Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has came back to his job as governor of Florida after dropping his presidential bid and endorsing President Donald Trump (R). However, one of his biggest claims in the primary race is being fact-checked.
In order to appeal to small government conservatives, Gov. DeSantis told a crowd of primary voters in New Hampshire, "Florida state government (has the) lowest number of state employees per capita in the country."
Although this statement was made on January 16th of this year, the Tampa Bay Times has refuted DeSantis' claims as murky at best. The Florida publication claims that the governor's statement was not exactly true.
"Florida’s small state workforce long predates DeSantis; his predecessor and fellow Republican, now-Sen. Rick Scott, also bragged about the state’s low per capita ratio of government workers," wrote the Tampa Bay Times.
According to State Economic Competitiveness Index Florida ranks the third lowest among 50 states, employing 409 state and local employees per 10,000 population.
The Tampa Bay Times concluded that while the overall premise of DeSantis' claim has merit, the statement is misleading. "When state government workers are combined with local government workers, as an independent group has calculated, Florida generally ranks low but isn’t quite the lowest."
"The statement is accurate but needs additional information. We rate his claim Mostly True," wrote the Tampa Bay Times.
