Dear Friend,

I’m already preparing to head back to Tallahassee for Week 5 of Committee Meetings, but I wanted to give you on update on the events of last week – which included a five-day special session in which the Florida Legislature made itself into even more of a lapdog for Gov. Ron DeSantis, plus more committee hearings ahead of the 2023 regular session. 

Bills are really beginning to move now ahead of the 60-day regular session, which begins March 7th. It’s important that all of us pay attention – and make our voices heard. I encourage you to tune into the Florida Channel live, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube for additional and real-time updates.

In the meantime, below is a recap of last week. 

Onward, 

Rep. Anna V. Eskamani

Holding Disney Hostage 

Most of last week was devoted to a five-day special session that Tallahassee Republicans called because they needed to fix mistakes – and cover up potential corruption – by the DeSantis administration before DeSantis can launch his campaign for president. 

Take the governor’s authoritarian-like attacks on Walt Disney World. Disney made the governor mad last year when the company spoke out – belatedly – against DeSantis’ homophobic and transphobic “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. DeSantis responded by forcing a bill through the Florida Legislature that could have dissolved Disney’s personal city government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Like so many of DeSantis’ tiny dictator tantrums, this created all sorts of problems – including the fact that dissolving Reedy Creek could have left taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties picking up the debt on all Reedy Creek’s debt.

So last week, DeSantis had Republicans pass another bill. This legislation keeps Reedy Creek completely intact and lets Disney keep perks like tax-free bonds and exemptions from sales taxes, property taxes and impact fees. It just changes the district’s name – and puts DeSantis, rather than Disney, personally in charge of all appointments to Reedy Creek’s governing board.

 This would be silly if it weren’t so scary. Think about it: After claiming he would strip Disney of its competitive advantages over other private businesses, DeSantis is instead letting Disney keep all those benefits – but only as long as it doesn’t make the governor mad again.

DeSantis has essentially given himself control over a private company. If Disney doesn’t give campaign contributions to the governor, DeSantis can have his board appointees deny Disney a building permit. If Disney makes a movie that features a trans character, DeSantis can have his appointees refuse to issue bonds for a Disney construction project. 

There’s a term for this. It’s why I offered an amendment to rename the district for what it really is: the “Florida’s Attempt to Silence Critical and Independent Speech and Thought” district. The FASCIST district.

Republicans rejected that amendment. They also rejected amendments I offered to add local elected officials – people who are accountable to voters in Orange and Osceola counties – to the governing board of Disney’s district.  

The truth is this was never about stripping Disney of privileges or corporate accountability. This was ONLY about giving Ron DeSantis leverage over a private company that made him big mad.

Covering up DeSantis Corruption

Then there’s the disgusting immigration stunt Ron DeSantis pulled last year. That’s when he used taxpayer money to trick Venezuelan asylum seekers who were living in Texas into boarding planes where his staff flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, dropped them off without warning, and filmed it all for Fox News.

This was illegal. DeSantis pulled this stunt under a state law that Republicans passed last year giving him $10 million to move undocumented immigrants out of Florida, not Texas.

It was also corrupt. Reporting by the Miami Herald has shown that one of the governor’s top aides used a private email address – with a pseudonym named after a character from “The Silence of Lambs” – to coach a former client of his on how to win a state contract tied to this “relocation” program. The DeSantis administration has since paid that vendor more than $1 million in taxpayer money that still has not been accounted for.

But instead of standing up for taxpayers and transparency, Republican leaders passed a bill that retroactively approved all the spending the governor has done through this bigoted and corrupted program – even though they admitted that even they don’t know he’s actually spent this money. 

They also rewrote the rules to allow DeSantis to continue kidnapping undocumented immigrants from other states around the country. So now we’re going to see DeSantis spend even more Florida taxpayer money on gross publicly stunts in other states.

I tried to add some legitimate guardrails to this program. I offered one amendment to ensure that the governor’s office could not award any more contracts to former clients of any senior staffers. And I offered another amendment to prevent anyone in the administration from communicating about this program using private, rather than public, email addresses.

Republicans rejected both amendments.

Causing Chaos Instead of Solving Problems

Republican leaders also forced another bill through this special session that DeSantis wanted to shore up the weak – and racially motivated – prosecutions his administration is bringing against a handful for former felons who the state mistakenly allowed to vote during the 2022 elections.

But I also want to note what Republican leadership also didn’t do this special session: They refused to hear bills, proposed by Democratic colleagues, that would have helped make property and health insurance more affordable for Floridians.

It’s more proof that DeSantis and his enablers in the Legislature aren’t interested in solving the real problems facing Florida families. All they want to do is pass performative legislation that helps DeSantis score political points in his cold war with Donald Trump.

“Permitless carry” gun bill advances 

In between our time in special session, we also continued to hold committee meetings in preparation for the regular legislative session, which begins in March. And, unfortunately, Republicans are already beginning to advance some truly dangerous bills.

For instance, a House committee approved a bill that would allow people to carry concealed guns in Florida without any licenses or training.  

Known as “permitless carry,” HB 543 would eliminate the entire concealed-weapons permitting process, which includes background checks and gun-safety training courses. All anyone would need to do to carry a concealed gun around is have a driver’s license or some other form of ID. 

I’m so grateful to and proud of all the gun-safety advocates who traveled to Tallahassee to testify against this reckless and irresponsible legislation before the House Constitutional Rights, Rule of Law & Government Operations Subcommittee. The bill passed the committee on a 10-5 vote but this fight is far from over.

Housing bill helps landlords but not tenants 

Meanwhile, the Senate began to move on a major housing package.

SB 102 would provide an assortment of grants, tax breaks and loans to apartment developers and force cities and counties to more quickly approve housing projects that include affordable housing in them. But the bill does little to deliver any immediate relief to Florida’s affordable housing crisis and it provides no help whatsoever directly to tenants struggling to stay in their homes right now.

 In fact, the bill is actively harmful to tenants: It would overturn the rent-stabilization referendum that was just approved by nearly 60 percent of voters in Orange County. And it would prevent any other city or county in Florida from ever pursing rent stabilization or rent control in the future. 

The bill passed the Senate Community Affairs Committee this past week. At the same time, the House introduced its own affordable housing legislation – and the House bill also bans any form of local rent stabilization. 

House committee approves a “renter’s tax”

Another bill that began moving last week actually seeks to prey off tenants.

HB 133 would allow landlords to charge tenants unlimited, non-refundable fees instead of upfront, refundable security deposits.

The lobbyists for this legislation – who represent out of state real-estate companies who are trying to cement their business models into Florida law – say it would help Floridians who can’t get into apartments right now because they can’t come up with the money for a large up-front security deposit.

There is no doubt that security deposits can pose a big barrier to entry to rental housing and that we need to do more to help find housing for folks get over these upfront obstacles.

But the solution should NOT be to replace security deposits with unlimited fees that can ultimately cost the tenant more money over the long run – while providing far less protection than a security deposit. This would be nothing more than a renter’s tax that helps companies profit off poverty.  

The House Civil Justice Subcommittee passed this on a 13-4 vote.

The Senate thinks Tallahassee knows best

We’ve seen Republicans in the Florida Legislature – who often claim to care about local control and home rule – pass a lot of bills over the last few years that strip powers away from cities, counties and towns and instead centralize control in Tallahassee.

These are known as “preemption” bills, and Republicans usually pass them as a favor for companies like Disney, Publix and McDonald’s who don’t want to comply with some local law passed in a place like Orlando, Tampa or Miami.

Well now my Republican colleagues are advancing what can only be described as preemption on steroids.

The Senate Community Affairs Committee this week passed SB 170, which would give more ammunition to businesses who want to sue a city or county that passes a local law the business doesn’t like. The legislation would make it easier for the business to block the law from going into effect – and even put the city or county at risk of paying the business’ legal bills.

The goal is to scare local governments into ever even attempting to stand up to businesses like Disney, Publix or McDonald’s.

SB 170 passed on a 7-2 vote.

My committee meetings

Three of the committees I serve on met last week.

The House State Affairs Committee met as part of the special session to hear the governor’s Disney punishment bill (HB 9A).

I offered several proposed amendments to the bill during this meeting, including one that would have actually imposed some corporate accountability on Disney. It would have made sure the company pays its fair share of corporate taxes, by forcing it to file its taxes using “combined reporting” – a method that prevents corporations from exploiting tax loopholes.

Republicans refused to even allow a vote on that one.

Watch the House State Affairs Committee meeting here.

In the Transportation & Modals Subcommittee, we heard from a series of presenters on alternative sources of fuel for transportation.

 In addition to presentations from the Florida Department of Transportation on Florida’s electric-vehicle infrastructure, we also heard from several other actors – including ChargePoint, a California company that makes charging stations for electric vehicles, and the Florida Natural Gas Association, which wants the Legislature to give more tax subsidies to vehicles powered by natural gas (even though natural gas is also a fossil fuel that contributes to climate change).

Watch the House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee meeting here.

And in the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee, we heard a report on the implementation of the “REACH Act” – a bill we passed in 2021 that is supposed to improve collaboration and coordination between the various state agencies and regional organizations that oversee things like job-training and career-education programs.  

Watch the House Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee meeting here.

DeSantis amps up his attacks on trans kids

The DeSantis administration also continued its politically motivated attack on transgender Floridians last week.

Specifically, the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine – whose members are appointed by the governor – voted Friday to deny transgender kids access to gender-affirming care.

Acting on direct orders from the governor, the board even eliminated an exception for research for clinical trials.

So not only is Ron DeSantis denying potentially life-saving medical treatment to some of our most vulnerable children. He is shutting down scientific study of these treatments to prevent anyone from learning more about them. 

I stayed in Tallahassee after our committee meetings had ended for the week in order to testify against this barbaric decision. I was so proud to stand alongside other LGBTQ+ accomplices and trans Floridians themselves who shared powerful personal testimonies to the board.

Sadly, this wasn’t the only attack on transgender kids we saw this week.

The Florida High School Athletic Association – the organization that oversees high school sports in Florida and another organization that Ron DeSantis has threatened to take control of – called an emergency meeting to back down from an invasive policy that would have forced student athletes to report details about their menstrual cycles.

But that’s just because the FHSAA found a different way to target trans kids. At the same meeting where the FHSAA board give up on its dystopian plan to collect students’ period data, they also rewrote mandatory forms to force athletes to disclose their “sex assigned at birth” (rather than just their sex).

All of this is disgusting and dangerous. Our governor is just relentlessly isolating and attacking trans kids, who are already some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our communities. 

All so he can score a few more points with far-right extremists in a Republican presidential primary race.

HD 42 in Tallahassee

We also had yet another packed schedule of advocate meetings and community events, both in Tallahassee and back home in the district. Here are a few photos from the week: