Dear Friend,
The 2024 session is finally over.
I’m not going to lie to you: This was a tough session. The Florida Legislature ultimately did very little to help Florida families get by in our increasingly expensive state.
The Republican majority that controls the Legislature didn’t pass any real reforms to address the property insurance crisis or solve affordable housing challenges. The majority stripped more rights from workers – including protections that ensure many hourly workers are paid living wages. And the Legislature continued to take away local freedoms and strip local governments of their ability to solve problems, all while further concentrating power in Tallahassee.
But we did stop several of the worst bills from passing – from an attempt to establish fetal personhood in Florida to more attacks on the LGBTQ+ community to an effort make Florida’s already-broken unemployment system even worse for Florida workers.
And we were able to win some important victories. We helped convince our Republican colleagues to pass tax breaks that prioritize relief for working people over savings for corporate shareholders. We helped secure funding for important projects and programs, both in District 42 and around Central Florida. And we finally got some long-overdue accountability for the DeSantis administration, from restrictions on spending at New College of Florida to no additional funding for the governor’s trafficking of asylum seekers.
You’ll find updates on those issues and many more in our update from the ninth and final week of the Florida Legislature’s 2024 session.
Overall, this was a session where advocacy worked. And I encourage everyday Central Floridians to continue the fight.
Onward,
Representative Anna V. Eskamani
A $117.5 billion budget, with important funding for Central Florida
The one bill the Legislature must pass every year is the state budget, and this year’s is $117.5 billion – about $1 billion bigger than last year’s. This is by no means a perfect budget. For instance, I’ve been a big supporter of arts and culture funding since I was first elected. Unfortunately, this year’s budget only funds the state’s cultural and museum grant program at 41 percent. We’ll keep advocating for 100 percent next year.
But there is a lot of good in this budget, too. There is funding for several important Central Florida projects, including $5 million for the Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity in downtown Orlando and several important initiatives at the University of Central Florida.
In District 42, we helped secure funding to support the 1619Fest Orlando Black History Month Celebration; fix flooding issues along Dommerich Drive in Maitland and throughout the city of Belle Isle; prevent phosphorous loading in Lake Bumby; and study pollution sources and remedies around the Winter Park Chain of Lakes.
The budget also has important funding for substance abuse treatment and continuum of care services for housing insecure people. We’re finally starting to set some limits on how Gov. Ron DeSantis and his cronies at New College of Florida can spend all the money they’re getting from taxpayers. And there is no new money for the governor to spend trafficking asylum seekers.
In the end, I voted yes on the budget.
A last-minute assault on working Floridians
Unfortunately, at the very last minute the Legislature passed one of the most anti-worker bills we’ve seen in Tallahassee in a long time.
House Bill 433 will eliminate local living wage laws around the state that require local government contractors to pay their employees enough money that those workers can afford to live in the community they are working in. It will also prevent any cities or counties from adopting “fair work week” or “predictive scheduling laws,” which require businesses to provide hourly workers with their schedules at least two weeks in advance. And it will stop local communities from setting heat-safety standards to protect farmworkers, construction workers and other Floridians who work outside in extreme heat.
We should be empowering our local communities to support their workers, not banning them from ensuring very basic protections. The heat stress preemption in particular is dangerous, as Florida just had the hottest summer in its history last year and the temperatures are continuing to rise because of climate change. For outdoor workers, requirements like employer-provided water, shade, and bathroom breaks shouldn’t be controversial. It’s really just common sense.
Taking away local freedoms and stopping local governments from solving problems
Unfortunately, that was one of just many preemptions the Legislature passed this session, as Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican leaders in the Legislature continue to take away local freedoms, erode home rule, and concentrate power in Tallahassee.
In the last week, we also saw bills pass to:
- Tie the hands of cities and counties when it comes to regulating vacation rentals and homes rented on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo (Senate Bill 280)
- Stop local governments from restricting the use of gas-powered leaf blowers, which are not only a source of noise pollution but contribute to consumption of fossil fuels and climate change (House Bill 5003)
- Prevent citizen-led charter amendments that would impose limits on real-estate development. This was a last-minute issue that emerged from developer industry lobbyists in response to a proposed rural boundary being considered by the Orange County Charter Review Commission (Senate Bill 1420)
- Undermine the power of local communities to independently investigate and discipline police misconduct (House Bill 601)
- Ban cities and counties from regulating electric vehicle charging stations. This would even stop communities from expanding the availability of EV charging stations, by blocking local laws that require commercial developers to include EV infrastructure in their development plans. (Senate Bill 1084)
The preemption on EV charging stations was part of a large agriculture package that also banned the sale of lab-grown meat in Florida, making it a contender for the most ridiculous and anti-free-market piece of legislation passed this session.
I tried to get both of those provisions removed from the bill, but Republicans voted to keep them in. Click here to watch me present my amendments to SB 1084.
Loosening child labor laws
It’s hard to believe this happened in the year 2024, but the Florida Legislature decided the state’s child labor laws.
The very last policy bill to pass this year was House Bill 49, which rolls back protections on the number of hours that teenagers can be made to work.
To be fair, the final bill was not nearly as bad as the original version of the legislation, which was written by a billionaire-funded, right wing think tank. Under the bill that was passed, teenagers as young as 14 will be able to work longer hours over the summer and holiday breaks, while 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to work longer hours on Sundays, too. Some home school and virtual school kids could also be put to work for full-time hours even when school is in session, too.
While this bill isn’t as bad as where it started there is no good reason to loosen child-labor laws at all. I hope the next time we see a “child labor” bill in Tallahassee, it will be to strengthen these basic protections – not weaken them.
Beginning to crack down on the Ron DeSantis book bans
One of the more encouraging developments of this session was when Gov. Ron DeSantis finally admitted that all his book banning is backfiring on Florida.
As a result, we finally passed a bill that begins to set restrictions on who can challenge books in order to have them removed from public school libraries and classrooms. House Bill 1285 would limit residents of a county who does not have a school-aged child from challenging more than one book per month.
Unfortunately, this won’t go far enough to address the problem of anti-freedom extremists objecting to books en masse – even when they haven’t read them.
I tried to solve this problem by requiring any person who challenges a book to submit a five-page, double-spaced report with citations in APA style that explains their concern with the book.
In other words, if you want to ban a book from public schools, you have to prove that you’ve actually read it by writing the same kind of book report that our children regularly do in schools.
The amendment prompted some good debate, but Republicans ultimately rejected it.
In addition to not going far enough to stop the Ron DeSantis book banning, HB 1285 makes some dangerous changes. For instance, it will also allow under-qualified instructors to begin teaching in classical charter schools.
And it wasn’t the only troubling education bill we saw in the final week, either. The Legislature also passed House Bill 931, which would allow school districts to let religious chaplains work in public schools. That’s a really dangerous erosion of the separation between church and state.
A dangerous ethics bill that will protect corrupt public officials
In the final days of session, the Legislature also passed a bill that will thrill corrupt public officials.
Senate Bill 7014 guts the state’s ethics laws by making them far more difficult to enforce.
For instance, the state’s ethics commission would only be allowed to investigate complaints that are based upon “personal knowledge” of a violation. Basically, a complaint would have to be filed by either the person who offered the bribe or the person who took the bribe for the Florida Commission on Ethics to actually investigate.
But SB 7014 also kicks the legs out from under local ethics agencies, too. In addition to setting the same “personal knowledge” requirement for local complaints, the legislation will also prohibit local ethics agencies from initiating their own investigations. They will become completely passive agencies, only able to act in response to complaints.
This is another incredibly dangerous bill. I tried to ask some pointed questions on the floor exposing some of these issues. Click here to watch me go back and forth with the bill sponsor.
Criminalizing homelessness
We also passed the terrible bill attacking homeless people that’s got so much attention this session.
Basically, House Bill 1365 will make it illegal for homeless people to sleep on public property in Florida, unless they are inside a secured camp. But the bill does not provide any additional funding to local governments to build these camps – nor does it say what cities or counties are supposed to do if a homeless person or homeless family refuses to relocate to one.
I am really worried this bill is nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt to criminalize homelessness in Florida – and to hide homeless people in county jails rather than actually helping them and solving our housing challenges.
Doubling down on some of the Florida’s worst new laws
One of themes of the 2024 session was doubling down on some of the worst laws that Gov. Ron DeSantis has forced through the Legislature over the past couple of years. There were a bunch of examples.
We passed:
- House BIll 1291, which expands the “Stop Woke Act” of 2022 and Senate Bill 266 of 2023, which tried to stop teachers from discussing racism and sexism in K-12 classes and core college courses. HB 1291 extends those same restrictions to educator-preparation programs.
