VOLUME 6 ISSUE 25
$2
Stuff the Bus… Pg B11 JUNE 20 - 26, 2025
Lawmakers pass $115.1B budget, end session
‘Mr. Ma’ leads the way for Marion manufacturers
By Jim Turner and Tom Urban The News Service of Florida
O
ne of the more contentious legislative sessions in recent history came to a close late June 16 as lawmakers approved a $115.1 billion budget for next fiscal year and prepared to send it to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Senate unanimously passed the spending plan (SB 2500), while the House approved it in a 103-2 vote. Lawmakers finished the annual session at 11:19 p.m. — more than six weeks after the scheduled May 2 end of the session. “Here we are at the end of the long and winding road,” House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, said as the House convened. The budget, which will take effect with the July 1 start of the 20252026 fiscal year, remains subject to DeSantis vetoes. But it would be about $3.5 billion smaller than the budget for the current fiscal year and is less than a $115.6 plan that DeSantis proposed in early February. Lawmakers also approved a $1.3 billion package of tax cuts, dominated by the elimination of a commercial lease tax that has long been a target of business lobbyists. The budget includes moves ranging from paying down state debt to giving most employees pay raises. Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Miami Republican who chairs the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, described the spending plan as “lean yet strategic.” The only dissenting votes on the budget were cast by Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, and Rep. Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami. While she voted for the budget, Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said it represented “a lot of missed opportunities.” “There was just so much time spent on conflict and controversy, that a lot of issues that would benefit working families got left behind,” Eskamani said. The House and Senate could not See Budget, page A8
Members of the Mid-Florida Regional Manufacturers Association, from left, Vice President Phillip Schuster, President Mitch Twardosky, board member and associate professor at CF Sam Ajlani and Program Chair Brian Ballard, talk during a tour of Custom Window Systems in Ocala on June 12, 2025. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette]
For nearly three decades, the Mid-Florida Regional Manufacturers Association has worked to build the area’s manufacturing base. By Jamie Berube jamie@ocalagazette.com
I
n March 2020, Brian Ballard stepped out of a Mid-Florida Regional Manufacturers Association tour of a local manufacturing plant to find the world had been turned upside down. “When we walked out of that tour, everything had changed during that hour,” he recalled. “You went from wondering what was happening to all of a sudden realizing everything just got shut down. It was scary, it was disruptive. There was
so much unknown, there was so much misinformation.” As COVID-19 shut down the nation, MRMA became Marion County’s lifeline for manufacturers. “I felt like MRMA came in and was an incredible steadying voice of collecting information, boiling that down to what is really going on and what do people in our industry really need to know, how can they react, where can they go to get masks, other PPE supplies. They just did a great job helping our members navigate through that,” Ballard said.
“Manufacturing was listed as an essential job. So, all of these places were still trying to work and navigate and communicate to their employees and get the materials that they needed. And it was scary, disruptive,” he said. From that moment of crisis to its three-decade legacy, MRMA has been the backbone of Ocala’s industrial might, forging opportunities and resilience for a community on the rise. For 23 years, MRMA has united manufacturers, logistics See ‘Mr. Ma’, page A6
Shaping Ocala’s future
How Tye Chighizola’s vision and leadership transformed a city over more than three decades. By Jamie Berube jamie@ocalagazette.com
Tye Chighizola, the longtime city of Ocala director of growth management, speaks during a City Council meeting at City Hall on Jan. 4, 2022. Chighizola retired on June 6 after 36 years on the job. [File photo by Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette]
W
hen Tye Chighizola walked into Ocala’s city offices to begin his career in 1989, he was handed a
yellow tablet notepad as his “computer.” At a time when the city relied on a single shared PC with a greenscreen mainframe and floppy disks, Chighizola’s work depended on handwritten notes passed to an assistant for typing.
“When I first got here, I was like, ‘Where’s my computer?’ And they said, ‘We only have one.’ So, the assistant director handed me a yellow tablet and was like, ‘You write it down on that tablet,’” Chighizola said. In an era with few
personal computers and scant email, communicating for work meant phone calls or letters, and planning required patience and ingenuity. Yet, even with a yellow notepad as his primary tool, Chighizola’s t See Ocala’s future , page A4
READ DAILY NEWS AT OCALAGAZETTE.COM
INSIDE:
Record achievement .................... A2 Veteran leader ............................. A5 Flag Day.......................................... B1 Juneteenth...................................... B3 Calendar ........................................ B6
Subscribers will receive their paper through USPS on the USPS schedule. Subscription orders must be received by 5 pm on Tuesday in order to be included in the following week’s delivery. Starting at $10/month ocalagazette.com/subscribe