TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – When Florida lawmakers return to the Capitol next week to begin their annual session, they will have more money than anticipated. State tax collections, buoyed by rising consumer spending, were up almost 400 million dollars in November.
State economists, even with inflation, are cautiously optimistic about the future.
Florida’s November revenue collections were 398.8 million higher than economists predicted. It follows a nearly year-long trend of larger than expected tax collections.
“We had a lot of stimulus money,” Amy Baker, coordinator at the office of Economic and Demographic Research, said. “Some of that is starting to fade out. ”
Baker said they are continuing to recover “from the worst effects of the pandemic” and are continuing to grow.
Florida businesses remain wary of national policies, but they are also seeing a rising tide, even with staffing and supply chain shortages.
Bill Herrle, the Executive Director of the Florida Chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, spoke on the subject.
“Forty-four percent of small business owners have reported increasing wages in the last quarter,” Herrle said. “We’re doing what we can to bring workers back. But of course, that could mean higher prices too.”
Even the governor noted the upswing when he announced his $99.7 billion Freedom First budget.
“Florida is clicking on all cylinders,” Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters when he announced the budget on December ninth.
The governor also doubled down on the state’s economic freedom Monday after reports that one of his biggest critics, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, vacationed maskless in Miami.
“If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I’d be a pretty doggone wealthy man,” said DeSantis.
State economists tell us the rising inflation we’re now seeing is a double-edged sword. Inflation will initially bring more money to the state before damaging consumers’ purchasing power.
And as lawmakers begin writing the state budget next week, they are better able to say yes to new spending than perhaps anytime in the state’s history, with as much as seventeen billion in reserves.