Dear Friend,
We are two-thirds of the way through the 60-day Legislative Session.
We just wrapped up week six of nine, and it was a busy one. The House and Senate both passed their initial drafts of the state budget. The House version would make a big cut to the statewide sales tax. But it would also slash funding for environmental conservation, AP courses in public schools, arts and culture, and affordable housing – while doing nothing to close corporate tax loopholes.
The House and Senate are also getting closer to passing dangerous bills that would reinforce Florida’s near-total abortion ban and virtually end all future citizen-led constitutional amendments.
But we’re also working on good bills to protect state parks from development and prohibit state leaders from interfering with elections. And the House is digging ever-deeper into potentially illegal spending by the DeSantis administration through Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida charity.
You can find lots more about each of those issues – and a bunch of others – in our weekly Session Update below.
As always, I encourage you to connect with Team Anna on our different social-media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube – where we are constantly posting real-time alerts and calls to action.
Time is getting short in Tallahassee. But by working together and exercising collective power, we can still have a profound impact on what happens in the Legislature this session – from which bills pass and which bills fail, what programs get funded and which get cut
Onward,
House passes dangerous anti-abortion bill
The Florida House passed a really dangerous bill last week that will eventually make Florida’s near-total abortion ban even worse.
The bill, House Bill 1517, would allow someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of a fetus or embryo if a pregnancy is lost in an accident of some kind. It’s a terrible idea in its own right; imagine trying to calculate the lost future wages of a fertilized egg.
But this is also part of a larger legal strategy on the far right to give embryos and fetuses the same legal rights as living human beings – with the goal of eventually banning not only all abortion but even assistive reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization.
The supporters of this bill keep publicly claiming that it doesn’t have anything to do with abortion and wouldn’t lead to lawsuits against women who seek abortions, people who help someone obtain an abortion, or doctors who provide abortions. And yet, when I offered an amendment to make that explicitly clear in the bill – Republicans rejected it. You can watch my floor debate in favor of that amendment by clicking here.
House Bill 1517 ultimately passed the House by a 79-32 vote.
The Senate is advancing similar legislation. But the votes in that chamber have been very close: Senate Bill 1284 passed the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee last week by a 5-3 vote.
And there’s another dangerous anti-abortion bill moving, too. That one is House Bill 1505, which passed the House Judiciary Committee last week and is now ready for a vote in the full House.
The bill would stop teenagers from obtaining prescription birth control or treatment for sexual transmitted infections. But it could also eliminate the judicial waiver process that allows teenagers who live in dangerous family situations to get court approval to obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent.
A growing scandal at ‘Hope Florida’
A big scandal broke last week involving “Hope Florida,” the shady charity founded by First Lady Casey DeSantis.
The Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and others reported that the DeSantis administration pressured a state Medicaid contractor to make a $10 million “donation” to Hope Florida as part of a legal settlement after the contractor overbilled the state.
Hope Florida then gave that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits – including one controlled by the Florida Chamber of Commerce – that then gave $8.5 million to the Ron DeSantis-led campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to allow recreational marijuana in Florida.
You can find a lot more details in this Tampa Bay Times story.
This story isn’t over, either: The House is now seeking even more records from the DeSantis administration about its use of Hope Florida.
The Legislature could rein in DeSantis’ election interference
The $10 million funneled through Hope Florida is yet another example of the ways in which Ron DeSantis used taxpayer resources to campaign last year against Amendment 3, the marijuana amendment, and Amendment 4, the ballot measure that would have overturned Florida’s near-total abortion ban.
It was a disgusting abuse of power by the governor against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that most Floridians supported.
But a new bill might stop something similar from happening again. The House State Affairs Committee last week added provisions to House Bill 1445 that would strengthen laws that prohibit state officials from interfering with elections. It would even stop state employees from fundraising for political campaigns – which is something that Ron DeSantis’ staff has done over and over and over again.
But the Legislature could end virtually all citizen-led constitutional amendments, too
Unfortunately, while the Legislature might stop Ron DeSantis from interfering in future elections – it also continues to move forward with a plan that could kill off citizen-led constitutional amendments entirely.
The Senate Rules Committee last week passed Senate Bill 7016, which would impose all sorts of intentional barriers, bureaucratic red tape, and potentially ruinous financial penalties on groups sponsoring proposed constitutional amendments. The bill would even make it illegal for Floridians to voluntarily collect petitions for a ballot initiative without first registering with the state.
The full Senate is going to the legislation this week, too. The House already passed its own version of the bill – House Bill 1205 – though the House and Senate bills aren’t yet identical.
A bipartisan bill to protect state parks is getting closer to passing
We had a couple of good environmental bills move forward last week.
The House State Affairs Committee approved House Bill 209, which would protect our state parks from any more schemes to develop them – like the plan Ron DeSantis tried to sneak through last year to build golf courses, hotels and pickle ball courts in some of the most beloved parks in the state.
I serve on the State Affairs Committee so I was thrilled to cast a “Yeskamani” vote for it. You can watch my debate for the bill by clicking here.
In the same committee we also passed House Bill 1143, which would forbid any oil- or gas-drilling within 10 miles of some important coastal estuaries – including the Apalachicola River in the Panhandle, the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve near St. Augustine, and Rookery Bay south of Naples.
We also passed House Bill 1133, which would ensure more diverse geographic representation on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
More positive developments: Small business support, Right to Repair, university presidents
There were quite a few more positive developments last week, too.
For instance, the Senate Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Committee passed Senate Bill 324, which would create a new program to support small businesses whose operations are disrupted by public works construction projects.
