Issues

Florida’s housing affordability crisis is affecting Floridians young and old, and it is the result of years of Tallahassee politicians ignoring their responsibility to middle- and working-class Floridians to keep Florida an affordable place to live. As State Representative, A.J. will advocate for the full funding of the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which allocates funding to incentivize the development of affordable housing units in areas with the highest need. A.J. supports property insurance reforms that would have the immediate effect of lowering excessive property insurance rates. Finally, A.J is committed to thinking of creative ways for the state government to incentivize local governments to enact sustainable and mixed-income land use and zoning policies. 

For many low-income Floridians, the greatest obstacle to prosperity is their lack of access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. For years, the Republican majority in the Florida Legislature has refused to expand its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, turning away billions of dollars in federal funding to provide health insurance coverage to over 800,000 qualifying Floridians. Low-income individuals in South Florida, particularly in Miami-Dade, would stand to benefit the most from expanding Medicaid. That is why A.J. is committed to filing legislation that would expand the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

With more coastline than forty-eight other states, Florida is incredibly vulnerable to the existential threat of climate change. Despite this, Florida’s Republican-controlled state government continues to sell out to big-business interests and delay any meaningful action to protect our coastline, our economy, and our way of life.

Instead, Florida should be an international leader in re-evaluating how a major economy can focus on saving its sensitive environment. Florida must take swift and significant action in pivoting from dependence on non-renewable energy sources to renewable ones as well as investing in local and state infrastructure that lowers Floridians’ overall carbon footprint. We must also invest in infrastructure that is resilient to the effects of rising seas and more frequent adverse climate events. Finally, we must continue the decades long effort to restore and protect the Everglades. A.J. is committed to achieving these results and saving our homes and our communities from sinking into rising seas.

A.J. believes that strong public schools and local control of Florida’s school districts are critical for the advancement of all of Florida’s children, not just those from well-off families. Rather than erode Florida’s public school system, Florida’s state government should make public school teacher jobs more competitive and desirable. Politicians should stop legislating curriculum from Tallahassee and rather re-think how public schools and teachers are evaluated so students can spend more time learning and less time testing.

A.J. is a product and supporter of Florida’s top-tier public higher education system. Florida should continue to prioritize strengthening its pre-eminent university and college system while keeping the costs of attendance low for students, that means permanently and fully funding the Bright Futures scholarship, so that any Florida student who meets the program’s high standards in high school can attend its state universities at a substantially lower cost.

A.J. understands that the Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to own a firearm. But gun violence has deadly and devastating consequences in our communities, and A.J. is unwilling to accept gun violence and further, unnecessary death as the norm. That is why A.J. supports common-sense, broadly supported gun safety legislation that both takes guns out of the wrong hands and encourages safe, responsible firearm ownership:

• First, Florida should require universal background check for all firearm transactions. These background checks would facilitate the effectiveness of the state’s red-flag laws, preventing individuals with histories of domestic violence, severe mental health and substance abuse disorders, and violent criminal offenses from accessing deadly weapons.
• Second, the sale of assault-style, high-capacity firearms in the state should be prohibited or require a special license with heightened safety standards for ownership. 
• Finally, individuals seeking concealed carry permits from the State should undergo a more rigorous gun safety education program to obtain their permit. A.J. opposes any form of open carry.