TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Among a series of tax relief proposals announced Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down on promises he’s made to ensure Floridians keep their gas stoves. For the governor, it’s a matter of preventing government overreach.

“What I have said is we have people that say under climate change, that gives them the right to regulate and control everything people do,” DeSantis said. “And we reject that in Florida. They claim climate change for gas stoves, they claim all of this stuff. Notice how they don’t like gas, natural gas, they don’t like oil, they say it all should be windmills and solar panels. But what’s the cleanest of all? Nuclear. They almost all oppose nuclear. They use that to control.”

Florida, according to DeSantis, will not allow that type of federal control.

“What we don’t do in Florida is embrace things to try to control people. What we do is, I have vulnerable areas in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We’re a storm prone state. If you look at what happened in Ian, some of the areas that had been fortified after Charlie, and even a little after Irma, they did much better. So that’s just recognizing that we’re in position to have to fend this stuff off.”

He said being in position to protect residents from control was actually a positive.

“Take away gas stoves, take away this, all that other stuff, that’s not going to happen in the state of Florida,” DeSantis continued. “And I do think that is really what they use to try to justify exerting control over people in this country. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Related to the alleged plan to remove gas stoves from Floridians and other Americans, DeSantis said rather than take the stoves away, instead Florida would provide a permanent sales tax exemption for the purchase of the home appliance, among other items, equaling $7 million in tax relief for residents.

During the actual budget announcement, DeSantis said gas stove removals were to keep the stoves “free from federal overreach in Florida.” However, many Floridians simply do not have gas stoves.

Even the governor said as much, noting that “we’re not even a state, the way Florida was built, a lot of this wasn’t even connected to gas line, a lot of it’s electric—it’s just the principle of, you know this is ridiculous, they do want to go after it. They got blowback so they kind of had to back off…”

By “they,” the governor was referring to the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission. In January, the agency took criticism after reports from Bloomberg came saying it was considering a ban due to indoor pollution concerns and childhood asthma risks.

Soon after, the Commission’s chairman, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, said the ban would not be happening, and that CPSC does not even have a regulatory power in place to remove it.

“I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” said CPSC Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric in a written statement. His statement further clarified that they were “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks” were looking at ways to strengthen voluntary safety standards for gas stoves.

Despite the comments from the chairman, and further clarification that a removal or ban on the gas stoves was not coming, DeSantis and other politicians around the U.S. have continued to push back on the concept.

However, reporting by The Hill showed that even in December, some regulators had proposed potential new regulations on gas stoves, including a ban.

To DeSantis’ point, Florida does not have a large number of gas stoves. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, just 8% of Floridians were cooking on gas stoves as of 2020. The data for consumer use of electric versus gas cooking appliances was released in June 2022.

The governor’s budget proposal, as far as tax relief is concerned, defines gas stoves as “Gas stoves installed in a kitchen, fueled by combustible gas such as natural gas, propane, butane, liquefied petroleum gas, or ither flammable gas,” for tax relief purposes. It does not include camping stoves or portable stoves.