Dear Friend,

By the time you read this, I’ll already be back in Tallahassee, but I wanted to get you a recap of Week 3. 

Things are moving very fast right now. Gov. Ron DeSantis sees his poll numbers slipping in the Republican presidential race, so Republican leaders are trying to get some extremist, far-right bills for him to sign so he can out-Trump Trump. 

This week alone, the Legislature sent DeSantis a massive expansion of private school vouchers that could decimate funding for traditional public schools; a badly flawed housing bill that silences the voices of voters here in Orange County; and a giveaway to deep-pocketed insurance companies like State Farm and big businesses like Publix that will make harder for everyday Floridians to ever hold these corporations accountable. 

Dangerous bills that to ban virtually all abortions; let people carry guns without any training; bust up unions that help workers bargain for better wages; deny medically vital healthcare to trans people; and cancel drag culture are all quickly moving through the House and Senate, too. We also heard that a major elections bill will be coming soon, too. 

But we can still slow down and maybe even stop some of these dangerous pieces of legislation from becoming law. But we need to keep the pressure on – and keep forcing DeSantis and his lackeys to see us and hear us. 

As always, I encourage you to pay attention and make your voice heard as we move through the 2023 Legislative Session. You can watch hearings and floor sessions live on the Florida Channel. And be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube for extra updates in real-time.

Onward, 

Rep. Anna V. Eskamani

House and Senate Draft budgets released

The process of passing a state budget is progressing forward, with the Florida House and Senate releasing draft budgets this week.

The Senate budget is $113.7 billion, or nearly $700 million more than the House proposal and a $3.7 billion increase from the current year. All but four of our funding requests have made it into at least one funding silo, and arts and culture funding allocations looks very strong right now too.

The House wants to rework the Florida Education Finance Program, the state’s key funding formula for K-12 schools, and eliminate Enterprise Florida, the state’s main economic development agency, and defund VISIT FLORIDA, the state’s tourism marketing group. The Senate doesn’t include any of those measures in its budget, and adds funding for VISIT FLORIDA, up to $80 million, or $30 million more than the current year.

The appropriations committees in the House and Senate will each convene on Tuesday to take up amendments to their preferred budgets. Each chamber will pass the budget off the floor the following week, setting the stage for formal negotiations on a final spending plan.

Budget negotiators must reach an agreement by May 2 to meet the 72-hour “cooling off” period required by the state constitution before voting on the budget to end the Regular Session by May 5, the scheduled last day of the 60-day session.

Preemption in housing bill, an insurance industry giveaway, and a massive voucher expansion go to the governor 

The Florida Legislature sent three big bills to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk last week, Senate Bill 102, a giant affordable housing bill that will provide more than $1 billion in funding and tax breaks to developers that build affordable apartments. 

There are some parts to this bill, which, hopefully, will eventually increase the supply for attainable homes and apartments around the state. But it also does nothing at all to directly help renters who are struggling to find a home, or stay in the one they already have, right now. 

Even worse, the bill completely forbids any city or county in Florida from ever adopting even temporary rent stabilization measures. This provision was added specifically to kill a referendum here in Orange County, where nearly 60 percent of residents voted last fall for temporary rent stabilization. 

The bill ultimately passed the House and Senate. Read more about this housing bill and rent preemption here.

The Legislature also passed House Bill 837, a horribly anti-consumer bill that will make it harder for every Floridians to access the courts and hold insurance companies and big businesses accountable. 

This bill was a top priority of Gov. Ron DeSantis, but even former President Donald Trump called it a bailout for the insurance industry. Among other things, the bill will make it much harder for Floridians to find a lawyer to represent them when their insurance company refuses to pay a claim. 

DeSantis already signed this industry giveaway into law, too. 

The bill passed the House 80-31 and the Senate 23-15. I voted no. You can see how every member of the House voted by clicking here and how every member of the Senate voted by clicking here.

Click here to watch a video of survivors speaking out against this bill. 

And the Legislature passed House Bill 1, a massive expansion of the state’s private-school voucher program that will give taxpayer money to all families regardless of income level to spend at completely unregulated private schools.

