The Florida Roundup - Unpublished study raises concerns over Florida’s insurance industry, fight over water fluoridation, weekly news briefing

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

This week on The Florida Roundup, a previously unpublished study from 2022 found affiliates of Florida insurance companies paid out $680 million dollars to investors between 2017 and 2019 while claiming to be running out of money and filing for big rate increases for policyholders. We spoke with the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times’ investigative reporter Lawrence Mower who brought the study to light (00:08). Plus, we hear about the growing debate over whether or not to adding fluoride to public water supplies with Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey (20:45) and later Dr. Johnny Johnson, a former pediatric dentist and President of the American Fluoridation Society (33:45). And we also bring you the news of the week from Florida’s own DOGE efforts (39:40) and the start of turtle nesting season (47:24).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being here this week. If you are a home or condominium owner, when you pay your property insurance premium, some of that money may be going to other companies affiliated with your insurance company. And those other companies may be paying out some of your premiums and dividends and other payments, while your costs may be increasing. A 2022 study that had not been made public until this week found affiliates of Florida insurance companies paid out $680 million to investors between 2017 and 2019, while claiming to be running out of money and filing for big rate increases for Florida policyholders. Now, the insurance industry was teetering on collapse after hurricanes Irma and Michael. During those years, the industry complained about frivolous lawsuits and laws that it argued were too friendly to lawyers representing homeowners. Florida lawmakers passed more than a dozen insurance reforms in recent years, but have not changed how insurance companies are financially structured. So how much do you know about where your insurance premium dollars go? Are you an investor in a property insurance company?

And how has your premium and coverage changed through the years? Our inbox is open now for you radio at the florida roundup.org radio at the florida roundup.org or you can join us live on the phone here on this friday 305-995-1800. Property insurance costs often one of the singular biggest issues for Floridians. We want to hear your stories 305-995-1800. Lawrence Maurer is with us, reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, and the reporter who broke this story not quite a week ago. Lawrence, welcome back to the program. Thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Thanks for having me on. This study that you were finally delivered, and we'll talk about that in a moment, but this study came from the Florida

Office of Insurance Regulation. It was a study that it asked for it examined property insurance affiliates. What are property insurance affiliates? Well, these are basically sister companies and parent companies that build the insurance company for services. And you know, it's basically, you know, if you imagine a company, say you're a widget manufacturer, and you pay a subcontractor for a contractor for various services, for

example, accounting, or, you know, trash pickup or whatever, you would reach a deal with that company saying that you know, obviously for a price that's good for you. But if under this scenario, what insurance companies are doing is basically creating relationships between related companies and essentially over billing the insurance company for services.

So such as in this case claims handling. And basically, this can be incredibly lucrative for insurance company executives, but also leaving the insurance company much financially weaker. So how are companies in Florida allowed to use these affiliates under the regulations? Well, they are allowed to do it. And the reason why they're allowed to do it is because the the state basically wants investors to invest in Florida's insurance market. The state caps the profits of insurance companies at about four and a half percent,

which, as you can imagine, I mean, Warren Buffett isn't going to be breaking down the door trying to get to Florida. Yeah, that's like restaurant profit margins far from software profit margins. Exactly. And so, however, if you create affiliate companies, and you overbill the insurance company for serve basic services, you can make a lot of money. State Senator Joe Gruters, when he was proposing creating an insurance company, his prospectus basically was pitching 165% return within five years, which is obviously pretty substantial. And so basically, regulators have tolerated this until relatively recently.

What was the justification for the tolerance of that kind of business structure and I suppose the inability of that structure to provide enough competition on price? Yeah, I mean, the justification is that they want more investors here and they don't want to upset the apple car to the industry. This is how the industry makes money in Florida. These little mom and pop insurance companies that provide policies.

This is how they make their money through affiliate companies. And of course, you know, it doesn't need to be said that, you know, these companies are also major donors to state lawmakers. And so, you know, regulators have asked for more insight, you know, they asked in 2023 for more insight into these companies and lawmakers said no. We're speaking with Lawrence Maher, reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, who is behind the report that he published and reported out just a few days ago, about a 2022 study that was done on the request of the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation looking at the payment of insurance, the payment to insurance affiliates in Florida during 2017 to 2019, finding more than a half billion dollars of insurance premiums were paid out to these insurance company affiliates.

