The governor’s wish-list for resilience spending is big on flooding, not climate change

Gov. DeSantis wants to spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars on what he calls resilience projects. But will they protect communities against the threat from climate change?

Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars on what he calls resilience projects. The state money is designed to attract local spending on stormwater drainage, water pumps and fire stations. And there’s more spending proposals in his overall budget released this week.

"We’re proposing to do [a] hundred million more in the upcoming budget. So you’re going to end up seeing probably well over a billion dollars in this over the next couple of years, which is going to be really really good," said DeSantis this week.

When the governor announced his resilience project spending list he avoided talking about climate change. And he dismissed criticism that the spending does not address the causes of climate change.

"What I found is, people, when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways," he said Tuesday.

"I'm encouraged by to see a significant level of funding to be directed towards resilience related projects," said Tom Frazer, dean of the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. Frazer is the former chief science officer of the state of Florida. He was not involved in forming the spending plan announced this week.

Of the 76 projects under the banner of the "Statewide Flooding and Sea Level Rise Resilience Plan," 17 of them are drainage or stormwater work.