The bill passed the House 81-23 and the Senate 28-12. I voted no. You can see how every member of the House voted by clicking here and how every member of the Senate voted by clicking here. 

Read more about this massive voucher expansion here.

The House passes bills to let people carry guns without any training and to force banks to lend money to private prisons

The House also sent some dangerous bills to the Senate last week – particularly House Bill 543, the “permitless carry” legislation which will allow anyone in Florida to carry a gun without any training or license. 

Democrats in the House offered more than a dozen amendments trying to make this bill just a little less dangerous. But Republicans rejected every single one. 

I proposed amendments that would have allowed people struggling with suicidal ideation to temporarily waive their firearm rights and to create a statewide community task force to study the true root causes of gun violence and other crime. 

I also exposed some of the hypocrisy around this bill: I offered an amendment to remove a longstanding restriction that prevents Floridians from carrying guns to meetings in the Legislature. But Republicans apparently don’t want to allow guns into their own workplaces, so they rejected that amendment, too. 

House Bill 543 passed the House 76-32 and now goes to the Senate. I voted no. You can see how every House member voted by clicking here. 

The House also passed House Bill 3, another priority of Ron DeSantis’, which attempts to exert state control over private banking decisions. 

DeSantis and other Republican supporters claim they are trying to outlaw the use of “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) standards when investing public money. But what they’re really trying to do is force banks to lend to big donors like private prison operator The GEO Group, which has been turned away by banks that no longer want to support for-profit prisons. 

This is gross government outreach by my colleagues, who like to claim they support free markets and oppose crony capitalism. I offered an amendment to at least protect our small, Florida-based banks from political retribution from the governor. But Republicans voted it down. 

House Bill 3 passed the House 80-31 and now goes to the Senate. I voted no. You can see how every House member voted by clicking here. 

The Senate is about to pass a union-busting bill 

The Florida Senate last week gave preliminary approval to Senate Bill 256, a terrible union-busting bill that Ron DeSantis has demanded lawmakers pass this session.

The Senate is expected to approve the bill next week. The House version of the bill is coming to one of my committees (the House State Affairs Committee) very soon, possibly next week, too. 

Read more about this anti-worker legislation here.  

Attacks on our LGBTQ+ communities

An ugly bill targeting our drag queen community began moving through the House last week, when the House Commerce Committee approved House Bill 1423. 

This bill is another in a long line of attacks on LGBTQ+ Floridians we’ve seen lately from DeSantis and Tallahassee Republicans. It tries to threaten restaurants and other venues from ever hosting drag shows of any kinds and take away the rights of parents to decide whether their kids can attend things like drag queen story hours. Read more about the bill here. 

I offered an amendment to leave decisions like this up to individual parents but Republican committee members, who love to claim they support “parents rights,” rejected it. 

The Senate’s Judiciary Committee also approved this bill last week on an 8-3 vote. 

Watch my presentation of the amendment here. 

Watch my debate against the bill here.

Meanwhile, the House’s Healthcare Regulation Subcommittee approved House Bill 1421 – also known as the “Trans Ban.” This cruel legislation would ban insurance coverage for essential medical care for trans people. The bill was even amended in committee to allow the state to forcibly detransition trans youth. 

Standing up for home rule

Some of Florida’s biggest business lobbying groups have teamed up this session to lobby for House Bill 1515, which would give deep-pocketed companies the power to stop local laws they don’t like. 

Under this bill, a single business could block an ordinance supported by the entire community just by suing the city or county that approved it. Read more about the bill here. 

I debated against this anti-democratic idea in the House State Affairs Committee, but it still passed on a 14-6 vote. It heads next to the full House.

Watch my debate against this bill here. 

While Democrats try to give more rights to renters, Republicans are taking existing rights away

Speaking of anti-democratic legislation, the House also began moving a corporate landlord-backed bill last that would dissolve consumer protections for renters that have been enacted in cities and counties around the state. 

Here in Orange County, House Bill 1417 would undo a local “Tenant Bill of Rights” that our county commission approved in January. Read more about that here.   

Unfortunately, the bill passed the House Civil Justice Committee on an 11-5 vote. And the Senate version of the bill has already been scheduled for a hearing next week. 

