effect last year.

WLRN Public Radio reports 54 public sector unions statewide have been legally terminated because they do not meet requirements of the new state law.

The blow to labor in Florida has affected workers' ability to collectively bargain in every corner of the state.

Everyone from municipal employees of the small city of DeFuniak Springs in the Florida Panhandle to custodial staff and adjunct professors at large state universities and Orlando airport workers have lost their union representation.

Senate Bill 256 passed in 2023 and was signed by Governor DeSantis.

It requires public labor unions in Florida to have at least 60% of members paying dues in order for a union to be recognized.

Previously, there was no dues threshold for the vast majority of public sector unions.

The new law also bans government employers from deducting union dues from workers' paychecks.

Police and firefighters unions are exempt from the new state law.

- Stanley, is this new law a good one?

- I'm not necessarily a pro-union individual.

However, I have worked in represented environments probably for over 10 years.

And one of the things that I learned that I truly believe is that if you have a union, you need to have good union relations.

And I believe that this new legislation is going against that.

And I think it's gonna be, maybe I'm extrapolating too much, but one of our biggest challenges in the state is education.

And I see that this is another, to me, an indirect way that you can affect the public school system.

- How so?

- Well, the problem is is that you're degrading the environment, the work environment.

You only have so much money that's brought in for education.

Now you siphon off for charter schools, now you siphon off for increased security, now you siphon off for facilities.

And so what's gonna happen is the public schools are gonna have less money to operate on, and to decertify their union or even to think about that, now you're talking about the working conditions of your teachers.

I believe that just by principle, this is the wrong thing to do.

- Carlos, what was behind this law?

What do you think was behind the passage of this law?

- Well, I'd like to wish a happy belated Labor Day to everyone except the union busters in Tallahassee that passed this law.

This law was meant to bust the unions.

It was meant to retaliate against the teachers' unions and many others that traditionally support Democrats in elections through campaign contributions.

That's why police and fire unions were carved out of this law.

They were exempt, which exposes the motivation behind this law.

And what we see now is this is totally out of sync with the voters.

We know recent polling has shown that a majority of Americans support labor unions, that's 77% of Americans.

And it's not hard to understand why Floridians want the freedom to organize.

They know that their unions are gonna fight for better benefits and better wages, and they want to secure that freedom to be able to get ahead, especially in Florida where we're seeing inflation continues to be a problem in our state compared with other states.

And we're seeing soaring costs, and having better wages and better benefits, which our unions fight for is something that will help put more money in workers' pockets.

- Okay.

Well, before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

And, Stanley, let's start with you.

Your other big story of the week.

- I talked about it a little bit, but I really do think that there's time to do an adverse impact study with respect to what we're paying the heads of our universities.

I think that if you looked at it by the number of students, the minority representation in those students, I think you're gonna find a negative trend.

- Okay, Maya, your other big story of the week.

- Listen, I don't know if you all have seen, but the Agency for Healthcare Administration just announced a webpage on its official government site that talks about the current status of abortion laws in Florida, and then illegally also opposes Amendment 4.

And so I think that's something that folks should pay attention to and also speak up about and push back on.

- All right, Deveron, your other big story.

- Well, if you remember the last time I was here, I talked about the folks that are on the St. Pete City Council voting for the Ray Stadium, that they probably never get elected again.

Well, we see on the heels of that, these big bonuses that were given to staff.

I would tell you that, just keep looking.

I think we're gonna see another three or four stories out of that.

Maybe some folks being in pen stripes.

- Okay, Carlos, your other big story.

- Well, surprise, surprise.

Governor DeSantis is again attacking LGBTQ people.

This time he has bullied Visit Florida into taking down their welcome page for LGBTQ tourists in the state.

Ultimately, we know that voters are growing tired of these culture wars.

They're tired of his politics of division and hatred, and they're gonna be voting for something better in November.

- All right, now I have a story.

It's all about the heavy rain we've had in the Tampa Bay and Sarasota areas in the last few weeks.

September is always a rainy month, but climate change is making it worse.

This week neighborhoods that rarely have had trouble are seeing larger and larger pools of standing water or large scale developments in an aging storm sewer system are aggravating the situation for many residents.

Neighborhood flooding is becoming more common and we need to address the problems of disappearing green space, spaces that absorb the extra water and global warming, which for years, Tallahassee has tried to make us believe does not exist.

That's it for us this week.

Thanks to our panelist, Stanley Gray, Maya Brown, Deveron Gibbons, and Carlos Guillermo Smith.

And thank you for watching.

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

Check out this show and more in our WEDU PBS YouTube channel.

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

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