This legislation was inspired by the financial struggles faced by some of our small businesses here in Orlando who have had to deal with months-long road closures because of city construction. Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando) is sponsoring the Senate bill and I’m sponsoring the House version.
Unfortunately, House Bill 215 hasn’t been given a hearing this year. But I’m hopeful the progress in the Senate bodes will for the future.
Meanwhile, the Senate Rules Committee passed Senate Bill 1132, a “Right to Repair” bill for farmers and smartphone owners. The bill would require manufacturers of agricultural equipment and mobile phones to share access to critical tools, parts and records needed to make repairs with both device owners and with independent repair shops.
Senate Bill 1132 is now ready for a vote in the full Florida Senate. I’m also sponsoring a Right to Repair bill – House Bill 311, which would help wheelchair users find affordable repairs if their chair breaks. And that bill has made it through all of its committees, too, and is now ready for a vote in the full House.
In higher education, the House Education & Employment Committee passed House Bill 1321 – a great bill that could finally end Ron DeSantis’ meddling in university presidential searches while also ensuring bringing more transparency to hiring decisions.
And finally, Scott Yenor, the bigoted Claremont Institute hack who Ron DeSantis installed as the board chair at the University of West Florida resigned – because he knew the Florida Senate was going to reject his appointment.
Good riddance.
House budget imposes deep cuts to important programs – but we have a way to avoid them
The House and Senate both passed their versions of the state budget, which sets us up to begin “conference” – the process by which the two chambers negotiate a final state spending plan for the year.
I voted no on the House’s draft budget – which is nearly $5 billion smaller than the Senate’s version – because it slashes critical investments in environmental conservation, guts funding for AP courses and other important educational programs, cuts support for arts and culture programs, and fails to adequately fund affordable housing programs.
Part of this is because the House has also proposed cutting the statewide sales tax from 6 percent to 5.25 percent, which would cost us more than $5 billion a year in lost revenue.
I actually support reducing the sales tax, which is an especially regressive tax that hits working- and middle-class Floridians much harder than wealthier people. I even voted for House Bill 7031, the bill that cuts the sales tax, which we also passed last week.
But we also need to pair a sales tax cut with other tax reforms that both make our tax structure fairer and ensure that we do not have to take a meat axe to environmental conservation, AP courses, arts and culture, and affordable housing. The idea I keep pushing is called “combined reporting,” which would close corporate tax loopholes that the world’s biggest corporations are using to avoid Florida taxes – which both costs us lost revenue but also hurts our small businesses who can’t take advantage of the same accounting tricks.
The Senate has proposed a much more targeted tax cut – permanently eliminating the sales tax on shoes and clothing priced at $75 or less. I think that’s a better approach than a wholesale sales tax cut, if we’re not also going to close corporate tax loopholes.
Budget conference could begin as soon as this week. And I’m still hopeful we’ll get the final budget to a place where I can vote for it.
A big week for charter school industry lobbyists
A big package of bills helping the charter school industry are getting closer to passing.
The House Employment & Education Committee passed a pair of bills last week that the industry is lobbying for. One of the bills, House Bill 123, would make it possible to convert a traditional public school into a charter without consent from the teachers at the school. The other, House Bill 443, would allow charter schools to grow more quickly, by making it easier for them to go exceed the enrollment caps in their original charters.
Meanwhile, the House State Affairs Committee passed House Bill 569, which strips local communities of the power to enforce rules that might cap a charter school’s enrollment – like rules around parking lot sizes and vehicle-stacking in streets.
New House bill tries to strangle guaranteed income programs before they can start
The House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee passed a bill last week that combines two of the worst impulses in Tallahassee: Attacking support for working families and preempting local decision-making power.
The legislation, House Bill 1193, would prohibit cities and counties from testing guaranteed income programs, which are a type of benefit program that provides regular, no-strings-attached payments to people in a targeted population – like families living in poverty, pregnant mothers, or formerly incarcerated people reintegrating into society.
There are no government-funded guaranteed income programs in Florida right now – although there are some really promising privately funded ones. And communities in other parts of the country have seen some really encouraging results from guaranteed income pilots, too.
So I really hope we don’t turn our backs on this simply because a few national right-wing billionaires don’t like it.
Meanwhile a similar-in-spirit bill that would carve new loopholes into the state minimum wage keeps moving forward, too. The House Commerce Committee passed House Bill 541 last week, even though the bill is blatantly unconstitutional.
That bill is now ready for a vote in the full Florida House.
The House Civil Justice & Claims Subcommittee also passed House Bill 6033, which would repeal protections for day laborers and temp workers.
Roundup: A right-wing ‘Farm Bill,’ funding cuts for Legal Aid, and ‘Gulf of America’ nonsense
And finally, here’s a quick roundup of some other notable bills that moved forward last week:
- Senate Bill 498, which would gut funding for legal-support programs that help working-class Floridians afford lawyers – all so banks earn bigger profits for themselves by paying lower interest rates on bank accounts used to finance Legal Aid in Florida.
- House Bill 549, which would require public schools textbooks to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and House Bill 575, which would replace Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in our state laws, both passed the full Legislature. They now go to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who I’m sure will sign them.
- House Joint Resolution 679, which would put a constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot proposing lifetime eight-year term limits on all county commissioners and school board members.
- Senate Bill 700, which is a right wing “Farm Bill” pushed by Agriculture COmmission Wilton Simpson, who wants to be governor one day. The bill would try to subsidize the beef industry with taxpayer-funded ads while also trying to hurt plant-based competitors with unnecessary labeling restrictions. But it would also ban communities from adding fluoride to their water supplies and impose even more nonsense “ESG” restrictions on banks.