This is an important point of contrast. Because while Republicans in the Florida Legislature are literally trying to take rights away from renters, my Democratic colleagues and I are fighting to give more protections to renters. 

Click here to watch a video of some of the ideas we have proposed – but that Republican lawmakers have rejected. 

Ron DeSantis wants to command a bigger military force

Republican leaders in the Florida House unveiled a proposal last week to nearly quadruple the size of the Ron DeSantis-led Florida State Guard from 400 to 1,500 members. And they want to give the force a $100 million budget, police powers, planes, helicopters and boats. 

As I told the Tampa Bay Times last week, this idea is really gross, it does not make anyone in Florida more safe and is entirely about giving DeSantis more tools to silence dissent so he can continue trying to out-Trump Trump. 

Six-week abortion ban continues to advance 

Though he dodged the question all during his re-election campaign, Ron DeSantis wants a six-week abortion ban that he can campaign on in the Republican presidential primary. And just like in every other issue, legislative Republicans are doing his bidding here, too. 

The Senate Health Policy Committee approved the DeSantis abortion ban last week on a 7-4 vote. And the Senate has already scheduled the abortion ban for its second and final committee hearing, which will happen Tuesday in the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee.  

In support of a free Iran 

Last week was Nowruz, the Persian New Year. I was proud to mark it by passing House Memorial 531, which expresses support for the people of Iran as they fight for freedom and urges the United States Congress to demonstrate its support for the people of Iran, too. 

My memorial passed the House Local Administration, Federal Affairs & Special Districts Subcommittee on a bipartisan, unanimous vote. 

Hiding where the governor travels, who he travels with, and how much you’re paying for it

How suspicious is: Now that Ron DeSantis is running an all-but-announced campaign for president, Tallahassee Republicans want to hide his travel records from the public. 

The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee and the Senate Governmental Oversight & Accountability Committee both approved bills last week (House Bill 1495 and Senate Bill 1616) that would exempt DeSantis’ travel records from Florida’s public-records law. 

Supporters keep saying they want to hide this records because of security concerns, but that’s not true: The bills would keep these records secret even after the travel has already happened. 

This would be an awful step backward for transparency – and exactly the sort of thing that aspiring authoritarians try to do.  

Grifters gonna grift

After Ron DeSantis put a slate of right-wing grifters and extremists in charge of New College of Florida, they immediately fired the school’s president and gave the job – plus a bloated compensation package worth nearly $1 million a year – to Richard Corcoran, an unqualified former Republican politician who had already been passed over Florida State University. 

Then they gave a general counsel’s contract to Bill Galvano, a former Republican politician who is personal friends with DeSantis. 

And now New College leaders has given a job to the wife of Sen. Joe Gruters, a Republican politician who previously served as the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.

Letting billionaires baseball team owners pay their minor league players poverty wages

Some of the billionaire Major League Baseball team owners who are helping to bankroll Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to be calling in a favor this session.

Committees in both the House and Senate advanced bills last week that would exempt MLB teams from the state’s minimum wage. 

That would allow billionaire owners, who were just forced to settle a $185 million class-action suit accusing them of violating wage laws, to continue paying sub-poverty wages to minor league players, some of whom make less than $5,000 a year, have to drive Ubers during the offseason and sometimes cram together with three or four other players into one-bedroom apartments. 

I find it very suspicious that MLB has hired a lobbying firm led by one of Ron DeSantis’ biggest donors, is using a lobbyist who used to be the governor’s chief of staff, and that the father of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs made a $1 million donation to DeSantis one day after this bill was filed. 

Letting billionaire space company owners get away with negligence that kills their workers

Speaking of favors for billionaires, I serve on the House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee where last week we heard House Bill 839 – which would give lawsuit immunity to billionaire-owned space companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. 

This is another anti-worker bill that would prevent employees of these companies – or their families – from suing if they are injured or killed in an accident, even if the company’s negligence caused the accident. All a bill like this does is shield a few billionaires from accountability.  

Read more about the bill here. 

Visitors, Activities & Events

It was another busy week of meetings and events, too!