Berny Jacques town hall gets raucous

It’s not just Republicans in Congress who are being aggressively challenged at town-hall meetings this Summer.

Pinellas County Rep. Berny Jacques heard loudly from some critics about the way Florida Republicans are running the state while hosting a town hall meeting at the Abundant Life Ministries in Largo Friday night.

While touting DOGE efforts led by Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia to review spending by local governments, Jacques was interrupted by a man who began shouting about “home rule.”

“You’re talking about giving over our finances and giving up control to the state government and having their Big Brother eyes scrutinizing these cities, whether it’s big cities or small cities. Like, what about the city’s own ability to judge for themselves? ” the man yelled at Jacques. “You’re taking away everybody’s power to hold their own electeds responsible if they so choose.”

“I would push back against your dismissiveness of the state’s role in all of this,” Jacques responded. “And I believe in home rule as much as the next guy, but when government is intentionally or blatantly wasting your money, and people don’t have recourse —”

The man angrily retorted: “Wasting your money? $300 million on Alligator Alcatraz!” He referred to the costs of the immigrant detention facility built by the state in the Everglades. (Court filings in a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida say that the state has spent at least $218 million in constructing the facility).

“There should be no resistance to being transparent,” Jacques responded, his voice rising. “Anybody who is resistant to be transparent has something to hide, and they need to be brought to heel!” Other members of the crowd cheered him on.

“Like the Hope (Florida) Foundation, right?” Another voice in the audience immediately called out.

Another inquiry about the costs of constructing the Everglades deportation facility prompted Jacques to say that the state and the country gave President Donald Trump the green light to enact his promise of mass deportations of immigrants without legal papers when they re-elected him to the White House last year.

“He has to deliver on that mandate,” he said. “Anything less would be a disappointment, and I’m so glad that the President is amping it up, and I’m so glad that our state government is being a strong partner in amping up the deportations because it’s what the people demanded.”

Congressional redistricting

The next issue was congressional redistricting. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said it’s likely the Legislature will follow Texas in redrawing the state’s congressional districts map before the 2026 election.

The woman asking the question prefaced it by denouncing the 2022 congressional map drawn up by DeSantis that eliminated a majority-Black district in North Florida (that was recently upheld^[1] by the Florida Supreme Court).

She also criticized the 2022 Florida Senate-approved map that a federal judicial panel upheld^[2] within the past month. She went on to describe the call by Trump for Republican lawmakers to redraw their congressional lines was a way to “silence the voices of millions of Floridians.”

“Do you intend to support this obvious gerrymandered and partisan redistricting?” she asked Jacques.

“I will support our redistricting if they get the numbers accurately,” he replied, adding that he believes Florida was undercounted in the 2020 U.S. census and robbed of one or two congressional seats. “So, there should be a new census,” he said. “There should be a citizenship question. We should know who’s here, and we should redistrict accordingly in a way that’s accurate with the current times.”

A few minutes later a woman stood up and chastised Jacques and the crowd for displaying what she called un-Christian behavior. She then criticized law enforcement officers arresting and detaining people who they claim lack the legal right to be here without due process.

“You have to prove that. Instead of allowing funds to be diverted to federal initiatives, we are investing in concentration camps in the United States,” she said. “Now, the Germans said the Jews were criminals and they were taking away from our —”

An uproar from the crowd ensued, drowning out the remainder of her sentence.

“Before we go to the next person, just to be clear, I disagree with everything she just said,” Jacques responded, as an official with the church intervened to try to keep the peace. At that point, the man who who initially shouted out to Jacques yelled back at the church official. Members of the crowd yelled, “We don’t want to hear you,” and he peaceably left the event.

The crowd settled down after that.

The Pinellas Republican was later asked about SB 180^[3], the measure sponsored by fellow GOP Republican Sen. Nick DiCeglie designed to expedite post-disaster rebuilding. There’s been a substantial backlash^[4] from local government officials since it went into effect. They object to a provision that prevents local governments from passing any new local land-use or development regulations that could be considered “more restrictive or burdensome” than what was already on the books.

“We vote on hundreds of bills. And every now and then, probably more times than we care to admit, we have some unintended consequences. And then you have to go back and adjust,” Jacques responded. “That is an issue I’m looking into, because I’ve been hearing from several people who are involved in local government and we don’t want to be overdeveloped.”

Property taxes

Another inquiry from a woman who identified herself as a member of the Pinellas Republican Liberty Caucus was about the (still to be written) constitutional amendment expected to be on the ballot next year aimed at either eliminating or reducing property taxes on homesteads. If approved, she asked, would that mean that the tax burdens would simply just shift into higher sales taxes, more tolls, or higher fees at state parks?

“It will depend on the particular city,” Jacques said. “Even if all homestead property taxes went away, they could still make it up on second homes, they could still make it up on commercial properties.”

He added that the idea that local governments could lose some of their funding via property taxes “forces them to look inward. And then to start making priorities and to get back to basics of police, fire, roads, sewage systems.”

After the meeting, Jacques said he wasn’t taken aback by the aggressive questioning by some members of the audience.

“I’m always prepared to engage with both passionate supporters and those who are not supporters, so I was not surprised,” he told the Phoenix in a text message. “This was our third annual town hall since elected. I welcome the constituent engagement — I work for all of them.”

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Mitch Perry reporting. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected]^[5].

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