Dear Friend,

We just wrapped up our sixth, and final, week of pre-session meetings in Tallahassee.

The next time we return to Tallahassee it will be for the start of the 2023 session, which begins March 7 and runs for 60 days.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: This is going to be a tough session. We have a governor who is turning state government – including the Legislature itself – into a personal political machine for his personal agenda. We’re all going to have to work, and work together, to stop some really dangerous ideas from becoming law.

But the good news is that we’re already seeing signs that our efforts to stand up and fight back are working.

You’ll see what I mean in this newsletter recapping the events of our final committee week.

Onward,

Rep. Anna V. Eskamani

 A dangerous gun bill moves forward

Our community experienced another horrific and heart-breaking act of gun violence this weekend, when an Orlando women, a 9-year-old girl, and a local television journalist were killed and two other people — including the 9 years old mother and another news official — were wounded.

And yet, at the very same time, Republican leadership in the Florida House of Representatives continued to force a bill through the Legislature that would allow anyone to carry a gun without a permit or basic firearms training – removing one of the only gun-safety protections we have here in Florida. 

This “permitless carry” legislation (HB 543) is dangerous and extreme. I tried to make it at least a little bit better by offering two amendments. One would have created a community safety task force to study the root causes of crime, illegal gun ownership and violence and to recommend data-driven public policy solutions that actually make our communities safer. The other would have allowed people struggling with depression and suicidal ideation to voluntarily waive their right to carry a gun for up to six months.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee rejected both ideas, and the permitless carry passed on 16-7, party-line vote. It’s headed next to the floor of the full House.

Watch the House Judiciary Committee meeting here.

Privatization of public education bill, HB1, moves forward

Florida Republican lawmakers continue to push forward a bill that will substantially expand the voucher system in Florida, pulling money away from traditional public schools and towards unregulated private companies. HB1/SB202  would make vouchers available to all Florida residents in pre-K through 12th grade, including part-time students and those who have never attended a public school.

Right now, Florida provides more than $1.6 billion annually, about 10% of the PreK-12 budget, into what the GOP calls education savings accounts. The money is for students to attend private schools (not charter schools, those operate differently) and is distributed through three programs:

• The Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES), for low- and middle-income students. The FES also includes two education savings accounts for students with unique abilities and a new world scholarship program
• The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship – a tax deduction for businesses in exchange for contributions to the scholarship program
• Hope Scholarship – for students who have been bullied or harassed (this program is not utilized that much)

HB1/SB202 would not only expand eligibility but also allow the money to be used to pay for:

• Digital materials and Internet
• Part-time enrollment
• Fees for standardized tests
• Fees for part-time tutoring by a person
• Establishes a cap of $24,000 in FES scholarship account
• Establishes a cap of $50,000 for a FES student with disabilities scholarship account

Even under conservative estimates, Florida Empowerment Scholarship vouchers would cost the state about $4 billion in the initial year of HB 1 and SB 202 implementation. This does not include costs for the proposed expansion of the Florida tax credit scholarship vouchers ($568 million in 2021-22). Learn more here.

Changes to tort passes first House Committee with some bipartisan opposition

House leaders have filed a major “tort reform” proposal a day after Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to end “a cottage industry of litigation” and the bill, HB837, has already passed one committee stop. This is a major giveaway to the Florida Chamber and big business community. The bill would eliminate one-way attorney fees in all insurance litigation (auto, health, life, business interruption, etc.). It protects insurance companies from bad faith lawsuits and suppresses medical damages in negligence cases. 

Jacksonville attorney Curry Pajcic, president of the Florida Justice Association, called the proposal “an insurance company giveaway.”

“This law they’re proposing would excuse from liability someone who might be 49% at fault,” Curry said. “The responsible person, who should have been held accountable, gets to walk away.” This bill already passed its first committee stop with Democrats and one Republican voting against it.

DeSantis is waging war on public universities and colleges. But students are fighting back!

Gov. Ron DeSantis continued to escalate his war on public education this week, when one of his allies in the House filed HB 999.

It’s hard to overstate how unhinged this legislation is. It would put hiring decisions and curriculum control at our public universities in the hands of politicians and their crony appointees. It would end academic freedom and university independence, allowing the governor to continue driving out administrators, professors and academic experts who stand up to his bullying and replacing them with grifters who will teach nothing but DeSantis’ personal propaganda while profiting off their public service.

The legislation even bans gender studies courses.

This is ultimately going to cost our schools their accreditation – and billions of dollars in federal funding. It’s already causing professionals in other states to pull out of applying for jobs at Florida schools and forcing so many of our families to look out-of-state for school.

At the same time, the DeSantis administration continued its book-banning witch hunt in our K-12 public schools, ordering school districts to identify all books in their school libraries concerning subjects such as sex education, social-emotional learning and diversity.

We also saw another bill filed in the House that will make it easier for ultra-MAGA extremists – the people that DeSantis sees as is base for a presidential run – to get more books banned.

The same bill (HB 1069) would also eliminate what little sexual health education we have left in Florida public schools, and take us back to the Stone Ages.

But I also have good news: Young people around the state are standing up this growing fascism and fighting back!

My heart was so full last week to see students at campuses across Florida walk out together against the DeSantis’ administrations to erase Black history, hurt LGBTQ+ kids and destroy independent public education.

I was so proud to join students at Florida State University as they rallied in solidarity in Tallahassee.

But this was a statewide movement. We saw walkouts here in Orlando, too, at the University of Central Florida.

And they also happened at many other campuses across Florida.

What’s even more inspiring is that this wasn’t just a one-day burst of activism. This is growing into a true, continuing movement, with so many young people standing up and organizing their communities.

