Know your role: Gov. DeSantis shoots down Florida GOP’s kumbaya budget pow-wow

Gov. Ron DeSantis is not going to participate in a summit proposed by the Republican Party of Florida to bridge divides between him, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez on a budget that is running late.

“That’s not the role of the Republican Party of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We’re not going to do a dog and pony show. That’s not the way it works. The way it works is: People should do their jobs.”

The state party’s unprecedented offer to broker peace via “thoughtful discussion and aligned decision-making” clearly struck the Governor as extraneous.

“You don’t need a summit to just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” DeSantis added.

RPOF chair Evan Power was undaunted by DeSantis’ words.

“Floridians want historic tax reform and the Republican Party is always ready to help in any way possible to advance the goals of our Republican team,” he said Monday.

The offer came after legislative leadership ended last week saying plenty of budget issues remain unresolved.

Perez said in a memo Friday that a previous budget framework “has blown up.” He added that on Tuesday, the House will “pass a concurrent resolution extending the timeline through the end of June.”

In his own memo, Albritton noted that the House “proposal for an across-the-board sales tax cut would unduly benefit tourists and foreigners and is ‘dead on arrival’” should it be in the final budget. DeSantis has threatened to veto such a proposal.

“An across-the-board sales tax cut of one quarter of one penny is not meaningful, felt, or seen by families and seniors when compared with other available options,” Albritton wrote Friday.

DeSantis continued to take the House leadership to task, calling them a “little junta.”

“Some of these folks in the House leadership, they have a personal agenda. They have vendettas, petty. It’s not being driven by strong policy and they’re trying to really deviate in a variety of ways,” DeSantis added.

DeSantis also said “the House leadership has kind of careened off course the whole Session,” criticizing their intransigence during the illegal immigration Special Session earlier this year.

“I don’t know what got into the water. I think it’s just the leadership is driving these guys in a poor direction. It’s not the direction that their voters wanted. It’s not what they campaigned on.”