Why Bother?

Every spring, the Florida Legislature wraps up its work just as hurricane season looms. That timing carries both responsibility and opportunity. Floridians deserve to know what their elected officials have done — and chosen not to do — to help them weather the months ahead. Under Florida's balanced budget requirement, the core tradeoff is clear: should the state do more, and tax more? Or accept doing less, and spending less?

But voters aren't the only audience. Financial markets — crucial for insurance availability, catastrophe bonds, and post-disaster investing — judge Florida's readiness by business standards. They look beyond government accounting formalities (GASB) to focus on real-world risks and recovery costs, as defined in modern corporate practice (FASB).

For those market participants, the state's Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (CEMP) is just a user manual — a statement of operating limits (nameplate specs) of segments of Florida's Mitigation & Recovery (M&R) system or asset group. Unlike a modern company's reporting, CEMP does not systematically assess impairment risks, stress-test system capacity, or estimate cost of restoring operations after impairment, or lost income (say, State GDP).

This gap matters. Self-auditing rarely suffices — especially in government. To address this critical shortfall, this project proposes creation of a Florida Disaster Governance Observatory (FDGO): a public-private partnership that would independently assess Florida's readiness each May, before hurricane season begins. Supported jointly by state resources and market participants — insurers, reinsurers, bond investors, and others — the FDGO would provide a credible, transparent Readiness Report that evaluates not just last year's recovery, but the risks ahead.