The day after the statewide walkout, UCF students also turned out in force to the university’s Board of Trustees meeting to demonstrate their support for diversity, inclusiveness, history and academic freedom. Some of the trustees even expressed their support, too.

And here’s the really good news: When our young people organize and mobilize, they get results.

We proof of that this week, when the foundation at New College of Florida delayed an expected vote to approve the funds to pay the outrageously extravagant salary of New College’s new grifter of a president: Former politician and Ron DeSantis lackey Richard Corcoran, who wants to be paid $700,000 a year plus another $84,000 for housing and $12,000 for a car.

Demonizing immigrants and trans folks

Even though he won’t say it publicly yet, we all know Ron DeSantis is running for president. And we all know the governor’s go-to move is to vilify marginalized communities and try to convince ultra-MAGA extremists that they are the enemies (rather than the billionaires and big corporations that are funding the governor’s campaign).

Sadly, we saw a lot more of this behavior last week.

First, the governor escalated his attacks on immigrants and communities of color – going so far as to punish their children. DeSantis ordered the Florida Legislature to repeal a 2014 law that allows Florida’s dreamers – the kids of undocumented immigrants who were brought to Florida at a young age through no choice of their own – to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. 

This is a compassionate, pro-economy job that many in the governor’s own administration once supported – including Jeannette Nunez, his lieutenant governor, and Manny Diaz, his education commissioner. But sadly, we’ve seen no sign that any Republican leader in Tallahassee is willing to stand up to DeSantis bullying.

Second, the governor and his enablers in the Legislature also continue to demonize transgender Floridians and put them in real, physical danger.

Leaders in the Florida House staged a grotesque, one-sided “workshop” on gender-affirming care in which one speaker referred to trans people as “terrorists” and the committee chairman compared healthcare for trans kids to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

We know DeSantis has his staff working on an awful, anti-trans bill right now. We’re expecting it to drop soon.

Abortion is under attack too

We also know that DeSantis and Republican politicians are facing pressure to completely ban abortion in Florida. They’re starting to give in to that pressure, too.

This past week, Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody – who wants to run for governor once DeSantis is gone – launched an attempt to cut off funding for birth control and sexually transmitted infection services provided by healthcare clinics like Planned Parenthood that may also provide abortion services. 

Republican politicians like Moody want to deny working Floridians the ability to make family-planning decisions for themselves – all to ingratiate themselves with a few far-right extremists who might support them in the next GOP primary. 

This is just the start of another anti-abortion wave in Tallahassee.

But we’re still trying to solve real problems that affect ALL Floridians 

These inhumane attacks on our fellow Floridians are partly meant to district from the fact that the governor and Tallahassee Republicans are unwilling or unable to solve the real problems that are hurting all working Floridians and their families – no matter what they look like, who they love or where they come from.

Property insurance rates have more than doubled during DeSantis’ term and continue to rise despite the governor’s $2 billion giveaway to the industry last year. DeSantis is letting power companies continue to jack up electricity prices. He’s about to kick more than 1 million Florida families off their health insurance.

But while Tallahassee Republicans cause chaos, some of us really are trying to help people.

This week, I filed critical legislation (HB 769) to close corporate tax loopholes that are exploited by the world’s largest corporations – companies like Amazon, Google, Disney and Walmart. This critical policy is known as “combined reporting,” and it stops corporations from dodging taxes through accounting shell games.

Combined reporting would raise more than $500 million a year from giant, out-of-state corporations who make billions of dollars in profits in Florida – money that we could use to help everyday Floridians struggling with things like insurance, electricity and healthcare.

But it would also help our small businesses, who can’t exploit loopholes and shift profits to Delaware or the Cayman Islands, better compete against these global, tax-dodging giants.

I also filed a bill that would finally make Florida get serious about combatting climate change and moving away from fossil fuels.

My legislation (HB 957) would require Florida to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 and carbon neutrality by 2051. It also bans environmentally destructive drilling fracking and promotes the development of new, clean-energy jobs through the creation of a Renewable Energy Workforce Development Advisory Committee. 

We all know now that climate change poses an existential threat to our planet – we all just experienced Hurricane Ian, whose devastating flood impacts were increased by climate change. We have to slow the rate of climate change down, and that means we have to stop burning fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.

But this bill is also good for our economy. We are the Sunshine State – we should be the leader in renewable energy and clean energy jobs, and this bill will help us do that. 

And the sooner we can transition to 100 percent renewable energy, the sooner we’ll all be stuck at the whims of monopoly utilities and the DeSantis appointees who prioritize their profits over Floridians’ pocketbooks.  

Sitting down with The Florida Channel

We sat down with the Florida Channel this week to discuss our time in the Florida Legislature and some of our priorities headed into the 2023 session.

Watch: Perspectives – Representative Eskamani, Anna (D) – District 42 – Orlando

Watch: Running Start – Representative Eskamani, Anna (D) – District 42 – Orlando

My committee meetings for the week

Three of my committees met last week.

In the Transportation & Modals Subcommittee, we were brief on the movement of freight in Florida by a panel that included an executive at railroad corporation CSX. I asked the panelists for details about what, if anything, they must do to notify local or state officials when they are transporting toxic materials, in light of the rail disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.  

Watch the Transportation & Modals Subcommittee meeting here.

In the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee, we discussed nursing education programs. We face a critical shortage of nurses in Florida, but we’ve also faced issues with the quality of some training programs, particularly those offered by for-profit providers.

Watch the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee meeting here.

And in the Select Committee on Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery, we discussed storm-recovery and hardening programs at electric companies and Internet providers.

Watch the Select Committee on Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery meeting here.

Our doors are always open – in Orlando and Tallahassee 

Lastly, it was, as always, yet another full week of meetings and events, both here in the district and at our Capitol office in Tallahassee. Here are a few of the folks we met with and events we attended: