Dear Friend,
Well, we just finished up our sixth and final week of committee meetings in Tallahassee. The next time we’re back in Tallahassee it will be for the start of the 2024 Legislative Session.
With the start of the 60-day session now only about three weeks away, we’re seeing lots of bills start to move. Some of them are really bad: Like a bill that would erase some decades-old child-labor laws in Florida, which passed its first committee this past week.
But we’re also starting to see something else: Advocacy and resistance work! We managed to delay another bad bill last week that would cut pay for tens of thousands of workers across Florida and prevent local communities from making their own decisions about how best to help working families.
You’ll find more information on both of those bills and many more in the update below.
The 2024 Legislative Session begins Tuesday, Jan. 9. And it’s scheduled to last until Friday, March 8. We’ll keep these updates coming every week throughout session. But please make sure you’re following us on other channels – like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube – to get real-time alerts, too.
Because once the session begins, bills (and amendments) will start to move very fast.
Onward,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani
A bill to weaken child-labor laws moves forward
Republicans pushed a bill weakening Florida’s child-labor laws through its first committee last week.
House Bill 49, which would let businesses make 16- and 17-year-olds work overnight on a school night or for more than 30 hours in a school week, passed the House Regulatory Reform & Economic Development Subcommittee after a lobbyist for chain restaurants like McDonald’s, Outback and Olive Garden testified in favor of it.
I don’t normally serve on this committee but I joined it as an ex-officio member for this meeting to replace a Democratic colleague who couldn’t be there.
I and the four other Democratic members of the committee offered several amendments, all of which were blocked by the Republicans on the committee.
Some of our amendments were designed to make the bill better, while others were meant to expose the hypocrisy of Tallahassee Republicans who don’t think teens can handle learning about sexuality and gender identity – but who are happy to stick them on the graveyard shift at a 7-Eleven, even if they have an exam the next day.
One of our amendments – sponsored by Rep. Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) – would have required businesses that employ kids to maintain a record of all sexual harassment incidents and to provide that those records to the child’s parents.
Another of our amendments – which I sponsored by myself – would have exempted any 16- or 17-year-old deemed mature enough to work a full-time job from anti-abortion laws that currently require a teenager to go to court if they need an abortion but their guardian won’t approve.
Ultimately, House Bill 49 passed the committee on a 10-5 vote, with all 10 Republicans on the committee voting in favor and all five Democrats voting against. The bill still has two more committee stops in the House; no similar bill has been filed in the Senate yet.
But a bill to cut wages for workers stalls
In better news, I and the other Democrats on the Regulatory Reform Subcommittee were able to delay House Bill 433, an aggressively anti-worker bill that would stop local communities from trying to help workers secure higher pay, stronger benefits, and safer workspaces.
Among other things, House Bill 433 would dissolve living wage laws in places like Miami, St. Petersburg and Gainesville that require companies contracting with the government to pay their employees a wage that’s high enough that the employees can actually live in the communities where they work.
Partly because of the fight we put up against House Bill 49 – and partly because we were starting to fight this bill just as hard – the committee hearing ran out of time before Republicans could pass this one, too.
We still have lots of work to do to keep this bill from passing this session. But every time we can delay a bad bill, it’s a victory.
Forced pregnancy in Florida
We’ve seen an awful situation unfold in Texas, where Republican politicians and judges have tried to stop an abortion for a woman whose life is literally in danger because of complications with the pregnancy.
But we’re also seeing forced pregnancies here in Florida, too. Just last week, three appellate court judges in Tallahassee upheld a decision by a circuit court judge blocking a minor from obtaining an abortion without the consent of their guardian because the judges decided the minor “failed to demonstrate sufficient maturity.”
The circuit court judge and two of the appellate court judges were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The third appellate court judge was appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Abortion Petition
This is yet another reminder of why it’s so important that we enshrine the right to an abortion in our state constitution.
And we got more good news on that front last week: Floridians Protecting Freedom has now collected more than 750,000 signatures in an its effort to put a reproductive freedom amendment on the November 2024 ballot.
We need to collect just over 891,000 petitions total by Feb. 1 to get this amendment onto the ballot.
