Shading Ron DeSantis? Rick Scott spotlights Florida’s rising property insurance costs, stagnant job creation

Without naming him, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is resuming his criticisms of how his successor as Governor, Ron DeSantis, has handled affordability issues for Florida homeowners.

In an interview with WFLA’s Ryan Gorman, Scott again slammed DeSantis for how he’s tackled property insurance. Scott, who has long blamed DeSantis for insurance premiums having “skyrocketed” in the last seven years, again spotlighted the increased cost of insurance and housing.

“It’s doubled since I left … seven years ago,” Scott said, though he did say legislative reforms championed by DeSantis were “going to reduce the fraud.”

Scott said finding ways to reduce costs imposed by government could help reduce the burden that homeowners’ face.

“Fifteen to 30% of the price of a house, for example, which impacts the cost of insurance, is permitting. How could that be? (You) spend so much time and you have to hire all these lawyers,” Scott said.

“We’ve got to figure out how (to) drive the cost of housing down, which will drive the cost of insurance down. And a lot of (the increase in housing costs is) because of government rules and regulations. You can’t get a permit. The people that are building spend all this money on things that don’t give you a better house.”

Scott, who previously praised House Speaker Daniel Perez’s call to cut sales taxes over DeSantis’ idea to eliminate homestead property taxes, acknowledged during Thursday’s interview that while “we’d all like to get rid of property taxes,” more can be done sooner to reduce burdens on homeowners than a constitutional amendment in November.

“We’ve got to reduce our millage rates, which we did when I was Governor, (and) they haven’t been doing the last seven years, as far as I understand,” Scott said.

He also said there needs to be more job creation.

“We’ve not been adding jobs in Florida, and so one thing,” Scott said.

“If you don’t have a growing job economy, then your revenues don’t grow. And so that makes it harder. When your revenue’s growing, it’s a lot easier to reduce your taxes, which is what I was able to do. We grew 1.7 million jobs when I was Governor. So what that did was, we got more revenues. And every year revenues came in, I cut more and more taxes, and that’s one thing the state needs to do.”

Scott and DeSantis haven’t cooperated particularly well since DeSantis’ swearing-in, which Scott had to leave early to get to Washington, D.C., to be sworn into the Senate.

They’ve had conflict on issues ranging from the state’s unemployment website to the ban on most abortions after six weeks signed by DeSantis in 2023. Even as the years have passed, the two have yet to find a way to collaborate, and Scott maintains his criticisms of the current Governor.

Scott’s full Thursday interview is available here.