Dear Friend,
We just finished up week 7 of the 2024 legislative session. That means there are just two weeks left to go.
At this point, we’re pretty much done with committee hearings. We’ll be on the floor of the House almost full time now, passing bills over to the Senate – and on the governor.
It started to happen last week, when both the House and Senate passed House Bill 1, the bill could ban kids under the age of 16 from many social media platforms. This sets up a showdown with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who now has less than a week remaining to decide whether to sign or veto the bill. That decision will probably have a big impact on how the rest of the session plays out.
Though there are only two weeks left to go, there are still literally hundreds of issues up in the air – including controversial bills to weaken Florida’s child-labor laws, undermine health insurance for transgender people, slash wages for workers, put religious chaplains in public schools and so much more. Far-right Republicans in the Legislature have also launched yet another attack on abortion, pushing a so-called “fetal personhood” bill – similar to what just happened in Alabama where judges shut down in vitro fertilization by claiming that frozen embryos in a lab are children.
We still have to negotiate a budget, too. That will happen in a process known as “budget conference,” which is likely to begin this week.
We’ve got updates on all those issues and many more in our weekly recap below. I hope you’ll find it helpful.
If you aren’t already, please be sure to connect with us on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, where we provide even more information in real-time. Things are likely to move very fast during the final two weeks of session.
Onward,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani
Legislative leaders and the governor clash over controversial social media bill
We’ve got a showdown over social media between Republican leaders in the Legislature and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
On Friday, the House of Representatives and Senate both passed House Bill 1, a bill that would ban children under the age of 16 from social media platforms features like infinite scrolling and auto-play videos – so, basically, all the major platforms, like Instagram and TikTok.
While all of us are concerned about the negative impacts that excessive social media use can have on younger people, this bill goes way too far in infringing people’s free-speech rates. So I voted no on the final vote, which passed the House 108-7. (Click here to see how every House member voted and here to see how every Senator voted.)
But what makes this interesting is that legislative leaders decided to pass the bill just a few hours after DeSantis said he still didn’t like the bill and that he wanted to see changes – like allowing kids to use social media if they have parental consent.
By passing the bill now while the Legislature is still in session – rather than waiting until the end of session – DeSantis will have to decide by the end of this week whether to sign or veto HB 1. And that means he’ll have to act while he’s still hoping the Legislature will pass other bills he supports or funding things he cares about in the state budget.
I hope he vetoes the bill anyway.
Another extremist attack on abortion and reproductive care
Republican leaders continue to force a bill through the Legislature that would help “fetal personhood” in Florida, by giving civil liability rights to an embryo at the moment of conception.
We got a vivid example of just how dangerous fetal personhood can be when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization are children under a very similar law in that state.
And yet the Florida Legislature continues to move forward with House Bill 651, which passed the House Judiciary Committee last week and is now ready for a vote in the full House of Representatives. Some anti-abortion extremists view this legislation as a potential way to interfere with the proposed constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights that should be on the ballot this fall.
I encourage you to read this Sun-Sentinel editorial about the issue: Declaring fetuses to be people would crush abortion rights in Florida.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you have anti-women, anti-freedom extremists dictating policy decisions in Florida – like the top education advisor to Gov. Ron DeSantis who just admitted he thinks “recreational sex” should be illegal, too.
I will NEVER stop fighting for reproductive healthcare rights. It’s why I was so proud last week to speak at Abortion Fund Day in the Florida Capitol.
Click here to watch my remarks at that event.
The House just passed a bill that would allow religious preachers in public schools
The House of Representatives took a sledgehammer to the wall separating church and state last week, when it passed House Bill 931, which would allow school districts and charter schools to put religious chaplains into public schools.
The bill passed the House on an 89-25 vote. I voted no. Click here to see how every member voted.
The Senate version of the bill, Senate Bill 1044, is up for its final committee hearing this coming week. So this bill is really close to passing.
Click here to watch my debate against the bill on the House floor.
Meanwhile, bills that could lead to communist history classes for kindergartners keep moving forward, too. House Bill 1349 and Senate Bill 1264 both passed committees last week.
Doubling down on anti-worker and anti-immigrant legislation
Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature teamed up to pass some pretty terrible bills last year – and two of the worst were Senate Bill 1718, an awful anti-immigrant bill that has already lead to workforce shortages in Florida, and Senate Bill 256, a union-busting bill that sought to rob teachers and other public-sector workers of their collective bargaining power.
And now the Legislature wants to expand both laws.