Your call is at 305-995-1800. How has your premium changed or your coverage changed since 2017 or 18 or 19? 305-995-1800. Lawrence, let's follow the money here because it is a complex financial structure here for insurance that you write about and that this report goes over. A Florida homeowner gets the invoice from their insurance company, right? They pay their premium. And then how is that money funneled through affiliates? What did this report find? Well, we don't have a ton of details from the report because

the vast majority of it was not released. Because of public records costs. But basically, what happens is you pay your check to your insurance company and your insurance company, depending on the company, it might have like no employees. And so the insurance company basically will pay an affiliate, for example, claims handling. It'll pay some affiliates for reinsurance and it'll pay for other basic kinds of services. And so we don't exactly know the breakdown of where all this money went and that's one of the Office of Insurance Regulations criticisms of this study is that they don't ultimately know what

happened to this money but you know basically once this money goes to the affiliate companies, it's no longer available to pay claims. And so it's basically these kinds of financial arrangements have been repeatedly found, excessive financial arrangements have been repeatedly found to be the cause of these company insolvencies. In some cases, I mean, state auditors found that the executives were literally using the affiliates to strip the insurance company of cash as they were going

out of business. Because there's enormous cash flows in property insurance in Florida, as we know, just look at anybody's, you know, monthly invoice or annual premium, and there's a lot of cash to change his hands. And the kind of core of this study found that $680 million was sent to affiliates between these three years that it looked at, 2017, 18, and 19. You talked about the insolvency challenges at the time that the insurance industry was claiming.

What do we know about the financial impact of the stability of the insurance firms that operate like this in Florida that stand purportedly behind Florida homeowners and condominium owners. Well, I want to correct something about the 680 million. That's not what went to affiliates those that's money that the insurance companies paid to to investors in the form of dividends. They send billions more to the affiliates. That was the part that paid out to investors in various forms then.

Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And the investors are almost always the insurance company executives and and wherever else is involved. But yeah, to your to your point, regulators have have been taking action against the companies in recent years. They basically got this report. They didn't share it with lawmakers, but they did kind of publicly and behind the scenes push for more oversight of these companies. And one of the things that they found is that these insurance companies

had financial agreements in place for 10 years or more, which you're never gonna, you'd wanna renegotiate the your contract with a with a sub with a provider service provider, you know, much more regularly than that. Yeah, if the provider wasn't related to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the provider would love a 10 year deal. Of course, of course, with even though the cost of doing those services is you know, almost inevitably declines over that period. And

so what regulators said is that, you know, we're making everyone, you know, they want to have everyone signed three year deals, you know, they want to have these deals come up regularly. You know, one thing that's been found in these companies that go insolvent is that a lot of them had agreements in place that with affiliates that were never approved by regulators, and they're supposed to be approved by regulators. So I want to be approved by regulators.

So I want to ask you about the regulatory presence here in this. But let me reintroduce you again. Lawrence Maurer. He is the reporter for the Tampa Bay Times covering insurance in the state of Florida like no one else. 305-995-1800 is our phone number live on this Friday across the state. 305-995-1800. We know Florida property insurance continues to be a singular issue for Florida voters. Florida lawmakers have done more than a dozen different changes to Florida insurance regulations over the course of a year, the course of several years and report that was shared with Lawrence after two years of waiting with a freedom of information request shows how the affiliate company structure has really stripped hundreds of millions of dollars of insurance premiums to insurance affiliates, investors, and not to policyholders in Florida. The payments here, Lawrence, according to Florida rules must be quote, fair and reasonable.

What is fair and reasonable? What does that mean in this context of property insurance affiliate payments? Well, it doesn't mean much because it's completely undefined in state law. And from the office's perspective, they're like, Look, I mean, even if we do think this is, you know, these payments are improper and not fair and reasonable, there's not much we can do about it because it's kind of a hard case to make, you know? And they'd like some definition to this.

They wanna have it defined so that, you know, insurance companies have to report the actual cost of the services provided. They want, the regulators also want to know the amount in dividends that are being sent to shareholders. And they want to know the overall health of the company as a whole. You know, these insurance companies are just one,

you know, one company within a web of affiliates and parent companies that basically are, it's Byzantine. And it's hard for regulators to figure out what's really going on here. And so they want more insight into this. The business structure often moves at the speed of business versus regulations moving at the speed of legislation. This

study found 19 of the insurers who only insure in Florida single state insurers had fees that the study described as not fair and reasonable. What more light can you shed on that? Yeah, unfortunately, we don't know because, again, we just got the executive summary of the report and in but the rest of it is supposed to include details on companies and that information is not a public record necessarily that could be claimed trade secret by the companies. And so we

