By JIM TURNER
News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE – Florida received some positive economic numbers this week. But as university students get ready to return to class, controversial spending at Florida’s flagship university drew widespread attention.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office and state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis on Thursday raised the possibility of looking into spending under former University of Florida President Ben Sasse.

“We take the stewardship of state funds very seriously and have already been in discussions with leadership at the university and with the (state university system’s) Board of Governors to look into the matter,” DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said in a statement.
On Monday, the Independent Florida Alligator student newspaper reported Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending to $17.3 million when compared to his predecessor.
The costs included hiring several of his former U.S. Senate staffers, including two who were allowed to work remotely from the Washington, D.C., area. Sasse was a Nebraska senator before getting hired for the UF job. Travel costs for Sasse’s office also jumped from $28,000 to $633,000 in one year, according to the student newspaper.
Sasse, who had been at UF less than two years after being a controversial hire, abruptly resigned in July, citing his wife’s health.
On Friday, Sasse defended the spending, posting online that among actions by the office are plans for a new UF-Jacksonville campus, reforms to the core curriculum including more science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, programs and accelerated hiring of faculty “at the pace of tech and business – rather than at the sleepy pace where status-quo bureaucracies often drift for years.”
“I am unabashedly for big reform in higher education,” Sasse wrote. “This has never been a secret – certainly not when I was being pursued and publicly vetted for the UF presidency.”

FINANCIAL BUMPS

Visit Florida, the state’s tourism-marketing agency, announced Thursday that Florida had a record 34.2 million tourists in the second quarter of 2024, with totals continuing to be bolstered by travelers from other parts of the U.S. The agency still has work to bring international visitors back to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels.
And on Wednesday, a state panel of economists known as the Revenue Estimating Conference increased general-revenue projections by a total of about $2 billion for the current fiscal year and next year. The projection gives lawmakers a little more to play with when they start preparing to draw up a budget during the 2025 legislative session, which will begin March 4.
The increase was tied largely to anticipated earnings on historically high state investments receiving favorable interest rates.
Economist Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research, said some uncertainty remains about consumer savings levels and global issues, such as conflicts in the Middle East that could have a spillover effect on oil and gas prices.
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said in a memo to senators that the increased revenue estimates demonstrate “Florida’s economy is healthy and growing.”
However, she also noted the end of three years of “higher, nonrecurring pandemic-era spending” fueled by federal money.
“We know the timeline to spend pandemic funds is coming to (an) end, and we will need to continue to make smart, fiscally-responsible adjustments to align our budget with post-pandemic level spending that is balanced and sustainable for the long term,” Passidomo wrote.

FOOD FIGHT

California-based UPSIDE Foods, Inc., a producer of lab-grown poultry, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday arguing that a new state ban on selling or manufacturing “cultivated” meat, in part, violates a constitutional prohibition on favoring in-state businesses over out-of-state competitors.
The company, which would like to distribute its products at Miami Beach’s Art Basel event in December and the 2025 South Beach Food and Wine Festival, contends Florida’s ban has affected the company’s revenue, promotional opportunities and reputation.
“We’re not looking to replace conventional meat, which will always have a place on our tables,” Uma Valeti, a cardiologist who founded UPSIDE in 2015, said during a conference call Tuesday with reporters. “We want to give consumers a choice, a choice so they can eat cultivated meat or conventional meat, any choice they can make in the future to keep up with the demand for meat that will double by 2050.”
The lawsuit, filed in the federal Northern District of Florida, names as defendants state Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, Attorney General Ashley Moody and four state attorneys.
Simpson, a key supporter of the law, called the lawsuit “ridiculous” and said “lab-grown meat is not proven to be safe enough for consumers.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year approved UPSIDE to manufacture and sell its products.
The ban was approved this year by the Legislature as part of a broader Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services bill (SB 1084).

SUNNY DAY FOR BEACHGOERS

U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington on Monday sided with the Pinellas County town of Redington Beach in a long-running legal fight with waterfront property owners about public beach access.
Covington’s 53-page ruling upheld a 2018 ordinance that sought to protect customary use of what are known as “dry sand areas” of the beach for such activities as walking, sunbathing, fishing and building sand castles.
Florida lawmakers in 2018 made controversial changes to laws involving customary use. That included putting in place an extensive process for local governments that want to have customary-use ordinances, including requiring them to receive judicial approval.
The waterfront property owners argued the Redington Beach ordinance was an unconstitutional “taking” of their private property.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Former University of Florida President Ben Sasse’s spending drew scrutiny.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “States are the laboratory of democracy, and Florida has the right to not be a corporate guinea pig. Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.” – Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson on the lawsuit by UPSIDE Foods.