- House Bill 1451, which expands on last year’s anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1718 (which, by the way, drove off so many workers from Florida that the Legislature had to pass a bill loosening child-labor laws to fill the gap). HB 1451 will prevent local governments from recognizing or accepting community IDs issued to undocumented people.
- Senate Bill 1628, which expands last year’s “Death Star” preemption bill Senate Bill 170. This year’s bill will give real-estate developers the power to block development limits set by cities and counties.
- Senate Bill 1746, which expands last year’s union-busting bill, Senate Bill 256. This bill will impose even more intentionally burdensome regulations on teacher’s unions and other public-employee unions – but only the public-employee unions that Tallahassee Republicans don’t like.
A tiny bit of savings on homeowner’s insurance
I’m disappointed to report that the Legislature did nothing meaningful to help Floridians struggling with the soaring cost of property insurance.
For most people, the only thing of note that passed was a tax break that would lower the cost of homeowner’s insurance by just 2 percent for one year. Most Florida homeowners will save less than $50 as a result of this tax break, on annual premiums that have risen by several thousand for many people.
The other big insurance bill the Legislature passed is House Bill 1503, which is going to lead to a lot of second homeowners paying much higher prices for their property insurance. That’s because HB 1503 will allow surplus lines insurance companies – which are basically unregulated by the state and can charge even higher prices than regular insurance companies – to pluck policies out of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. that cover second homes.
Thankfully, the bill was changed just before it passed to protect many of our snowbird population – the people, mostly elderly retirees, who spend their winters here in Florida and are an important part of our state’s economy and community.
We did allocate $200 million to the My Safe Florida Home grant program. The program offers up to $10,000 in grants to help residents improve their homes and qualify for property insurance discounts. Read more here.
Fixing the tax package to prioritize everyday Floridians
The property insurance tax cut was part of our annual “tax package,” and this was one of the good stories of session.
The original version of the tax package (House Bill 7073) was really lopsided in favor of tax cuts for businesses over tax cuts for consumers. But in response to pressure from me and my Democratic colleagues, Republicans overhauled the plan to remove two giant business tax cuts and replaced them instead with a cut to tolls paid by Florida drivers.
The toll cut plan will cut tolls in half for the next year for commuters – folks who pay 35 or more tolls each month.
No tax package is perfect. But with the toll tax break – which is contained in a separate budget bill (House Bill 5003) – the tax package ultimately earned my support.
But I’m also going to continue pushing for more transformational tax policies – like combined reporting, which would close corporate tax loopholes in Florida and provide more balance to our tax structure. See me present that amendment here.
Other bills that passed in the final week
Here are a few other unfortunate bills that passed during the final week:
- House Bill 3: This is the revised version of social media ban. After Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed House Bill 1, which would have banned all kids under 16 from social media, the Legislature passed HB 3, which bans kids under 14 but allows 14- and 15-year-olds to stay on social media with parental permission. This bill is still unconstitutional, though.
- House Bill 87: This bill will allow people to shoot and kill Florida black bears if they feel threatened by the animal or that someone else, a pet or their home is in danger.
- House Bill 549: This bill will increase the criminal penalities and prison sentences for shoplifters.
- House Bill 1347: This bill will allow predatory consumer lenders to charge much higher interest rates.
- House Bill 1645: This is a really backwards energy bill. Not only does it try to incentivize more natural gas production while banning renewable wind energy, it literally erases most mentions of climate change from state law.
And the good news
Lastly, I do want to take a moment to note some of the bad bills that we were able to stop in their tracks.
With your help and advocacy, we were able to block some really ugly attacks on the LGBTQ+ – including trans erasure bills meant to deny health insurance for gender affirming care, stop people from changing the gender on their driver license, and prevent people from using their preferred pronouns at work. We also blocked a bill that would have banned pride flags in public buildings.
That’s not all. We were able to defeat an attempt by anti-abortion extremists to establish fetal personhood in Florida, efforts to loosen Florida’s already lax gun laws, and a bill supported by white supremacists meant to force communities to keep monuments in place honoring Confederate leaders and other supporters of slavery.
We had some important consumer wins, too. We blocked bills that would have imposed even more barriers to obtaining unemployment assistance in Florida and protected corrupt polluters who destroy our environment and make people sick.
Click here to see a slide deck of bills we were able to stop this session.