don't really know. And that's kind of one of the one of the big questions is, you know, exactly what's going on with these companies. We know overall what happened overall, the bulk of the industry basically between 2017 to 2019, reported about like $430 million in losses, while the affiliates reported $1.8 billion in net income. And so maybe that's all we know basically on its face. And so just on the financial reporting there, that insurance industry losses are reported after they had paid out almost $2 billion to their affiliates, right? Yes, that's right. And you know, that's also after you know, these, the way the setup works is that, you know, when these companies get into trouble, you know, the insurance company gets into trouble, it doesn't have enough money, and regulators start

raving warning signs, the affiliates will re inject hundreds of millions of dollars back into the insurance companies. That's how much so basically the bulk of the money is with the affiliates. And when the insurance company gets in trouble, they inject, you know, hundreds of millions more. And that 1.8 billion in net income came after re injecting hundreds of billions of or hundreds of millions of dollars into the insurance companies.

Just an impact of this perhaps Brian has been listening in the panhandle in Panama City and he sent us an email radio at the Florida roundup.org is the address that Brian used. He writes us here Lawrence my house was built about nine months before Hurricane Michael. My insurance costs have gone up 300% since 2018. Now, difficult to pin just the affiliate structure on Brian's experience as a singular homeowner in the panhandle hit by Hurricane Michael, but certainly, in all likelihood, a contributor to the overall environment here, Lawrence, what has been the reaction amongst state regulators and lawmakers as they prepare to meet in a legislative session

next week? Well, state regulators have a bill that would that would basically give them more oversight of these companies. It's not I've not seen it publicly released on the on the the legislature's websites. But they are asking for more action here. And today, the Senate or the House Minority Leader, Representative Fenchris Driscoll, is calling for a statewide grand jury, calling on DeSantis to convene a statewide grand jury to investigate this, and for the House Speaker to convene a select committee to investigate this, you know,

I don't know if if either of them would take that up. But there there's certainly been some appetite to learn more about this. This report that you finally got ahold of after two years of waiting and filing for a freedom of information request. This report is originally dated March 31 2022. So we're coming up on the third anniversary of this report being handed over, at least the executive summary being handed over to to state insurance regulators. Why wasn't it shared with state lawmakers at the time, as they debated and passed a number of insurance reforms? Well, what the Office of Insurance Regulation says is that this was not like a formal examination. This was, you know, they don't release every single study that they do to state lawmakers,

which, you know, a lot of the things they do are, you know, trade secret, you know, examinations into the specific finances of companies. And this was one of those. However, the executive summary had no information that needed to be redacted. And you know, lawmakers at the time were asking about this very issue. I mean, there were people on the floor saying, what about affiliate companies? Why aren't we looking into this? And, you know, And here we are three years later with some of this evidence. Lila has been listening in from Brandon on line three. Go ahead.

You're on the radio. Thanks for calling. Yes, I just want to make a comment. I have been with USAA Insurance for 34 years in Brandon, Florida. I received a notice about a month ago that I would be being switched to Garrison Insurance, not USAA, that's an affiliate I guess now of USAA, and their reasoning in one paragraph was my eligibility is why they're doing this.

Your eligibility maybe as a USAA policyholder? Yeah, but that makes no sense because I've been a member for 34 years, you know? I'm a member of the Veterans Council. I've done all my stuff with them. I've only had, I think, two claims in 34 years that I just did on the calculator, a rough estimate of how much money I paid to USAA. It came to $234,000 over a 34-year period. And that's minimum. That's probably higher than that. I was just roughing it on premiums and things like that.

Yeah, you're back of the envelope. Yeah, so after all those storms and everything, this is what you get is a thank you from your insurance that you've been with for 34 years. Lila, thanks for sharing your story from Brandon. Lawrence Maurer with the Tampa Bay Times. How about the use of these affiliate companies by these larger multi-state insurance companies like a USAA? That's even less known. You know, if you look at the report that was produced, it had a quite extraordinary finding, which is that if you take out a couple of, or if you just look at a couple of large

national insurers that were in this study who are not named, we don't know who they are, but they probably offer auto insurance, they were their affiliates reported a net income over these three years of $14 billion, which, you know, it's kind of hard to wrap my head around that. I'm not sure what that means. You know, primarily the focus of the study was on Florida based insurers, the many companies that that make up the bulk of the insurance market.

Yeah, that stand behind, you know, trillions really dollars of insurance insurable property values in the state of Florida. Lawrence Maurer is a state government reporter for the Tampa Bay Times with us. Lawrence, as always, thanks so much for sharing your terrific reporting here. Thanks for having me on. We're always listening to you. Home insurance, not a topic for the faint of heart here in Florida. You can share your thoughts radio at the floridaroundup.org. You are listening to the floor to roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. More to come.

