A massive climate resilience program is escaping Florida’s DOGE purge

When it comes to government spending, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking a cue from the Trump administration. As his second term nears its end, DeSantis is spearheading a campaign to slash property taxes, which provide around 30 percent of local government revenue. He’s also looking to dramatically pare down state-funded programs, and he’s commissioned a state-level version of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to do so. DeSantis’s DOGE will be run by his hand-picked chief financial officer, the creator of a YouTube show called “Government Gone Wild.” In a signal of his seriousness about cutting spending, the governor’s proposed budget for this year is 10 percent lower than his 2019 budget in inflation-adjusted and per-capita terms. To make these cuts happen, the Sunshine State’s climate programs are in the crosshairs. The DOGE report that the governor’s office published last month singled out local efforts to confront climate change as examples of the “irresponsible spending” that Florida must end. The state task force targeted Jacksonville’s efforts to purchase electric vehicles, St. Petersburg’s hiring of a “sustainability and resilience officer,” and Miami’s efforts to build out buses and rail systems. The report directed specific ire at Palm Beach County’s Office of Resilience, which had a mandate to “reduce resident, business, and natural resource vulnerability” to disasters that “include flooding, more frequent and intense storms, extreme heat, [and] saltwater intrusion.” DeSantis’s DOGE justified this criticism by appealing to a controversial report from the federal Department of Energy, which concluded that “scientific…

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