Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said on Newsmax the ESG movement is on its way out in Florida and called the efforts "anti-profit", "anti-creativity", and "anti-competitive."
ESG refers to a set of standards investors can use in the areas of environmental, social and governance to make sure their investments are "socially conscious."
"We said if you're a bank in the state of Florida and you're using ESG criteria to score a loan that you might be making, you know what? The state of Florida's not gonna do business with you anymore," Patronis told Bianca de la Garza on "Newsline."
Patronis noted that 117 banks have agreed not to participate in the ESG criteria, and many CEOs have noted privately that they welcome the change, according to Patronis.
The sunshine state CFO also touched on his bill to free Floridians from giving money to Newsguard. Although claiming to provide "independent, apolitical trust ratings for online news sources," critics says Newsguard is anything but that. Patronis said that Newsguard scoring criteria arbitrarily "puts conservative opinion out of the public light."
He continued, "The State of Florida spends a lot of money advertising. We've made it loud and clear through my agency bill that we are not going to allow taxpayer dollars to go to any news service that subscribes to Newsguard."
De la Garza pointed out that Newsguard censorship efforts have found their way into organizations not related to media such as The American Federation of Teachers and the U.S. Department of Defense.
"The state of Florida is not going to stand by and allow it to grow here," Patronis said.
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