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Next week, live from Gainesville. Yeah, this program is going on the road again and in front of a live audience. This time at the University of Florida. The state's flagship university is looking for a new leader controversies over political meddling and spending swirled around the former President Ben Sasse. He abruptly resigned last summer he cited concerns about his wife's health. A subsequent audit found his office unnecessarily spent millions of dollars. The search is now on for his successor. So are you a Gator alum? Maybe you send a family member to the University

of Florida. What do you want in the next president of the university? It's just one of several recent openings leading a public university here in Florida. Free speech on campus, money for research, making college affordable. What should be the priorities for the bosses at Florida's public universities? Email us now radio at the floridaroundup.org, radio at the floridaroundup.org, and we may share your story next week. Now you can still join us live in person in Gainesville. Go to wuft.org to register. It's all free but space is limited and seats are going quickly so we want to make sure we've got one for you. Please go to wuft.org and look for the registration link for the Florida

Roundup. Now the fight over fluoride in Florida's drinking water. This is just the latest battle over science. At least a half dozen local water systems no longer add fluoride to the drinking water here in the Sunshine State. Collier County stopped about a year ago when county commissioners voted unanimously to do it. The effort was led by a group advocating for what it calls health freedom. It frames the issue of adding fluoride to drinking water as one of consent that residents drinking tap water with

fluoride have not made that choice to drink water with fluoride. This is Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall at the meeting a year ago. I'm all for removing it and giving people a choice to add the fluoride that they want to. And the ones that don't, don't have it pushed upon them. So it's all about health, freedom, and limited government, and I'm all about it. In November of last year, Winterhaven City Commissioners voted three to two

to stop fluoridation. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Latipo came to Winter Haven then later that month and issued guidance advising against adding fluoride to public water supplies. It is public health malpractice to continue adding fluoride to community water systems that women and pregnant women and children have access to. He cited studies that link high levels of fluoride exposure with lower IQs in children. Now the fluoride levels were often twice as high as

what's added to public drinking water in many parts of the United States. Fluoride absolutely positively can strengthen teeth. It is also the case that fluoride is neurotoxic. Before the end of the year at least four other cities, Stewart and Port St. Lucie on the Atlantic coast and Marco Island in Naples and southwest Florida, decided to stop adding it. In February of this year, Lee County joined the trend. Fort Myers decided to keep it as did Hillsborough County when it voted three to three. It was a tie. Commissioner Harry Cohen wanted to keep it in the water.

It's my view that it is highly ir this action in light of t that is out there to how the dental and and otherw across the country and ha Local governments in Flor make a decision about fl bill becomes law this spr ban fluoridation in drinking water statewide.

So let's talk more about this. Does your drinking water have fluoride added to it? Do you want it or not? And who should decide? The state government, your local government, you? 305-995-1800. Our phone lines are open live on this Friday, 305-995-1800, or shoot us a quick email, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. Paul Alfrey is with us now. He's the mayor of the city of Melbourne. Mr. Mayor, welcome to the program. Thanks for your time.

Hey, thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. You and your fellow council members voted 6-1 in January to stop adding fluoride to your city's drinking water immediately. You led this initiative. Why was it important to you? Well, I led the initiative first in 2019. It actually failed a 43 vote. And so, you know, this time around, and actually back then I wasn't mayor yet, and then I was elected to mayor and then brought it back with more data, more science. And really,

as you see, the state, the Surgeon General was also pushing to remove it. So with his assistance, I was successful, but there's something I even tried in 2019. You cited the advisory from the state Surgeon General for voting to stop adding fluoride. If that advisory changes and you're still in office, would you support changing your position? Absolutely not. And again, my decision was well before the Surgeon General's. Matter of fact, when I spoke with him, kind of went over why.

My background, I served in the United States Coast Guard, and I was responsible for a lot of the MSDSs, which if people don't know what that is, it's the material safety data sheets. I see. And so if you were to read the hydroposiclic acid, that's what we actually use. We don't use a medical grade fluoride. Right.

That's the acid that turns into fluoride when mixed with drinking water. Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, it turns into fluoride. It uses ions, etc. And of course, I'm not going to sit and argue that, you know, there's not some benefits to fluoride in a medical office. A lot of the doctors that came up during that evening, the dentists, were to remove it as

well. But if you were to look at the MSDSs for theropociclic acid, it contains lead, it contains arsenic, it contains many things that our body shouldn't be ingesting. And I know some of the arguments will be, well, you know, it's a very minute amount, a small amount, but how much we can't control the amount of water that's drank by a consumer or, you know, we're putting it back into our lagoon or basically our environment. So if you were to look at the MSDS and read that, you'd be very shocked. The Federal Public Health Service Agency recommends fluoride in drinking water in the United States. So how do you weigh the state advisory over the federal recommendation? Well, again, we're talking about fluoride.

