You're watching Southwest Florida InFocus coming up.

State leaders push to build what they call alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades.

Details on the controversial migrant detention center that could cost close to half $1 billion.

Is the state's funding fight over?

The legislature has agreed on a new, slimmer budget compared to last year.

But Governor Ron DeSantis has yet to sign off, with a deadline looming, and proposed cuts to Medicaid could impact millions of Floridians and health facilities, particularly those in rural areas.

A look at the potential impact on Southwest Floridians.

Hello, I'm Sandra Victorova Thank you for joining us.

State officials are transforming a remote airfield in the heart of the Florida Everglades into an immigration and detention center dubbed Alligator Alcatraz.

It is designed to house some 5000 people.

Governor Ron DeSantis used his emergency powers to convert the Dade Collier training and Transition airport without negotiating with Miami-Dade County.

The center would be temporary, utilizing tents and administration trailers.

This is part of state efforts to support President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.

According to the Department of Homeland Security.

The detention center could cost $450 million for a single year of operations.

Governor DeSantis says the federal government will pay for it using FEMA dollars.

He also says the airfields locat Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there's a lot of alligators.

You're going to have to contend.

No one's going anywhere.

You know, once you do that, it's a safe and secure as you can be.

The Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport is located in the Big Cypress National Preserve, roughly 55 miles west of Miami.

The location was originally intended to become the Everglades Jetport.

It was supposed to be five times larger than New York's JFK International Airport.

Work was halted in the 1970s after an environmental study determined an airport in that area would lead to massive land drainage in the already fragile ecosystem.

Hundreds of south and southwest Floridians gathered at the site of the future detention center, calling for state leaders to reconsider.

They stressed the impact the project could have on local Native Americans, as well as the area's ecosystem.

We live in a time that's so disrespectful that you could propose something at the very site that literally started the EPA in America, literally started the first national preserve in America, where we're standing in the Big Cypress National Preserve.

There's not a thousand people that live on this road.

Tamiami Trail in the Big Cypress.

You know, so you're more than doubling the population, and you're welcoming a whole wildfire.

And they're using a highly controversial issue like this to try to get people to not remember why we protected this site in the first place.

DeSantis says he also wants to create another facility at a Florida National Guard training center known as Camp Blanding, about 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville.

Florida lawmakers recently approved a leaner state budget compared to last year.

This one totals more than $115 billion.

It includes a $1.3 billion tax cut package.

The governor now has until July 1st to consider that budget.

Joining me now for a closer look are Florida Gulf Coast University political science professor doctor Sandra Pavelka, WGCU host and reporter John Davis.

Welcome to you both.

Thank you.

So the state legislature passed this budget 45 days after the scheduled end of session.

What was the delay?

Well, there were some discrepancies in the budget and priorities from the governor and the legislature.

The governor was seeking for a reduction in the property taxes, and the House and the Senate were disputing a decrease in the state sales tax from 6% to 5.25%.

So I know that Speaker Daniel Perez didn't get his permanent sales tax reduction, but some tax cuts did make it in.

John.

What essentially did they agree on?

So there was a $1.3 billion tax cut package that was approved.

One of the most significant things I thought, because this largely benefits businesses overall, was they eliminated Florida's business rent tax.

This was a 2% tax that businesses would pay on any property that they rented in the state of Florida.

This is going to save a collective $1.6 billion on businesses that operate out of Florida and rent properties.

That's a huge deal.

And Florida was truly an outlier for even having this in the first place.

No other state in the country has anything like this.

So how does this proposed budget compared to last year?

There is a reduction in one point.

I think it's about 1.5 billion in and money from this year to last year in terms of a reduction.

So that's a pretty significant chunk.

That being said, I don't think it was unexpected.

Lawmakers went into this session knowing they were going to have to do some belt tightening.

And this has largely because we're not going to have the budget propped up by federal economic stimulus dollars or Covid relief money, as we have in recent years past.

So the budget now goes to the governor's desk.

Any idea what we can expect at this point?

Well, the we have a fiscal year that starts July 1st.

So normally the governor will have 15 days.

Once it's presented to him.

But in this case, time's ticking.

So he has until July 1st to actually sign the budget.

And and he has what's called a line item veto.

Many states don't have that power.

But our state government and the governor does.

So the governor can actually go in and line item with his red pen.

Whichever, items that he does not want within the budget.

Or of course, he can veto the entire budget because it doesn't normally happen.

And then the legislature has to, go, go back into session and vote upon it by two thirds vote.

But but the line item veto is really an incredible power for the governor to have where he can go in and kind of, red pen, those, those turkeys, so to speak.

