Allison Tant is a native of North Florida, born in Jacksonville, Florida, attending Florida State University earning a BA in Communications and BS in Psychology. After a 4 year stint in the Tampa Bay area working for two members of the House, Allison moved back to Tallahassee permanently in 1987. Allison has been married to Barry Richard for 28 years this December. They have three children together: twins Jonathan and Jeremy 26 and Danielle 21. Allison is the bonus mom to Barry’s two older children and they are grandparents of 2 adorable children.
Allison was elected to the House in 2020 and currently serves as Ranking Member of the Commerce and Higher Education/Workforce Committees and is also a member of the Health Care Regulation, Insurance & Banking, Rules and Ways & Means committees.
In addition to her legislative work, currently serves on the Challenger Learning Center Board, the Anti-Defamation League Regional Board, the Florida Center for Students with Unique Abilities Advisory Board and is a member of Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club of Tallahassee, and Capitol Women’s Network. She is in class 2013 of the Tallahassee Democrat’s 25 Women you Need to Know honorees. She is a former board member and founder of the Independence Landing nonprofit in 2017 to build an affordable housing community for people with disabilities, KEYS (Keys to Exceptional Youth Success) scholarship committee to create pathways to life long learning and jobs for students with disabilities, and founder of the Summer Institute with Leon County Schools, a state recognized life, social, and job skills training program for adults with disabilities. Previous to her election, was on the Children’s Home Society of Florida North Central Division Board for 9 years serving as board chair, treasurer, advocacy chair and Chef’s Sampler chair. She served on the Big Brothers/ Big Sisters board and was a big sister for 3 years in the 90s.
Question 1. In light of recent legal changes and challenges related to abortion rights, what steps do you think should be taken at the state level to address these issues and how do you plan to engage with constituents who hold differing views on abortion to find common ground or address their concerns?
Answer – Whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is a highly personal and private matter between a woman and her husband or partner, their faith, and the circumstances of their family.
My mother nearly died in pregnancy when she was 7 months pregnant decades ago when she developed toxemia, now called pre-eclampsia. My father was told: you can’t save both lives. Do you want to save the life of your wife or your baby? He saved my mother who spent the rest of her life grieving that badly wanted baby. Under current Florida law, my mother’s doctor would have had to leave her side to write a letter documenting her pending death and then find another doctor in that rural area of Rooks, NC, to write a second letter. Given the dire situation with my mom, there is no doubt she would have died that day. Florida’s law does not provide a definition of when the life of the mother is in danger. Doctors have no guidance as to when to save a mother by ending an ectopic pregnancy, or when the fetus has died, leading to sepsis and maternal death. We are seeing a growing number of women dying as a result of all of this, many of whom have other children at home who need their mothers to raise them.
There will never be universal agreement on this topic, however, I believe most of us would want the law to be clarified to address the circumstances above. Whether the ballot initiative passes or not, the legislature will likely take this issue up in the coming session to address some of these issues. I will want to continue to hear from constituents as I already have, on this matter as we move forward on this and every issue. My work as a state representative is to bring people together by building bridges, not divide us further so I count on your feedback for that. The differences between Leon, Jefferson and Madison County residents have never impacted my representation of Madison County in the state legislature. I am present and work to be informed by the views of every constituent. No single issue will change the way I run full tilt to make sure Madison’s needs are addressed.
Question 2. How do you propose to address healthcare access and affordability in our district and do you feel that minors are capable mentally to make life altering decisions concerning their gender?
Answer – As your state representative, I worked closely with Madison County Memorial Hospital in securing $5 million in rural hospital funding 2 years ago and last year successfully getting it bumped to $10 million in recurring dollars for the foreseeable future. This will provide a funding stream for Florida’s overlooked rural hospitals in order to provide access to more and affordable care in this district. Further, we worked with the hospital to secure a USDA grant which will be used to open a primary care office and urgent care after hours clinic on the campus of the hospital with an expected opening date in April of 2025. I secured $2 million in funding for Disc Village to treat drug, alcohol behavioral issues as well millions for Apalachee Mental Health to serve Madison County. Florida State University has partnered with Tallahassee Memorial and Apalachee Mental Health to bring psychiatric residents from the college to provide more access to specialty care for our residents. Further, North Florida College routinely places nursing students at MCMH to help get clinical hours in, making health care more accessible.
With respect to question two of this question: DO you feel that minors are capable mentally to make life altering decisions concerning their gender?
No minor in Florida is capable of making life altering decisions about their gender without parental consent, extensive mental health treatment and physician involvement, nor should they be.
Question 3. What motivated you to run for state representative, and what personal experiences have shaped your views?