We're talking about medical. The benefits for fluoride, I'm sure there is some, but I think at the end of the day, you can go forward or you're against it, but then at the end of the day, a person has a right with putting their water. And then now we're getting back to one of the day, a person has a right with putting their water. Now we're getting back to one of the arguments that evening was consent. It was something that a lot of people come up and said, �I don't want it in my water. If I want fluoride, it's something I will deal with my dentist.� Again, you can be

on the fence and that's fine. At the end of the day, you have a right. I had a lot of doctors come to me quietly and say, listen, we don't need it in our water. One of the doctors was, she had a very good point. She said, there's such a deficiency of vitamin D in this country, why don't we put it in the water? Not saying we should, but what's next? And so at the end, go ahead. I was gonna say, Mr. Mayor, along those same lines, are there other public health measures

that you believe should be choices that aren't? Well, I honestly believe that between you and your doctor. I don't think it's between you and the government. And when we've endured the time of the vaccination COVID, I always believe that was between you and your doctor. And a lot of people would may have argued or, you know, and say, hey, you're anti-vax. No, I chose with my doctor to get vaccinated.

It was my choice between me and my doctor. It wasn't me between me and the government. What about seat belts? Seat belt usage is seen as a public health measure. There's a law for it. Should that be a choice? No, because actually you don't have a right to drive a car. I was a police officer for over 20 years and you can take a bus and it is a privilege. And matter of fact, if you were looking at the bottom of your Florida license and applied consent law,

that's like saying, well, if I get stopped, I don't have to blow into a tube or do any fields of variety task. If you want to go further in the argument, you could go that route. But at the end of the day, that's something that you don't have a right to drive. It's a privilege to drive, and that's why you have to have seatbelt, you have to have insurance. And we've all seen what happens when people can't drive or they drive illegally. How much will the city save from no longer fluoridating water in Melbourne? Well, you're probably looking at probably around $150,000 a year.

Will that be passed along to customers? Oh, absolutely. Our water fund is an enterprise fund, so that saving would be passed. I don't know how substantial. I mean, probably you won't see a lot of it because it's broken up in over 58,000 accounts. But yes, the savings does go back. But again, I'm not against fluoride. Again, that's something that your dentist,

that your dentist feels you need, absolutely. But again, reading the MSDSs and seeing, doing a lot of research on how it's obtained. And it's, again, at the end of the day, I just felt that it was the best for our residents. Melbourne had been adding fluoride to its water since, I think, the 1960s, if I heard correctly,

in that meeting back in January. Had there been documented health issues because of fluoride in the drinking water? We never really did. As a local government, we never did any kind of investigation, but we did have a lot of people come up and say, listen, because I have thyroid issues and, you know, site studies. And at the end of the day, it's easy. It's a choice. It's again, it's something that I feel that should have been taken out. And yes, we started in the late 60s to add fluoride in the water after a memo from the state

health officials said we should add it. So again, best we move it after a state memo says we should remove it. City of Melbourne has acted already. There's a proposed bill that will be in front of the state legislature beginning next week that would preempt local governments such as Melbourne from making the decision that you made, it would prohibit adding fluoride statewide to drinking water. Do you support this legislation, Mr. Mayor? Actually, I do not. And I'll tell you why. I think it's something that I see the state taking a lot of power out of local government. And for example, they did once down in Key West when Key West local officials decided to clean up the water, they had to take some actions on cruise ships.

And of course, the water, it was documented, the water cleaned up and the state came back and said, no, you can't do that. And so I think everybody has their own job, the state, the local government, in a local government, that's something we provide the water and, you know, if our residents want it, and, you know, if you were to if you were to move one step up, and you see the federal government now sending, you know, certain things to the states, you know, for example, they're saying now, like, for example, abortion, I don't want

to get into that. But they're saying that that should be handled at the state level. So. With the Supreme Court decision. Yeah. Government's best when it's close to the people. And when people can come to our city hall or call us, and I have my personal cell phone number and the city website, when people can call us, I mean, you can't get ahold of the governor. Let's just face it. You can't call him, but you can call your mayor in the city of Melbourne. Well, Mr. Mayor, thanks for taking our call and coming on the radio program. Much appreciate it. Well, well, absolutely. I appreciate it. Again, this is

that this is definitely a good debate. And like I said, we had about almost a five hour meeting, and we had a lot of doctors come up and look, everybody's voices was heard that the way government should respond. And we've got some voices here we want to hear from as well. Paul Alfrey is the mayor of the city of Melbourne, your honor. Thank you so much for joining us here on the floor government should respond. And we've got some voices here we want to hear from as well. Paul Alfrey is the mayor of the city of Melbourne. Your honor, thank you so much for joining us here on the floor to round up.