Yeah.

Speaking of which, almost immediately after the budget was announced, Florida tax watch this nonpartisan like sort of budget watchdog group, identified 242 so-called budget turkeys they want DeSantis to look into.

So these are some 1600 local projects lawmakers have put into the spending plan, and there's about $2 billion there.

And those individual projects that would specifically benefit the their constituents.

So I think we'll all be looking closely to see what survives Desantis's veto pen.

So want to switch gears here to this whole discussion about the governor's idea to reduce or eliminate property taxes.

What happened to that idea, that proposal?

Well, so that tax deal, was put on hold, and the legislature instructed their Office of Economic and Demographic Research to study property taxes in Florida and to present some type of report to them by the beginning of November of this year.

So that that will be they can review it.

And then, of course, hold committee meetings in the spring when they in the fall, in the spring to discuss it.

So it's still on the table, so to speak, but, it's being researched, for probably next session.

This is really the prudent action to take.

DeSantis has been going around the state saying we need to cut or eliminate property taxes.

And people have been saying, what's your plan?

Show us the work.

How would the funding or how would the projects that are funded by property taxes?

And bear in mind, this is all hyper local things like public schools, roadway infrastructure.

Who is going to respond when you call 911?

All of these things are vital services paid for by property taxes.

So cutting or eliminating them without studying the feasibility first would really be reckless.

Doctor Pavelka, John Davis, thank you so much for your time and we'll have to have you back once the governor signs the budget and learn from you about what those changes are.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Coming up, limiting trips to the emergency room, Lee County is looking to expand its parent medicine program to bring health care to those who need it without heading back to the hospital.

Medicaid could be severely impacted by federal spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration.

U.S. House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill act, which is estimated to cut $600 million from Medicaid, the health care program for lower income families and people with disabilities.

If passed, the budget bill would reduce Medicaid enrollment by millions of people at the nonprofit health care network in Collier County, about 27% of its patients are Medicaid recipients.

That's approximately 14,000 people.

This patient at a clinic in a markley told us her family depends on Medicaid to be able to afford care.

Doctor Jamie Khemraj, the chief medical officer at Health Care Network, which provides everything from primary health care to dental services, says the financial impact of the proposed cuts could mean cutting some services they currently provide.

She is most concerned, though, about how it will impact the health of the families they serve.

As a physician.

When I think about cuts, I think about access again.

Who gets access to health care?

Who is able to come in and know that they can not have to worry about accessing a well-child visit, managing their diabetes because now they've got to pay for a visit.

You know, $10 may not be a lot to a lawyer, but it's a lot to a person who has minimal income.

Right.

You are choosing to put food on your table or to have a medical visit.

You are choosing to have to buy a pill or to have dinner that night.

To help us understand the impact this could have across the country.

And here in Florida is Doctor Sarah Miller, an associate professor of business, economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Thank you so much, Doctor Miller, for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So my understanding is approximately 71 million people are enrolled in Medicaid.

Help us to understand the implications of cutting Medicaid to this extent and and how how much you think Medicaid will be impacted.

Yeah.

So Medicaid is a health insurance program that really serves our most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.

So people in poverty, low income pregnant women, kids in poor households, the Congressional Budget Office is expecting Medicaid enrollment to drop by about 10.9 million as a result of this bill.

And then additional cuts related to the ACA exchanges will drive that, an insurance rate up even higher than that.

So I think, experts are predicting that the effect on Medicaid enrollment is potentially quite substantial.

I want to hone in on on Florida for a moment.

The funding for Medicaid is sort of a shared cross between the federal government and the state of Florida.

Apparently, Florida contributes about 40%, for coverage, around $15 billion annually.

What would the impact be to Floridians?

Well, the Kaiser Family Foundation is putting the number who are going to become uninsured in Florida from the the combined efforts of this bill, both the Medicaid piece and the marketplace piece.

At just under a million people.

So I think they're going to be a substantial number of Floridians that are going to be losing coverage, either because they can't remain enrolled in Medicaid or because they suddenly find that their marketplace place coverage is unaffordable.

And of course, that could have ripple effects to the Florida economy, especially since hospitals are often required to see people, even if they're uninsured, and they're not going to be able to make up that revenue that's going to uncompensated care.

Help us to understand as far as sort of tangible impacts, my understanding is this would really impact potential care at, let's say, people accessing emergency care or folks who live in more rural communities.

Yeah, I think that's definitely a possibility.

Especially hospitals in rural areas often are operating on really razor thin profit margins.

And so they would have gotten revenue from these new uninsured people in the form of insurance payments.

