POD 982: Feeling Good but Taking Nothing for Granted

This is the story of the one. The one who keeps multiple buildings running smoothly day after day. Plumbing that flows, HVAC that hums, cleaning supplies that keep surfaces sparkling. That's why she counts on Granger. With easy reordering online and 24-7 support, Granger helps her keep the product she needs on hand. So shelves stay stocked, and buildings stay ready. Call 1,800 Granger, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger. For the ones who get it done. From Pennsylvania Avenue to Main Street, Scott Innes tackles the hot topics like only he can. It's time for Annes Says. He's the frontrunner to become Florida's next governor. I talk with him coming up. Welcome, everybody, to the Inez Says podcast. I am, Scott Innes. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. You can find the podcast wherever you get them, Spotify, Apple Podcast, right there on the front page of the WDBO app and WDBO.com. And please join me for Orlando's Morning News with Scott Inez 5 to 9 a.m every weekday. Right there at WDBO 107.3 FM and AM 580 streamers right there in the WDBO app. Well, here we are less than one week away from the Florida primary. And the odds on fave, at least right now, to become Florida's next governor is U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds. I talk with Congressman Donald's in this edition of the Inez Says podcast. The polls say that you're the leader in the Republican field. And overall, the lead has shrunk a little bit according to some polls out there. But how are you feeling, Congressman? How are you feeling one week out from Election Day here? We feel good, but take nothing for granted. You know, our teams are all across the state. Get out the vote. Operations are happening right now. We've knocked over 450,000 doors in the primary campaign to earn the Republican nomination. I was in the panhandle yesterday. I was in Ascambia County. Okalusa County and Bay County. So for people who may not know, that's Pensacola, Knightsville, and Panama City Beach. And so we've been crisscrossing the state talking to voters all across Florida. And it's about affordability. It's about pushing down insurance costs, making it cheaper to build housing in our state by reforming government operations internally. Obviously, the tax amendments on the ballot, we'll see what the voters do with that. But we want to have a goal of pushing down property taxes in our state and getting that done for people, eliminating homestead altogether if we can make the math work. But it's also about the quality of life. People love Florida. We want to make sure that the quality of life of Florida continues while we have to balance the growth that is coming to our state because we're the best state in the country based on common sense conservative policy. And that's what's made us the best. We're going to continue doing that while making sure we prepare for our future. It's a refrain for you, especially out there on the campaign trail and with your ads, cut property taxes, lower insurance rates, slash the cost of housing. How do you plan on doing that as governor? I mean, you mentioned the quality of life. You mentioned affordability, and I'm getting that a lot.

from politicians out there. Affordability seems to be the number one topic. What's the plan to tackle that, Congressman? Well, first, when it comes to property and casualty insurance, we have to reform the regulatory side of Florida's insurance market. I chaired the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee when I was in the Florida House. I spent 17 years of my professional career in finance before I got into politics. And so there are regulatory changes in Florida's catastrophe fund that can be made. And when looking at the data, we can push down insurance costs 20 to 25% in our state. When it comes to housing, 30% of the cost of building a new home is government permitting costs and government permitting timelines. Time is money, and money is expensive. You talk to any contractor, any developer, when they're waiting for government to give them an answer to actually construct the building, that dead time is not free. It actually increases the cost of capital on housing, on multifamily units, apartment buildings, commercial centers, road construction, it increases the cost of longer government waits to say, okay, go build it. So we want to do is modernize permitting and planning in our state. We want to help local governments modernize their operations as well. So you can streamline that process and also push down the cost of construction, the cost of these timelines, push those down and decrease the cost of construction. You decrease construction costs in your state. You're directly hitting replacement costs in people's insurance policies. So if you can get the premium side down and get the replacement cost side down, now you're really pushing down insurance costs in our state. One of other things we want to do in health care, we want to have full price transparency. We are going to have a policy of hospitals and doctors' offices will have to post the real cash price for the top 20 services that they provide. Price transparency is how you end up stabilizing prices in healthcare. If nobody knows what anything costs and they just go, then how are you going to know what's real and what's not when you get the bill coming to your house? So we want real price transparency. We believe these are some of the... common-sense solutions, economic solutions that will stabilize pricing when it comes to health care, lower costs when it comes to property insurance and the cost of housing. And property taxes, it kind of go hand in hand to what you're talking about. It's another major issue that I'm hearing a lot, you know, people talking about their property taxes. I know we will have a potential amendment on the ballot this November. How does that potential amendment look to you, Congressman? Well, I support the amendment because people need relief. The homestead exemption hasn't been increased in our state in more than 15 years, but we all know property values have gone up in our state over the last 15 years. Also, local governments, what they should have done when property values were increasing right during COVID and after, because everybody was buying houses here because we were open and we were free, what they should have done is going to a rollback rate in their local millage. They didn't do that.

They told our citizens that, hey, we're not raising taxes, but property values were shooting up. And so local governments were taking those excess dollars. And so people now are stressed. They're strapped. So we need to actually have some common sense reforms to the overall market. My position is whether the amendment passes or fails in our Constitution every 20 years is the Tax and Budget Reform Commission. We are going to use that commission. to study all taxes and fees in Florida. We're going to have a goal of eliminating homestead property taxes through that commission. And if we can't get to a full elimination of homestead property taxes, we want to be able to provide real relief to seniors on fixed income and working families in our state. Because if you're a young family, police officer, nurse, teacher and your property tax bills are going up, that makes it harder for you to be able to afford Florida and build the Florida dream for yourself. Likewise, if you're a retiree, you've lived in Florida for 10 years or so and you see your property tax bills continuing to go up, you didn't plan for that. You plan for principal and interest. You didn't plan that taxes and insurance. we're going to be higher than principle and interest. So we have to make sure that we bring real relief for the people of Florida. An accusation by one of your Republican opponents, James Fishback last week, claiming DOJ is investigating you for alleged sex trafficking claims. How do you respond to that accusation, Congressman? First of all, it's completely false. It's BS. The Department of Justice already came out and said it was BS, and it's not true. Number two, when it comes to this individual, this is why I don't entertain clowns in politics. I just don't. We've been a very, there is a race. We've been up in the polls in the Republican primary, really the entire time. This individual, like the other candidates, have been in single digits the entire time. And I'm just not going to entertain baseless accusations that are simply false and completely untrue. Well, you mentioned fishback, Paul Renner, Jay Collins. They've debated. Why not take part in these debates, Congressman? Is it because you've just been, in terms of the polls, you've been just so far up that you don't need to contend with these guys? Why not debate these guys? Because we've been up in the polls by 40 points the entire time. Here's the issue in campaigns. And campaigns, they have a responsibility. Everybody does to be able to build meaningful support across Florida. If you have no ability to build meaningful. full support and that's why they've all been polling in single digits because they've had no ability to do that then now they're asking me to elevate them essentially they're asking me to do their homework for them it's the first day of school from basically everybody now some kids went back yesterday a lot went back today that would be like asking the that would be like asking a student in a classroom to do everybody else's homework because they didn't do it themselves and in political campaigns you got a responsibility as a candidate to build support and actually build a real campaign that can win statewide. None of them have been able to do that. And so when I said, yeah, well, and I'm not going to debate you, if you can't even do your own homework, why would I do your homework for you, then they get upset.