Dear Friend,
Every Monday morning we’ll be sending you an email review of what we’ve been up to during Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session. Click here for last week’s review.
Also, if you’re not doing so already, please consider keeping up to date with us through our social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also watch Committee Meetings and Floor Sessions live on the Florida Channel.
Onward together,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani
UPDATED COVID19 GUIDE
We have updated our COVID-19 Guide (español) along with our Unemployment Issues blog post and our guidance for renters. If you are facing issues with your unemployment claim, please fill out our DEO escalation form here.
COVID-19 Vaccine News and Updates
Thanks to the Biden administration, teachers and all other K-12 educational staff can now get vaccinated against COVID-19, regardless of age, at federal locations. Teachers can get vaccinated at all FEMA-run sites and at major pharmacies, as long as they have a valid school ID. All school staff can now make COVID-19 vaccine appointments at Orange County Convention Center, too.
As of this morning, state-run vaccine sites are limited to the following populations:
- Long-term care facility residents and staff;
- Persons 65 years of age and older;
- Health care personnel with direct patient contact;
- K-12 school employees 50 years of age and older;
- Sworn law enforcement officers 50 years of age and older; and
- Firefighters 50 years of age and older.
Floridians deemed especially vulnerable to COVID-19 can get vaccinated by a doctor, under an executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis. At-risk Floridians can also get vaccinated by advanced practice registered nurses and licensed pharmacists — but only if a physician determines the patient meets the eligibility criteria and fills out a form prescribed by the Florida Department of Health.
It came to our attention last week that some physicians are charging at-risk Floridians to fill out this form, forcing them to spend money on what should be a free, potentially life-saving vaccine. The form has also created an additional burden on those who already have a doctor’s note or who don’t have a primary care physician. So on Friday, I wrote a letter requesting that the governor amend his Executive Order and allow all at-risk Floridians to seek the COVID-19 vaccine at any location and without the DOH-mandated form.
We were also proud to co-host with Rep. Travaris McCurdy (D-Orlando) two vaccine drives this weekend in underserved communities in Orlando. Partnering with local faith communities, we were able to vaccinate more than 1,000 people!
While we were helping to distribute vaccines to underserved communities, the Miami Herald reported last week that the Governor’s administration helped provide early access to the vaccine to an exclusive community in the Florida Keys that is home to one of the governor’s largest campaign contributors.
It’s the latest in a series of stories now in which the Governor’s office has sent vaccines to select communities affiliated with major DeSantis donors.
COVID-19 Legal Immunity
On Friday, the Florida House passed HB 7, which would make it much harder to successfully sue businesses who negligently fail to protect their workers or customers from COVID-19. Corporate legal immunity is a top priority this session of big-business lobbying groups like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida and of Tallahassee Republican leaders like Gov. Ron DeSantis.
I voted against this bill, which will put front-line workers at even greater risk amid this pandemic. The vast majority of businesses in Florida — especially the small businesses that we love and cherish here in House District 47 and around the state — are already following public-health guidance and acting responsibly, which is why we’ve only seen a tiny number of COVID-related lawsuits. But this bill will incentivize bad behavior, allowing some businesses to prioritize profits over public safety without any fear of consequences.
I’ve met and spoken with hundreds of small business owners over the course of this pandemic and none of them have said they need to be shielded from lawsuits. What they do need — and what I hope my colleagues in the Legislature will focus on, too — is real help, like rent relief, increased access to personal protective equipment, a crackdown on insurance companies that refuse to honor business-interruption policies, and bridge loans that can help small businesses stay afloat until the public health crisis is over.
You can watch my debate on this bill by clicking here. My remarks start at 56:00.
Rent Stabilization for Small Businesses
To the point about providing real help to small businesses, I was so proud to announce this week that I will co-sponsor HB 1469 by Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), which would create a rent-stabilization fund to help prevent struggling small businesses from being evicted during the pandemic.
Under the legislation, any small business that earns less than $250,000 in annual profit and whose revenues have fallen by more than 25 percent during the pandemic could receive money from the state to help pay its monthly rent through at least the end of 2021. This new state fund would cover half of the businesses’ monthly rent, including unpaid rent that has accrued to this point. The small business would still have to pay 25 percent, and its landlord would have to forgive 25 percent.
The bill would allocate $543 million for this small business-specific aid program. You may remember, $543 million is the same amount that Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis gave in tax refunds to the state’s very biggest corporations at the start of this pandemic.
Inspector General Report Highlights Unemployment System Failures
In a preliminary report released Thursday, Florida’s Chief Inspector General confirmed what we already knew: Florida’s disastrous CONNECT unemployment compensation system was deliberately designed to fail.
