Ron DeSantis says business couldn’t handle ‘patchwork’ of local heat protections for workers

Florida’s Governor is trying to cool down the temperature when it comes to a preemption law (HB 433) blocking local governments from protecting private sector employees from the state’s brutal heat.

The issue, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis: Local control would create a regulatory “patchwork” that would have befuddled the capital class.

“It preempted local governments,” DeSantis said, adding that the state has a “regular framework” including “what we didn’t want.”

“You don’t want a patchwork of, like, Miami-Dade has all this and then you go to Collier and then it’s totally different because people are doing business in multiple jurisdictions in this state,” DeSantis explained at Mo’s Bagel and Deli in Aventura.

While the state bans cities from enforcing water breaks and so-called “cooling measures,” DeSantis notes that there are “employee guidelines from the state level that can be tweaked one way or another,” while “businesses are able to do what they want to do.”

“It preempts a local government from imposing restrictions in ways that are not likely going to be feasible when you have people doing in multiple jurisdictions,” DeSantis said, defending the business class and again affirming that “it should be one rule for the state.”

Though localities can’t do anything to protect workers, DeSantis reassured the South Florida crowd that “there’s nothing preventing a business from taking any additional action that they want to take,” adding that “most of them do take” precautions to protect workers from heat and the complications it creates.