We had an email from Charles who writes, I strongly disagree with elected officials making medical decisions for citizens. Adding fluoride to our water systems denies citizens the ability to make their own health decisions. Bernadette writes, yes, of course, I would like to keep our water supply fluorinated. The science is solid and the practice is safe. Let's help keep our children especially keep their teeth cavity free as much as possible. Rebecca has been listening

in as patient on line one in Pembroke Pines. Go ahead, Rebecca, you're on the radio. Hi, I have the opinion that before I didn't need to be in the water system, given that it's in most of the two cases that are for sale. I think also people can purchase mouthwash with fluoride if they want to ensure that they're getting their daily dose. Rebecca, thanks for adding your voice to the conversation here. Benjamin in Gainesville has some ideas as well. Benjamin, you are on the radio. Hi, thanks so much. Yeah, I'm an epidemiologist and this has been a really interesting thing to follow over the last year, particularly with last year's judge ruling and the EPA report. The only thing I wanted to add to the conversation is that when we look at changes of policy and how

we're going to actually do things, we've got to look at some outcome data. It's really interesting to look at Europe as an example that has actually stopped fluoridation in many cases, but have not really seen increases in dental caries in a population level. And then I wanted to reiterate the comment about what the mayor said about what actually is being put in, the chemical itself. We have the concept of cumulative exposure, so the concept being that fluoride is much more readily available in different sources is a concern that we have if people are overexposed in fluoridosis. But I think there's a lot more to discuss now than maybe there was 50 years ago to kind of make those judgments on what's best.

Benjamin, I'm glad you had your voice today in Gainesville to join the conversation here on the Florida Ronda from your Florida Public Radio station. Dr. Johnny Johnson is with us now, retired pediatric dentist and president of the American Floridation Society and a Floridian. Dr. Johnson, welcome to the program. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate you having me on. Sure thing. Let me start with the legislation that is going to be in front of state lawmakers in the weeks ahead that would ban fluoride from drinking water statewide. What do you make of this legislation? Do you support it? Do you oppose it? No, I absolutely oppose it. It is something that is a decision that is not based in science. Obviously, through studies that have shown where fluoridation has ceased. We have outstanding studies from Calgary, Alberta, Canada

from Windsor Ontario from Juneau, Alaska Israel there's just so many studies that have been done over the past few years that show when you stop fluoridation Cavity cavity rates begin to rise you stop fluoridation, cavity rates begin to rise exponentially and people do not stop brushing their toothpaste during those times. The only common denominator is that fluoridation has stopped. We had one email, Dr. Johnson, sorry for the interruption, but we're tight on time. So I want to make sure we get to some of these listener comments.

And Uta sent us an email saying, tooth decay is mainly caused by bad nutrition and the immense amount of sugar being eaten and used in preparation and processed foods, implying that it's not solely protected by fluoride in the drinking water. Oh, fluoridated water protects 25 to 50 percent, it reduces cavities by that amount, which means on the flip side, you'll get 50 to 75% of them anyhow. So a diet, it's multifactorial diet, good hygiene, being able to see a dentist, all of those things figure into it, but we don't have people going to the dentist on a regular basis. The only population-based preventing measure that some people ever get is fluoridated water. And that's why it is vitally important. The Surgeon General of Florida, Joseph Lattapoe, you were at a town hall meeting

just this week. He called it reckless to have the information that we now have and continue to support adding fluoride in the water. Do you feel that your position is reckless? My position is based on the credible science that has been done around the world and science that Dr. Lattapoe is referring to is not credible scientific IQ studies. They're using these studies that have been published or using non-accepted scientific methods. There are studies around the world that absolutely have been very high quality, not low quality like they're describing, and these high quality studies show absolutely no health effects, including IQ, from fluoride in levels that we have here and in Europe. We use 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter. In Europe, they use 1.0 parts per million.

If there were any issues with it, we would say stop it. We have probably the worst business model of any company out there. We're advocating for less business. And this is why it's a disease process that we want to stop. Dr. Johnson, we have to leave it there. Johnny Johnson, retired pediatric dentist, president of the American Fluoridation Society. Dr. Johnson, thanks so much for joining us here. I'm Tom Hudson. We got more to come on the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being here. Immigration enforcement in the state is changing quickly as Republican lawmakers move to help President Donald Trump fulfill one of his big campaign promises

to conduct the biggest deportation program in American history. Every County Sheriff's Department now has an agreement with the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, ICE. The agreements allow County police to keep someone who's already in jail locked up, if federal immigration authorities ask. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd on Monday said space is limited in many county jails, so officers will prioritize people who are accused of a crime. If you're here working, you have your kids in school, you're paying your taxes, you're

not the priority. It's the criminals. The inmates can be kept up to 48 hours before being picked up by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. This is Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. The most pressing need they have is for us to deliver to them people who are booked into our jails who are clearly illegals and have clearly committed crimes so that these people are deported and not released back into the community to yet commit more crime. These agreements are named for the section of the law that created them,

but these agreements between Florida County Sheriff's Departments and ICE go beyond the walls of the jail. They give sheriff's deputies in Florida what Governor Ron DeSantis calls street-level immigration enforcement powers. Tristan Wood reports now from our partner station WFSU in Tallahassee. He made the announcement in front of several state law enforcement helicopters and a crowd of officers dressed in uniform. The 287G agreements give new abilities to local sheriff's offices.

This is not just saying, oh, if there's an illegal alien in our jail, then we'll let ICE pick him up. Obviously, you gotta do that. It's also not saying that, oh, well, we'll honor a detainer or a warrant. Of course you have to do that. This is a task force model which will lead to street level enforcement operations. The moves are due to requirements in the immigration package passed by the Florida legislature in last month's special session. President Trump promised to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

The fact is if the state and locals are not fully participating in those efforts, it's going to be very difficult to achieve that. I'm Tristan Wood. Also this week, Governor DeSantis announced a Florida DOJ effort. DOJ is the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a federal government department. It's a presidential initiative that was created by executive order. And also, Elon Musk is not the head of DOJ.

Legally speaking, it's the acting administrator, Amy Gleason, who was with the US Digital Service, which is the service that was renamed Doge. Anyway, back to Florida. The governor announced his own Doge-type effort. In Florida, we were Doge when no one is even talking about it before it was even cool to do. We've worked hard to make this government as efficient and as effective as possible. The governor's executive order signed this week creates a Doge team within the executive branch. It will review local government spending, hundreds of state jobs, and about 70

state boards and commissions. Now a big focus of the group will be on spending by state colleges and universities. Universities in Florida will be subjected to an independent review and audit to study efficiency and effectiveness of their operations in financing. This is the dozing of our state university system. The group is due to make recommendations by the end of September. He's hunting. This is a hunting procedure for him.

This has nothing to do with government efficiency. This is Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. 30 years of one party control of the state. So they actually come in and they play ball, then they too have admitting that they have been stealing from the people of our state and using it for their own political purposes. As Governor DeSantis gets his own state doge efforts going, the federal effort is impacting Floridians, including

workers at Veterans Affairs hospitals and national parks. We have two reports on this, beginning with Mahika Kukde from our partner station WUSF. An exact number of area layoffs is hard to nail down, but officials at James A. Haley in Tampa and Bay Pines in St. Petersburg confirmed that several probationary employees at each site have been let go of. 1,400 probationary VA employees were laid off nationwide Monday, adding to the 1,000 who were fired two weeks ago. It's all part of President Trump's effort to increase efficiency across various departments.

VA Secretary Doug Collins says the cuts will save more than $83 million annually. Thousands of VA employees have also returned in-person work on Monday on Trump's orders. By July, all VA personnel, even those with temporary hybrid work agreements, will have to return to the office. I'm Mahika Kukde in Tampa. I'm Jennie Stoledovich in Miami. While the National Park Service has so far not provided details, current and former park staff say up to 20 workers have been terminated.

It's across the broad array of fields and that's the odd thing is it wasn't a surgical kind of thing. Gary Bremen is a former ranger. He's been tracking the layoffs at South Florida parks, including Biscayne National Park, where he worked until three years ago. He heard cuts include maintenance, research, and school programs. One staffer WLRN spoke to received a four-page termination letter as an attachment buried in an email.

