The state’s priorities are all wrong, and regular Floridians are taking the hit | Opinion

If the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, Florida is failing.

Consider this: In the last two years, Florida allowed about $800 million in state and matching funds — money meant to help Floridians with lifelong disabilities — to go unspent, according to a recent report highlighted by the Orlando Sentinel.

Few people are more vulnerable than those with disabilities. There are 23,000 people on the Agency for Persons with Disabilities waiting list in Florida. They need critical things like medical treatment, therapy, housing or a host of other services. That money could have done an enormous amount of good and given these people, and their families, a better quality of life.

But the money was allowed to languish, some of it returned to the state’s coffers instead of being used to actually help the people it was meant to help.

You might argue that it was just government oversight (a very large one). Mistakes happen. And that might hold water — except, why is it that we seem to have no trouble devoting resources and attention to cracking down on kids attending drag shows? Or banning books that feature a baby penguin with two fathers? Or trying to stop a handful of transgender girl athletes from competing in high school sports?

Those kinds of issues grab the spotlight over and over in today’s Florida under the guise of protecting children. But where was that deep and abiding concern when it came to making sure needed money and resources got to people with disabilities? Nowhere. Because Florida, sad to say, is turning into a place where culture wars have replaced real governing and disdain has replaced caring for the welfare of regular people. It has become OK — almost expected — that our leaders will put their campaigns, their thirst for power, their greed ahead of their responsibilities to the people.

Wasted rebates

Another example: Gov. Ron DeSantis turned away $354 million in federal money this summer earmarked under President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for energy-efficiency measures. The program would have offered cost savings for consumers through rebates on purchasing electric appliances, weatherizing their homes and tax credits for rooftop solar.

But this was considered a “green new deal” initiative. DeSantis — running for president as an ultra-right-winger and trying to cast himself as a warrior against the Democrat in Washington — was against it.

Rebates on an energy-efficient refrigerator or air conditioner wouldn’t be much help to wealthy people, the ones with money to contribute to political campaigns. But you know who it would have helped? Struggling families. The working poor. And a whole lot of middle-class folks. We doubt they would have spent one second worrying about whether there was a Democrat or a Republican running Washington when they cashed that rebate check.

In the long list of ways the state has shown contempt for regular citizens, the refusal to expand Medicaid rises to the top. Here we are, 13 years after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, and Florida continues to refuse to take federal money that would allow an an estimated 726,000 people to become eligible for Medicaid, according to figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group.

Florida is now one of just 10 states still refusing to help more low-income people get health insurance through Medicaid. This increasingly isolated path was carved out initially by former Gov. Rick Scott, who feared being “dependent” on federal money, but DeSantis doggedly has continued to adhere to that self-defeating policy. And who suffers? Regular Floridians, again.

It’s time for citizens to require their elected officials actually represent all of us, not just a vocal minority. We shouldn’t be held hostage to one governor’s political ambitions — or one party’s — as we have been for years.

Lately, we’ve gotten our priorities all wrong.

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