Legislative committees last week passed House Bill 1471 and Senate Bill 1746, which adds even more burdens to public workers trying to collective bargain for better pay and benefits.
Committees also moved forward with House Bill 1451 and Senate Bill 1174, which make life even harder for undocumented people to live safely in Florida. The bills prohibit cities and counties from recognizing or accepting forms of identification issued by nonprofit groups that provide community IDs to undocumented people.
The House bills went through the House State Affairs Committee, which is one of my committees. I voted no on both.
Republicans canceled their controversial election bills before it even got a hearing
In a bit of good news, legislative leaders have decided to give up on a terrible elections bill that would have imposed a bunch of new restrictions on ballot drop boxes – unnecessary limits whose only purpose was to make it even harder to vote.
The idea blew up in the faces of Tallahassee Republicans, because they included another provision in the bill attempting to bring back run-off elections in primaries. That’s actually a good idea – it could lead to less extreme candidates winning their parties’ nominations, which, as we all know, has become a huge problem for the GOP in the age of Donald Trump.
But it turns out Tallahassee Republicans are afraid of their own extremists. After a bunch of MAGA types got angry about the plan to bring back runoffs, the Legislature decided not to hear the bill, after all.
Reimagining tourist development taxes
In another part of good news, we held a workshop last week in the House Ways & Means Committee about the evolution of the Tourist Development Tax – which has become a major revenue source, particularly here in central Florida, but is currently wasted mostly on tourism advertising, convention centers and sports stadiums for billionaire sports owners.
I encouraged my colleagues to think bigger about this important revenue source and how it could be used to support tourism industry workers who needed affordable housing and to offset some of the negative impacts that visitors have on everything from drinking water to traffic congestion.
I want to give a shoutout to Eric Gray, the executive director of the Christian Service Center here in Orlando and a member of Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings’ TDT Citizen Advisory Task Force. He traveled to Tallahassee for the meeting and delivered some incredibly powerful marks about the need to reimagine tourism taxes to reflect modern realities.
He also wrote a subsequent column for the Orlando Sentinel that I encourage you to read: A message for Tallahassee: Reimagine tourist tax impact | Commentary
We’re even seeing a tiny bit of progress on this front this session. The House and Senate are both moving forward with bills – House Bill 1297 and Senate Bill 1456 – that would allow Monroe County, home of the Florida Keys, to use some of its TDT surplus building affordable housing for tourism industry workers.
The Legislature might stick its head in the sand on climate change
One of the more disappointing developments of this session is the way the Florida Legislature seems poised to stick its head back in the sand about climate change.
A big example of that is Senate Bill 1624, which passed another Senate committee last week. The bill would not only erase most references to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions from state law, the legislation actively tries to undermine renewable energy sources – while providing even more support for fossil fuels.
For example, the bill eliminates a bunch of regulations for fossil fuel infrastructure like gas pipelines. But at the very same time, it completely bans offshore wind energy production.
The full Senate also passed Senate Bill 480 last week by a 35-2 vote. That bill would allow electric utilities to charge their customers higher rates to pay for investments in so-called “renewable natural gas” – which is basically methane captured from sources like cow manure and then burned for electricity production instead.
One of the problems with RNG is that it gets mixed with fossil fuel based natural gas – which means it ends up supporting demand for even more fossil fuel infrastructure.
A whole bunch of corporate giveaways are getting awfully close to passing
The House and Senate both continued to move forward with their tax packages last week, with House Bill 7073 passing the House Appropriations Committee and Senate Bill 7074 passing the Senate Finance and Tax Committee.
Unfortunately, both tax packages are titled way too much toward tax breaks for businesses, while doing very little to help everyday Floridians. Under both of these plans, businesses would get the biggest tax breaks by far. Consumers wouldn’t get any meaningful permanent tax savings at all.
I’m still hopeful we’ll be able to improve these tax packages before session is done.
And these aren’t the only business tax giveaways we’re seeing either. The House of Representatives last week passed House Bill 471, which would give enormous tax breaks to timeshare developers – while also gutting funding for public schools in central Florida.
HB 471 passed the House on an 82-33 vote. Click here to see how every member voted.
And click here to watch my debate against the bill.
As session we nearer to the end of session, some really gross corporate giveaways are getting dangerously closing to passing.
For instance, last week the House Commerce committee passed House Bill 433, which would eliminate local living wage ordinances and also prohibit communities from making businesses provide their workers with better benefits or safer workplaces. The same committee also passed House Bill 1289, which add even more obstacles for laid off workers trying to obtain unemployment insurance.
Both bills are now ready for the House floor.
