{"id":39861,"date":"2023-12-06T10:38:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=39861"},"modified":"2023-12-06T10:39:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:39:07","slug":"desantis-plans-to-cut-over-1000-state-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/12\/06\/desantis-plans-to-cut-over-1000-state-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis plans to cut over 1,000 state jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A multi-billion-dollar budget surplus touted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be enough to save a thousand state workers\u2019 livelihoods from the chopping block.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, DeSantis announced plans to eliminate over 1,000 state jobs as part of the proposed 2024-2025 \u201cFocus on Florida\u2019s Future\u201d budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are also going to be reducing the size of government by eliminating over 1,000 positions throughout the state government,\u201d DeSantis said at a news conference Tuesday. \u201cThat\u2019s going to help us realign resources to focus on efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) and the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) will see the most job cuts. 407 jobs will be axed from the FDC, according to the budget website<\/a>, and 358 positions will be eliminated from the FDOH. The Florida Department of Transportation will also lose over 100 jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida Democrats slammed DeSantis\u2019 proposed budget as a \u201crefusal to address property insurance, the housing crisis, and cost of living.\u201d His proposal included a one-year exemption on taxes and other fees for homeowners insurance policies, which the DeSantis administration estimates will save \u201ctaxpayers $409 million\u201d and will decrease \u201cthe average insurance premium by up to 5%.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe irony of Ron\u2019s \u2018Focus on Florida\u2019 budget is his complete inability to actually focus on Florida,\u201d Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement responding to the lengthy news conference. \u201cHe spent more time ranting about the State of California today than proposing positive solutions for Florida \u2014 at times, his speech felt like the deleted scenes from last week\u2019s debate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fried, who is Jewish, also commented on DeSantis\u2019 recent, repeated condemnation of antisemitism in response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. She accused him of refusing to condemn the Florida neo-Nazis who appear to support him and trying to score political points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRon spent much of his speech talking about the threat of antisemitism and touting initiatives to fund security efforts at Jewish Day Schools \u2014 efforts that I greatly appreciate. However \u2014 and I\u2019m starting to sound like a broken record here \u2014 his support rings hollow when he still won\u2019t condemn the neo-Nazis that support his campaign,\u201d Fried said in a statement. \u201cHis refusal to denounce a right-wing ideology that threatens Jewish people makes any other action feel like a political stunt designed to help his presidential campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gov. DeSantis\u2019 office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A multi-billion-dollar budget surplus touted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be enough to save a thousand state workers\u2019 livelihoods from the chopping block. On Tuesday, DeSantis announced plans… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[6961,6960],"class_list":["post-39861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-000-state-jobs","tag-desantis-plans-to-cut-over-1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}