She and Bremen said two of her colleagues were also laid off. She moved across the country last year for what she thought was her dream job. Now she's wondering how she'll pay her rent. She has not to be named for fear of hurting her chances of being rehired. People are frightened. You know, you don't go into the National Park Service to make a million dollars, right? The old adage is we get paid in sunsets. Local park officials referred questions to the service's Washington headquarters, which

did not respond to two requests for comment. That's Jenny Stoledovich reporting with our partner station WLRN in Miami. Now we're going to be talking about the impact on the federal workforce in Florida coming up in a couple of weeks. If you know someone who's had their federal government job impacted by the efforts of Doge, or if you've had federal government services impacted, please email us radio at the Florida roundup dot org radio at the Florida roundup.org. We may feature your story coming up in a few weeks. I'm Tom Hudson, and you

are listening to The Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Finally in the roundup, two seasons that are now officially underway in Florida and one that is about to begin. Now one season will last more than a year, it'll stretch on. The second lasts barely a month, and the one to come starts and ends at the water's edge. Let's begin with this announcement on Fox Tuesday night. I'm here to announce my candidacy to be the next governor of the great state of Florida. Representative Byron Donalds officially kicked off the 2026 race for governor. Donalds is a Republican from Southwest Florida. He's a former state lawmaker who

is in his third term in Washington. Donald's made the announcement just a few days after President Trump endorsed him on social media for the job, even before Donald said he was running. In his number one issue, we have an insurance problem in our state. You know, my career in banking insurance and in financial services, I want to make sure that we solve this problem for the people of Florida. And it's going to mean bringing every stakeholder to the table because the people of Florida is what's going to matter. We got to solve it. We got to stabilize those costs.

The Republican primary is about a year and a half away. Now that's two baseball seasons between now and then. This is the time of year Tigers and Cardinals and Blue Jays are roaming around Florida. It's spring training for Major League Baseball. Among the teams playing in the Grapefruit League here in the Sunshine State, the Baltimore Orioles. Jennifer Grandahl is the team's head of communications. We're here in Sarasota. We've been here for about 16 years, a little over 16 years. This is our second home. Camden Yards is by far

one of the most iconic, not just baseball, but sporting venues in the world. And these seats that we're looking at right now here at Edsma Stadium are from Camden Yards. So when this stadium renovation was happening, they made the decision to bring some of the old seats here and it's pretty cool and I think when fans come in they recognize it because of some of the design on the side of the seats it's beautiful we see a lot of fans coming down from the mid Atlantic region not just Baltimore but the entire mid Atlantic to them see those and I think also because they really appreciate this facility and the intimacy of it.

Bob Roberts was one of the Orioles making the migration south for spring baseball this season in Sarasota. So I came down for spring training. My sister here lives in not far up the road there and we stopped by today to see the practice. I got a lot of games in Baltimore during regular season. I've driven by it's been a stadium before a few times but never been inside the facility, but yeah beautiful place. Yeah, a little more low-key, a little more relaxed, and I'm sure a lot of guys hoping to make the team and some guys knowing they're gonna be on the team for the season, but I'm not sure yet. So and of course the weather you can't beat. It beats the 20 degrees it is in Baltimore right now.

It was snowing when we left a couple days ago, so yeah, nice weather. The Orioles and the rest of the Grapefruit League play in Florida for about another month or so before the regular baseball season begins in late March. And then there's this season to tell you about that's upcoming, the sea turtle nesting season. It begins this weekend. This is the time female sea turtles come ashore to lay eggs. Wildlife officials estimate the vast majority of sea turtle nesting, about 90% of it takes place right here in Florida. Now two easy rules to remember while you're out on the sand.

Stay away and keep it dark at night. Keep your distance. Oftentimes we see people out on the beach at night with flashlights. Flashlights can be really dangerous for juvenile baby sea turtles. They orient to the light and they need the light off the moon and the water to orient to the ocean. Andy Dehart is the CEO of the Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juneau Beach. One more reminder for those sand architects for your day at the beach, knock down your sandcastles when you leave. That way the sea turtles have a clear path to and from the water. That's the roundup for this week. It is produced by WLN Public Media in Miami and WUSF in Tampa

by Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. WLN's Vice President of Radio is Peter Merz. Our Technical Director is MJ Smith. Engineering Help Each. Every week from Doug Peterson, Ernesto Jay and Jackson Hart. Katie Munoz answers our phones. Our theme music is provided by Miami Jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. Next week a live studio audience at partner station WUFT in Gainesville will be live from Weimer Hall on the campus of the University of Florida. Next week March 7th you can register for free at WUFT.org. It's not yet quite spring break. We would love to see you on campus though live next week in Gainesville. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening and

above all supporting public radio. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.