Answer – I never intended to run for office and in fact, was clear about never wanting to run. I worked in the legislative arena as an aide to a Senator and two house members from 1984-88 and then as Republican Governor Martinez’ legislative affairs director for the Department of Business & Professional Regulation from 1988-1990. I then went to work as a legislative advocate in the private sector for 11 years.
My twins were born in 1998 and I left the workforce to be a full time mom because one of my twins has a developmentally disabling condition called “Williams Syndrome” which necessitated my full time attention and care. He had open heart surgery when he was 23 months old and had 5 early intervention therapies 3 times a week to help him reach developmental milestones. When he started pre-k, we were denied educationally relevant therapies and I found myself using my contacts and my legislative advocacy skills to address state policies that worked against my little boy and others like him. I continued to right wrongs in the legislative arena for people like him and then started a years-long partnership with people in my community and my school district to ensure people like my son had opportunities like other students had. I pulled together moms of kids with disabilities including autism, Down syndrome, Willi-Prader syndrome, hearing and vision loss, cerebral palsy and other conditions to create a scholarship program to build pathways to lifelong learning after high school leading to meaningful adulthoods and jobs. Together with Leon County Schools, we created one of the single best k-12 transition programs in the state for 18-22 year old students with disabilities that I later took to the legislature to codify. And I worked with Tallahassee State College to create the “eagle connections” program, a college based program specifically for students with disabilities 12 years ago. That program became the basis for creating the State’s Center for Students with Unique Abilities with scores of colleges and tech schools around the state providing this continuing education and job skills training. Along with the State Division of Vocational Education and Leon County Schools, we created a summer institute teaching social and life skills, communication and job skills for 16-36 year olds with disabilities to grow workforce training opportunities for people who had been forgotten and overlooked that draws families from across North Florida. I also worked to build “Independence Landing”, an affordable housing, planned community for 70 adults with disabilities to live full, meaningful, and successful lives independently. All of this before ever being elected to office.
What I learned from all of this is the urgent need for every person, whether typically or other-abled to have the opportunity to work and that not everyone can or wants to go to college. I dug in deep into my community to work with employers, k-12, Career & Tech Ed providers, state colleges and universities and CareerSource to ensure that opportunities for workforce training, academic and job certifications matching employer needs and jobs in those fields are available to every Floridian and brought this model to the Legislature for codification last session. As the ranking member of the higher education & workforce committee of the House, it has been an honor to bring these solutions to the state legislature.
My parents taught me the meaning of family, hard work, and serving others. My mom was one of 8 children who spent hours before and after school, and through the summer picking crops in the fields of North Carolina to feed her siblings and mother. She told stories of starving and sometimes having nothing more to eat than bread as she grew up. My grandmother, her mom, had one dress she had to take off to wash and dry on the line. My father was placed in an orphanage at the age of 8 graduating from that orphanage at 18 to enter the Merchant Marines where he began to support his mother. He later enlisted in the Army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My mom & dad brought me up in the Baptist church where my mother served others through her faith, visiting nursing homes and seniors who could not leave their homes, teaching Sunday School and girls in action, leading bible studies and prayer circles and caring for fellow congregants. We had a family garden in the front yard and my dad regularly fished to help keep the freezer stocked and built the house my sister and I grew up in. We did not have much but we had each other and my mom insisted on us getting our education and with student loans, I was the first to graduate from college in our family, followed by my sister.
Food insecurity, health care access, affordable housing, vulnerable people and community service are hallmarks of my legislative focus and work, all informed by my life experience. None of these issues are ideological partisan issues and deserve the attention of every lawmaker whether Democrat or Republican. I work to build bridges and deliver results. As a result, I have passed 14 substantive pieces of legislation and cosponsored 110 bills. I have secured $1.5 billion in tax relief for Floridians and secured $80 million in addition to $500 million in hurricane relief funding for the 3 counties of my district in the 4 years I have been elected. In addition to legislative funding, I have worked to bring grant funding from the Community Foundation of North Florida bringing $350K to the Madison Strong Long Term Recovery Group to provide to citizens needing home repairs after Hurricane Idahlia, thousands in direct support supplies from Amazon and thousands more in donations for children from a child philanthropy group. Finally, I have worked closely with the county’s grant writers to support grant applications for Madison County, bringing in over $6 million in funding for Madison.
Since learning of the new maps to include Madison County in my district, I have made it my mission to be on the ground at least weekly and oftentimes more frequently, to meet with residents to understand constituent needs and solve problems. Madison brings home to me my fierce love of North Florida and the way of life we all want to protect. It has been a privilege and honor to work for you in the last 2 of my 4 years in the state House and I hope to continue that work on your behalf
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