At the same time, the Senate is now ready to vote on Senate Bill 742, which would allow construction contractors building public works projects to cut the wages they pay their workers, and Senate Bill 460, which would weaken child labor laws for the construction industry.
House Republicans continue to target transgender Floridians
I’m sad to say that many of my Republican colleagues are still attacking transgender Floridians.
We saw that last week when the House Infrastructure Strategies Committee passed House bill 1639, which would force health insurance companies to charge higher prices for plans that cover gender-affirming care for trans people. Not only that, but the bills would also require insurance companies to cover so-called “detransitioning” procedures and conversion therapy – a dangerous and debunked idea that leads to real harm for LGBTQ+ people who are forced to endure it.
That’s still not all. The bill would also require state driver licenses to list a person’s sex assigned at birth – rather than the gender they identify with now.
I tried to amend the bill to remove coverage for conversion therapy. Republicans on the committee blocked it, but you can watch my presentation of the amendment by clicking here.
The bill passed the committee on a 15-9 vote. Fortunately, there isn’t any similar bill moving yet in the Florida Senate, so I’m hopeful we’ll still be able to stop it. ,
Click here to watch my debate against HB 1639.
Longer prison sentences for defendants and less accountability for police officers
The Florida House of Representatives passed a series of bills that will put more people in prison for longer periods of time – without any evidence to suggest that doing so will make any of us any safer.
The bills included House Bill 549, which is being pushed by the retail lobby and could send even minor, nonviolent shoplifters to prison for five years or longer. The bill passed the House on an 84-31 vote. Click here to see how every member voted.
The House also passed House Bill 1181, which set harsher sentences for juveniles caught with a gun. That bill passed on an 83-29 vote. Click here to see how everyone voted.
And both of those came after the House passed House Bill 601, which would make it harder for local communities to hold rogue police officers accountable through the use of independent civilian review boards. HB 601 passed 87-29. Click here to see how all members voted.
Though they won’t say it out loud, some Republican lawmakers want to criminalize homelessness
One dangerous bill that’s getting a lot of attention this session is House Bill 1365, which seems to be designed to have homeless people rounded up and forced into camps – or thrown in jail.
The bill, which passed the House Health & Human Services Committee, would prohibit cities or counties from letting a homeless person sleep on public property – unless they are moved into group encampments that have things like security and running water.
But the bill doesn’t provide any funding for such encampments. And even if a city or county finds the funding to build one of these camps, the bill’s supporters keep refusing to answer what happens if a homeless person refuses to go.
They’re trying so hard not to admit it in public, but allow me to say it for them: This bill is nothing more than a ploy to criminalize homelessness.
Banning cultivated meat and blocking electric vehicle infrastructure, all in one bill
One of the most embarrassing bills this session – one that is making Florida a national laughingstock is House Bill 1071. It would totally ban the sale of lab-grown meat, in hopes of shutting down a potential competitor to the traditional beef and poultry industries – one that could one day offer a more climate-friendly and ethical alternative to traditional meat.
But that’s not all this bill does. It also tries to interfere with the electric vehicle market, but prohibiting local communities from engaging in any sort of regulations on EV charging stations. This could stop cities and counties from doing things to encourage EV adoption, like providing incentives to developers who install charging stations or implementing “make-ready” development regulations that require builders to plan with future EV infrastructure in mind.
HB 1071 passed through one of my committees last week – the House Infrastructures Committee – where I voted against it.
Click here to watch my debate.
The House keeps pushing dangerous gun bills
The state House keeps moving forward with some really dangerous gun bills.
In a single meeting last week, the House Judiciary Committee passed House Bill 17, which would shorten the mandatory waiting period for gun purchases, and House Bill 1223, would lower the minimum age to buy a gun from 21 to 18.
The Senate isn’t moving any similar bills this session, thankfully. But things can always change in the closing days of session.
Lawmakers may drive up property insurance rates for snowbirds and second homeowners
It’s sure looking like the Legislature is going to pass a bill that will raise insurance rates on some Floridians.
That bill is House Bill 1503, which would allow surplus lines insurance companies to take over policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corp. that cover someone’s second home or winter home. That will force those policyholders to pay much higher prices, because surplus lines insurers are the most expensive kind of carrier – their rates aren’t regulated by the state, like a normal insurance company.
The point of this legislation is to reduce the number of policies insured by Citizens, which is ultimately backed by the state. But we should be going the other direction and turning Citizens into a true public option for everyone, as was proposed in the bipartisan bill House Bill 1213 – which never got a full hearing this session.
The week in pictures