Now, the people that lose coverage are still going to have heart attacks, are still going to have car accidents.

They're still going to show up in need care.

But the hospital is not going to actually be able to get paid for that care.

And so I think especially rural hospitals that are struggling financially and don't have a lot of wiggle room in terms of their revenue, might be facing some pretty, severe financial challenges because of these changes.

What would be the the impact to seniors if these cuts become a reality?

Well, seniors are most seniors are covered through the Medicare program, but there are really a large number of seniors who are both enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

They're called dually eligible beneficiaries.

And it depends, of course, how the bill actually plays out and how things actually get implemented.

But they might be looking at jumping through a lot more hoops if they're using Medicaid to pay for their long term care services, or if they're on Medicaid to help them afford the medical care that they need, they might find themselves needing to, recertify their their eligibility more frequently and just deal with additional paperwork.

And certainly some people who face that, especially if they don't have a lot of resources to help, might find that they lose coverage even if they are entitled to that coverage.

In the 15 seconds I have left with you, what do you want Americans to know about this proposal?

As far as, what you think the impact will be, you know, to Americans as a whole?

Some folks may say, well, I don't have Medicaid.

It doesn't impact me.

I mean, I think one thing I would say is that we know from research that there's not just going to be impacts today.

There's going to be impacts for generations.

If people lose Medicaid eligibility.

It has a lot of beneficial effects that don't just stay with the beneficiary.

For example, we talked about the financial piece.

One thing we know about Medicaid is when people gain Medicaid coverage, they do a lot better financially.

They're not getting these $10,000 emergency department bills in the mail and then struggling to pay them.

That helps our family financially, but it also helps the providers who were expecting to get paid for those services.

So I think there really can be ripple effects that affect the entire health care system that should be considered.

Doctor Miller, we thank you for your time.

My pleasure.

And then Leaders at Florida Gulf Coast University are celebrating the largest gift in the school's history.

The College of Health and Science received $22 million from the Elaine Nippon Charitable Foundation.

The university plans to use the funds to construct a new academic building.

Some of the money will also pay for trauma simulation mannequins that give students experience performing ultrasounds, taking vital signs, and even practicing surgery.

FGCUs administration says the donation will improve training for tomorrow's local health care workers.

The gifts that the Mayor Foundation has provided now to us will allow us to further advance the technology that we're in implementing into the college and further futureproof our students in terms of their training, their learning, so that they're ready for tomorrow's workforce while we're training them here today.

The late doctor mayor was a renowned author and educator.

Her donations have revolutionized the health and sciences programs at Fgcu, and put it on the map as a top training facility in the area.

Going to the E.R.

isn't fun for patients, and it's certainly not the cheapest way to deliver medical care.

So a group of paramedics and EMTs who normally transport patients to hospitals in Lee County are doing something different.

They're making house calls with the goal of reducing visits to the E.R..

Joining us to explain how this new program works is Lee county's public safety medical director, Doctor Jim Augustine.

Doctor Augustine, welcome.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you.

So I find this program fascinating.

Why give paramedics, EMTs, these these new duties?

How is this going to help?

This helps the community by delivering care to people who need care in something other than the back of an ambulance, an emergency department or an urgent care center.

And for our for our paramedics and EMTs who work on the streets, this is a way of them delivering much better care than they can deliver by one time after another, coming to see somebody with red lights and sirens on.

So let's talk about the patients you're really focusing on.

Okay.

We started this program as a pilot, about eight months ago, with some of our opiate recovery funds for the state in an attempt to reduce the number of overdoses and fatalities and people with issues that would lead them to overdose in the field.

So that case you were talking about was the settlement with the pharmaceutical.

It was it was the opiate settlement funds, that came into the state of Florida.

And they were funding programs like ours across the state.

And those programs have come to reduce the number of overdose deaths.

And the people who have those recurrent situations found a much better way of caring for those people.

We're implementing the programs that have been implemented in other parts of the state and the country to reduce that impact on our community.

And there's a wide variety of patients that you're really targeting.

You mentioned to me earlier maybe seniors who've had hip fractures, cardiac patients.

Tell me about those.

Yeah.

So the program we have an opportunity now in partnership with Lee health to expand this program and to deliver care to people who are identified at the hospital level as having needs that may not be well met by them simply going home and having an occasional visiting nurse come to see them.

Those patients, the hospital can call us, let us know those patients are going home, that they're frail, that they have needs that may not be matched well again, by having them coming back in the emergency department or having, an attempt at having physical therapy or other services at home.

We send a crew to the house, figure out what their needs are, begin to address those needs at home, in some cases, getting them aligned with, palliative care or hospice.

