Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jimmy Patronis is continuing his efforts to woo businesses from other states.
This week, Patronis distributed a video that targets businesses in California to relocate to Florida. The video serves as a follow-up correspondence to the same businesses the CFO issued letters to in August. The letters from Patronis focused on California’s poor fiscal management and disinterest in supporting business growth.
“As the state’s Chief Financial Officer, a fourth-generation Floridian and a former small business owner, my mission is to encourage businesses in California to consider moving to the great state of Florida. The fact is politicians in California have treated businesses with complete indifference. It’s been six months since Governor Newsom closed Disneyland and other theme parks and amusement parks in the state and there is no end to reopening in sight. Thousands of people are out of work and people’s livelihoods are on the line. Politicians in California have shut down businesses, they’ve spent years spending cash they don’t have, and now they’re counting on the federal government to bail them out. Now is the time for Florida to strike and recruit businesses. As Florida’s CFO, I am committed to strengthening the state’s balance sheet, and I will continue reaching out to businesses in California to support Florida communities,” Patronis said.
The CFO’s office stressed that the opened Disney parks in Florida, which is one of the Sunshine State’s largest employers, serve as a contrast to California. California theme parks and amusement parks have been shut down in response to COVID for half a year. These parks are still waiting on guidance from the state of California. The city of Anaheim, where Disneyland is located, is facing a $100 million budget shortfall as a result of the closures and the unemployment rate has risen to a historic high of 15 percent since Disneyland closed in March. The Disneyland Resort is California’s largest private employer and employs more than 32,000 people.
List of California Businesses that Received a Letter from CFO Patronis
- Wells Fargo
- The Walt Disney Company
- Hewlett Packard, Inc.
- Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Oracle Corporation
- Gilead Sciences
- Qualcomm Incorporated
- Amgen, Inc.
- Visa Inc.
- Synnex Corporation
- CBRE Group, Inc.
- Western Digital Corporation
- PayPal Holdings, Inc.
- Pacific Life Insurance Company
- Tesla
- Adobe, Inc.
- The Clorox Company
- First American Financial Corporation
- Lam Research Corporation
- Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.
- A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc.
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