Sen. Jay Collins and Reps. Danny Alvarez, Karen Gonzalez Pittman, and Michael Owen fielded queries on a host of other topics as well, such as concerns about chemtrail sightings and alleged voting irregularities, during the hour-plus meeting in Tampa.
Other topics that have dominated the headlines from Tallahassee this year — from immigration to the enmity that developed between Gov. Ron DeSantis and fellow GOP member of the Florida House — went untouched during the proceeding.
Affordability remains front and center among Floridians, encapsulated by one Republican in the audience who asked what the lawmakers were doing on property insurance, property taxes, and auto insurance rates.
Regarding property insurance, Rep. Danny Alvarez described how just weeks after he was elected in 2022, he confronted the topic in Tallahassee.
“The very first vote I ever took was in a special session where I was told that if I voted on this bill, the insurance rates would go down and our crisis would stop,” he said. “That was partially true.”
That vote did stabilize reinsurance rates, Alvarez said, but “we weren’t told all the truth when we voted.”
That was a reference to a Tampa Bay Times report that emerged during this year’s session that insurers claiming financial ruin following Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Michael in 2018 had paid $680 million in dividends to shareholders while simultaneously funneling billions to affiliated companies.
“So, I voted on something without all the information,” he told the audience.
Subsequently, “for the first time in a long, long time” legislators began using their oversight authority in committee hearings, calling upon the sitting and former state insurance commissioners to testify about why they didn’t bring more attention to a 2022 report detailing money transfers from Florida insurers to out-of-state affiliates.
“I was told that people were dying on the vines and were going to run away from Florida, when in reality all they had done was shift their money to their secondary companies that were making billions of dollars while we suffer,” Alvarez said. “That was completely unfair, and we are righting that wrong.”
Lawmakers in the House did introduce a proposal (HB 881) this session that would have required property insurers to demonstrate that fees, commissions, and other payments to affiliates were fair and reasonable. But that measure died in committee.
Property taxes
Both Gonzalez Pittman and Owen are serving on the 37-member House Select Committee on Property Taxes. That’s the group slated to meet throughout the year to devise a strategy for how the state could wean itself off property taxes without suffering a major reduction in revenues. That work is expected to help inform lawmakers, who have already said that they intend to place a constitutional amendment on the 2026 statewide ballot to repeal property taxes.
Owen, a freshman lawmaker who previously served on the Hillsborough County Commission, said that although some counties don’t rely so much on property taxes to fund important services, others like Hillsborough essentially “run” through that revenue source. He dismissed some of the ideas that have already been proposed in the committee so far, but said he would not do anything that would essentially “defund the police.”
“What I’m saying is, we will have to come up with another solution to pay for our first responders if we are going to [remove] property taxes from Hillsborough County because it’s such a great percentage of what we use to pay our first responders,” he said. “I’m not saying that we can’t get it done. I’m saying that’s a heavy lift.”
Another member of the audience asked the lawmakers about escalating energy costs — the average energy bill went up by more than 50% between 2018 and 2023.
“What is your opinion on TECO and the never-ending increases that we’re all experiencing right now?” the Hillsborough Republicans were asked. “And why isn’t there any competition coming?”
The legislators had little substantive to say about the issue, with Alvarez noting that Florida public utilities can raise their rates only if approved by the Public Service Commission (PSC). He and Sen. Collins said a possible remedy to address the state’s growing energy needs could come from small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), listed in a feasibility report written by the PSC earlier this year. “It’s something that we should be at the very forefront of,” said Collins.
Alvarez acknowledged that such technology is “probably over 10 years away.”
Chemtrails
One audience member asked the four Republicans, “When will we stop seeing the chemtrails?” That was a reference to a bill banning weather-modification projects recently signed into law by Gov. DeSantis and that just went into effect last week.
Although such projects exist, what many people consider chemtrails are actually harmless “contrails” (for condensation) caused by freezing water vapor emitted by jet engines.
“People should be able to contact law enforcement and make sure that those flights do not take off and, if they are, when they land, they’re given a citation,” Gonzalez Pittman said.
The lawmakers stayed clear of opining too much when asked by another member of the audience about an allegation by a Republican congressional challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of “substantial” voting irregularities in their race last fall, which Castor won by more than 15 points. The questioner asked if they would look at “overturning this election.”
The Republicans bobbed and weaved regarding the question, with Collins ultimately pivoting to how strong voting integrity protections are in Florida and how DeSantis recruited him to run for the Legislature, and not Congress, which he originally intended to do in 2021.
He said the governor persuaded him to run in the Senate District 14 race (in which he defeated Democratic incumbent Janet Cruz by 10 points), promising, ‘”You’ll get more done in a year than you would in 20 years in Congress.’”
“And the man didn’t lie. He was 100% right,” Collins said.
Collins is considered a leading candidate to become the next lieutenant governor. DeSantis said last week he would make his long awaited appointments for both that position and for the chief financial officer seat “in relatively short order” following the July 4 holiday weekend.
Topics not on the agenda
Not discussed was the Hope Florida Foundation. Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the nonprofit program initiated by Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis. In April, state lawmakers began investigating $10 million in “donations” it received from a Medicaid overpayment settlement.
Shortly after the legislative session broke in early May while lawmakers continued to work on the state budget, Gonzalez Pittman passed out a flow chart in a meeting with constituents showing where that flow of that money had moved around, ultimately landing with political committees that spent the money opposing the proposed constitutional amendment that would have legalized recreational cannabis last year.
That display had angered the governor, who blasted the South Tampa lawmaker a week later during a Hope Florida event in Brandon, saying that she had “took propaganda that was done by far-left Democrats,” and adding that she had done a “poor job as the representative from South Tampa.”
The evening was marked by numerous references to how the Republicans now represented the “red” county of Hillsborough, whose shift to the right over the past five years has been echoed across Florida. Less than five years ago, county voters went for Joe Biden by more than six percentage points over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, while re-electing State Attorney Andrew Warren by more than six points.
Flash forward to last November, when Trump bested Kamala Harris by three points and Warren, running after being suspended for two years by DeSantis, fell short in his bid to recapture the state attorney’s office by more than five percentage points.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2025.