Click below to learn more about how you can get involved. And make sure you’ve signed a petition yourself – and then make sure your friends and family members have signed one, too.
https://floridiansprotectingfreedom.com
A really dangerous idea
One of the committees I serve on is the House State Affairs Committee – and it took a really dangerous step last week.
The committee passed a pair of resolutions requesting what’s known as an “Article V Convention” – a national convention that can be called by the states to propose new amendments to the United States Constitution. It’s one of two ways that the U.S. Constitution can be amended (the other is by amendments proposed by Congress itself.)
The State Affairs Committee actually passed two resolutions calling for an Article V Convention. The first one (House Concurrent Resolution 693) proposes a constitutional amendment establishing term limits for Congress. The second one (House Concurrent Resolution 703) proposes an amendment that would force a so-called “balanced budget” requirement on Congress (which is really just a backdoor way for right-wing extremists to impose cuts on Social Security and Medicare).
But what makes these resolutions especially dangerous is that – if enough states pass similar resolutions calling for an Article V Convention – there’s no telling what other extremist ideas might end up on the agenda. We could see, for instance, a constitutional amendment imposing a nationwide abortion ban.
I voted no on both resolutions.
Bears, vacation rentals and prison sentences
With session getting closer, here are some of the bills that started moving this past week:
- House Bill 87, which would allow people to shoot and kill black bears without a permit, passed the Agriculture, Conservation & Resiliency Subcommittee by a 12-4 vote
- Senate Bill 280, which makes it more challenging for cities and counties to regulate vacation rentals, passed the Senate Regulated Industries Committee by a 4-0 vote.
- House Bill 531, which will increase incarceration by imposing longer prison sentences on more crimes, passed the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee by a 14-2 vote.
Briefings on Hurricane Ian, adult education, healthcare waiting lists, and private-school vouchers
Two more of my committees also met last week: the Select Committee on Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery and the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee.
In the Select Committee, we heard from representatives of Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel and Captiva Islands about the financial and economic impacts of Hurricane Ian. (Watch here.)
And the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee, the Florida Department of Education gave a presentation on the state’s adult education programs. (Watch here.)
Other committees held discussions on some pretty important topics, too.
The House Health and Human Services Committee got a briefing from the Agency for Persons with Disabilities on the current waiting lists for home and community-based services. (Watch here.)
The Choice & Innovation Subcommittee heard a presentation from the Department of Education, Step Up for Students and others on the implementation of House Bill 1, the controversial bill from last session establishing universal private-school vouchers. (Watch here.)
Senate committee approves big public-school changes – but keeps recess in place
The Florida Senate is moving forward quickly with plans to roll back a bunch of public-school regulations – including the Bush-era requirement that third-graders pass an English-language reading exam before they can graduate to grade four.
The Senate’s Fiscal Policy Committee approved all three public-school “deregulation” bills – Senate Bill 7000, Senate Bill 7002 and Senate Bill 7004 – by unanimous votes.
Under the bills, seniors would no longer have to pass Algebra 1 and language arts exams to graduate. School districts would have more flexibility in setting teacher salaries. And they would leave it up to parents to decide whether to hold their child back if they do not pass that Grade 3 reading exam.
But the Senate also dropped a provision that would have allowed elementary schools to reduce the amount of recess time in a week.
All three bills look likely to pass the full Senate very soon after the session begins. Read more about them here:
Florida schools ‘deregulation’ plan gets backed by Senate committee (WGCU)
The Senate advances healthcare changes that are good (but not good enough)
Meanwhile, the Senate’s Health Policy Committee unanimously approved a pair of big healthcare bills, including one that would spend $70 million to train more physicians in Florida.
Senate Bill 7016 and Senate Bill 7018 are part of what Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) is calling her “Live Healthy” plan, and both passed unanimously. But many of us are concerned that the bills do not go far enough – particularly because the Senate is still refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would provide health insurance to roughly 800,000 more low- and moderate-income Floridians.
Florida is one of just 10 states in the country that has refused to extend Medicaid coverage to more of its own residents – even though the federal government would cover virtually all of the costs and independent experts say expanding Medicaid would ultimately save money by enabling more people to seek preventative care.
Read more here: Florida Senate’s health plan falls short | Editorial (Tampa Bay Times)
The week in photos
