OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at a news conference Friday morning at a high school in Osceola County, lauding ongoing efforts to establish Central Florida as the nation’s premier semiconductor-related talent pipeline.
The governor said he intends to propose $80 million in the next state budget for a semiconductor institute at the University of Florida.
“That’s for capital costs as well as operating costs and that’ll not only be good for students, you’re gonna end up seeing businesses want to come and locate alongside that. So I think it’s exciting opportunities and we’re continuing to get ahead. Now, everything that we’re doing — this is not the CHIPS Act that the federal government did — anytime we do anything people try to say, ‘Oh, is that Biden’s money?’ First of all, it’s your money, not Biden’s money, OK? And they’re putting you in debt,” DeSantis said.
Osceola’s NeoCity technology district, nestled between Kissimmee and East Lake Toho, was born of county leaders’ desire for a tech hub and future home for technologies-industry professionals. This aspiration, which the county is said to have been working toward since as early as 2014, has since become well-funded.
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That was no less true come Friday, as state and county heads gathered at NeoCity Academy to praise the district’s future in light of the hundreds of millions of federal and Floridian dollars flowing in to bolster semiconductor manufacturing on American soil.
“About 10 years ago, the Osceola County Commission adopted a goal to grow and diversify our economy and out of that we see NeoCity today, and governor, because of your support and the investments that you and the state of Florida have made into NeoCity, (it) has positioned this site to be five years ahead of anyone else in the country who’s pursuing a similar cluster in advanced packaging. So we’re way ahead of the game when it comes to enticing industry and creating those jobs for our community,” said Osceola County Manager Don Fisher. “We recently received the Build Back Better grant award that the governor referred to, we’re in the top 16 for the National Science Foundation Innovations Engine and we were recently awarded — Osceola County — up to $289 million from the Department of Defense reach (sic) and Cornerstone program to further advance packaging for the benefit and security of the United States. That makes Osceola County the local only local government prime contractor for the Department of Defense.”
News 6 Reporter Mark Lehman asked DeSantis if he intended to sign a bill moving through the Florida Legislature which seeks to ban children under 16 from having social media accounts. DeSantis said that the bill was likely to evolve, acknowledging that legal issues may arise if the proposed legislation were enacted in its current state and urging patience as lawmakers find a way to ease the governor’s concerns over the breadth of HB 1.
“To be determined, I’m getting into that. As a parent of young kids (...) they’re not on social media,” DeSantis said. “These devices (smartphones) are a big problem for kids and I think parents, you know, they want some tools to be able to help so that their kids can grow up in the healthiest environment and it’s one thing to just say, you know, you can’t do this, but I think that there’s a lot that happens in school and in society and whatever. So I do think it’s a problem, I think social media has been a net negative for our youth without question. Now, having said that, there have been other other states that have tried to do similar things that have met resistance in the courts, and not to say courts are always right about this, but I anything I do, I want a pathway for this to actually stick. So we’re going to look through that.”
See Friday’s news conference again in the video player below:
Also in education, Florida’s Board of Governors on Wednesday voted to cut “Principles of Sociology” as a core class — replacing it with a general U.S. history course — and to prohibit state spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in all public universities, such as UF, UCF and FSU. This came about a week after similar changes were made to Florida College System institutions.
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