The report, which you can find here, determined that the contractors responsible for building the system didn’t property design or test it. The state contract for the website required the site to be able to handle 200,000 users at once, but Deloitte Consulting only tested its capacity for a tiny fraction of that amount — and the website could only handle about 4,200 simultaneous users. Another contractor, Ernst & Young, failed to deliver appropriate quality control.
While I welcome this step towards accountability, we cannot let Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Legislative leaders get away with passing the blame entirely off on vendors. Florida’s auditor general conducted three audits of the CONNECT system between 2015 and 2019, and they were never adequately addressed. The 2015 report identified 31 issues that needed to be fixed; more than half of them were still unresolved as of the 2019 report.
Ultimately, the root cause of Florida’s catastrophically poor unemployment compensation system is poor leadership in Tallahassee, where politicians and political appointees have for years been ignoring the needs of everyday people in order to please their political donors and special interests. You can read my full statement on this report here.
A Potential Unemployment Compromise
On Tuesday, Senate President Wilton Simpson and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that they want to use some of the money that Florida expects to get from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 recovery plan to replenish the state’s unemployment compensation trust fund, which has been drained by millions of claims filed by workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic. This would provide a tax cut for businesses, who would otherwise need to pay higher unemployment taxes to replenish this trust fund.
Now, we cannot simply use COVID-19 aid to provide more tax cuts for businesses while continuing to ignore the needs of everyday working Floridians.
But, as I told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, I see the potential for compromise here: If we use rescue money to give corporations and businesses a tax break, we should at the same time finally raise the Weekly Benefit Amount that we pay to Floridians. Florida currently caps payments at $275 a week, which is one of the lowest in the country — and an amount that hasn’t been raised in more than 20 years.
I’ve already filed legislation that would raise the weekly benefit amount to a maximum $500 — plus make a host of other desperately needed changes to ensure our unemployment system actually works for everyday people.
Undoing Florida’s Shameful ‘Free Kill’ Law
Florida is the only state in the country that prevents parents of children who die as a result of medical malpractice from suing for pain and suffering if that child was over the age of 25. This notorious law is sometimes referred to Florida’s “free kill” law.
I was proud to vote last week for HB 651, which would undo this law and allow parents to recover non-economic damages in medical negligence cases no matter the age of the child they lost. This is a bipartisan bill; the sponsor is Rep. Spencer Roach (R-North Fort Myers).
The bill unanimously passed the House’s Civil Justice & Property Rights Subcommittee.
Our Renewable Energy Op-Ed in the Sun-Sentinel
Last week, I had a column published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel calling on state leaders to commit to transitioning Florida to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040 — and carbon neutrality by 2050.
Those are the goals set in HB 283, which I filed last month in the Florida House. This vitally important legislation would also ban fracking in Florida and establish a workforce board meant to ensure that our shift towards a clean-energy economy produces high-paying jobs that can help us recover from the COVID-19 economic crash.
Climate change — which is causing rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes — poses an existential threat to our great state. Passing HB 283 will make Florida healthier, safer and more prosperous right now and for generations to come.
You can read my full column here.
‘Anna Eskamani Takes Aim at Corporations’
I was honored to be profiled last week by Mike Synan at Florida Daily, who looked at some of the ways we are trying to cut back on corporate giveaways this session so we can provide more help to everyday working folks.
The story looks at our efforts to end the practice of states poaching jobs from each other by dangling tax breaks incentives that ultimately hurt everyone, prevent big corporations from abusing programs that are supposed to help struggling communities, and forbid companies and economic-development agencies from negotiating taxpayer giveaways in secret.
I encourage you to read the entire story here.
Our Incredible HD47 Team!
Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to once again give a shoutout to our incredible House District 47 team, who do so much to lift up our community — from helping folks with unemployment to organizing vaccine drives, and from developing public policy to delivering the best constituent services in the state.
Everyday is Employee Appreciation Day in HD 47!
ANNA IN THE NEWS
Student opposition mounts against scaling back Bright Futures scholarships
Florida unemployment system facing rise in fraud claims, hurting real applicants
Florida House passes first two bills of session
Hundreds vaccinated in Orlando Asian-American outreach effort
Chris Sprowls runs tight ship during House’s first contentious debate
Anna Eskamani’s committee pulls $100K in February
REMINDER: UPCOMING EVENTS
I am proud to be the first Iranian-American elected to any public office in Florida and this year — for the first time ever — we are partnering with the Iranian-American Community Center of Central Florida (IACC) to host a virtual celebration of the Persian New Year! Click here for more details.