In some cases, finding better home health care services that match their needs.

And we can do that across our entire community, which sometimes isn't easy for the hospital based care to do.

I assume you would argue this makes financial sense, and that there's proof that this type of program works, right?

Yes.

And actually the experience from both across the country and the experience I've had in other cities, this makes financial sense by reducing the number of patients in our medical units, reducing the number of patients going to the emergency department, and keeping these people's bills from getting higher and higher when they're already identified as having problems related to their heart or their diabetes or their hypertension or their COPD.

Because in the end, if they're indigent patients, right, that bill sort of comes back to the community in many ways.

Yes, it does, but many of these patients have some insurance.

But that's still a cost to everybody in the system when those patients can't find the right care.

And of course, we have a certain burden here in this area because we have a lot of visitor Sometimes they come down here not so healthy, and they try to try to think that Florida sunshine alone will get them better, and they begin to have their problems, and then they're back in the emergency department again and back to their their hotel or home.

We're we are like shortcutting that by saying if we've identified that they need care, we know the system really well.

We have EMTs and paramedics who know the system really well.

Let's find them the right care and keep them in their home.

Keep them in their hotel, keep them plugged into the system at the best site of care for the least cost.

All right.

We would love to have you back to see how the program has success in the future.

And I would love to do that.

Thank you, Doctor Augustine.

Thank you so much for your time.

A pleasure.

Coming up, as we've already seen, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, we're introducing you to a new app to prepare you for tropical weather and other public emergencies.

Forecasters have already been busy as the first named system of the Atlantic hurricane season has already developed.

And good news, tropical Storm Andrea has already fizzled out.

This is just the beginning of what is reported to be a busy storm season.

Now, a new statewide tool is available to help keep you informed about hurricanes and other public emergencies.

It's called beacon, and it uses artificial intelligence to bring you critical information directly from your local emergency responders.

We'll have the latest on Hurricane Milton as recovery efforts begin.

News teams like WGU work round the clock during hurricanes to broadcast important information to Southwest Florida.

Everything from evacuation orders to storm safety tips while still delivering other news.

And because GCU covers 12 counties, delivering safety information specific to each community can be a challenge.

It can also be frustrating for police and fire departments, hospitals and local governments.

And I'm working with emergency management and public safety.

Sometimes they're concerned that their message gets lost in everything that's going on with the disaster.

That's why Randy Wright and his team at the University of Florida have spent several years working with the Florida Division of Emergency Management to launch beacon.

That's the broadcast emergency alerts and communications operations network.

It's a broadcast system that allows local emergency managers and government leaders to transmit specific alerts to residents in the communities they serve.

There's no news, there's no editorial information, there's no commercials.

There's no there's nothing other than alerts.

If there's a burn van that's going on or if there's a boil water order that's happening, or if there's a closure on I-75, all of that type of information that's being fed into the system by the agencies responsible for them.

Listeners can get alert notifications and listen to them via this app.

Burn man notice from the city of LaBelle.

Although Hendry County has lifted its burn ban, it is important to note that the city of Lavelle's burn ban is still in effect until further notice.

And even when communities lose cell phone and internet coverage, bacon continues to be broadcast on local radio channels.

We continually hear about the only thing I could get was radio because it's the most resilient medium out there.

So while the app works wonderfully and is great for those times when connectivity is out, power is out.

Beacon will be there on the radio.

In Southwest Florida, you can find Beacon on WGCUS HD channel three for WGCU, and a number of public broadcasters in the state of Florida.

It's just natural within our mission to be able to provide that conduit for emergency management agencies and other government agencies to be able to talk to the public.

The alert information is written by public safety and government agencies.

Then, once it's fed into beacon, the AI technology turns it into digital voices that can speak nine languages.

De la might call it a concept of good here, and literally within a minute from the time that they enter the alert into the system, it's being broadcast, and then it's being repeated so that that agency can constantly update the public on the latest about whatever event is going on that the public needs to be alerted to be can also includes weather maps.

And Wright says if you evacuate from your community, that's not a problem.

You can ask the beacon app to deliver alerts from the area you're traveling to, or just turn the dial to the public radio station serving that community.

Each one has a beacon channel.

And when a severe storm moves in, we hope you'll also tune in to WGCU You can dial in to 90.1 or 91.7 for up to date weather information.

Make sure to also join us next week as we celebrate the 4th of July by heading back to America's beginnings and explore Florida's role during the Revolutionary War.

Join us for that story and much more next week.

And don't forget to like and subscribe to our WGCU news YouTube channel, where you can find all of our stories and extended interviews.

Have a great weekend everyone, and we'll see you again next week.