Team Anna Legislative Session Update: Week 9

by | May 4, 2025

Dear Friend,

Well, we just finished up what was supposed to be the final week of the 2025 Legislative Session. 

But we’re still not done. 

The House and Senate failed to agree on a new state budget during the regular 60-day session, which has forced us to extend the session for another five weeks – until June 6. 

We still don’t have a budget deal. But House and Senate leaders announced on Friday night that they have agreed to the framework for one – an agreement that will likely include a roughly quarter percentage point cut to the statewide sales tax and a reduction in overall state spending as compared to the current fiscal year. As a result, we’ll have to head back to Tallahassee next week to begin budget conference committee meetings. 

But Week Nine was still a frenetic one, as we had to finish up work on most policy bills before the end of Day 60. And lots of legislation made across the finish line before we gaveled out at about shortly before 11 pm on Friday night. 

Unfortunately, one of those bills will severely restrict Floridians’ ability to amend their own state constitution – a process that Floridians have used in the past to make important changes like raising the minimum wage and creating a universal pre-k program. 

But we also finalized some important positive legislation too – like a bill that will help condo owners across Florida who have been struggling to pay for costly building inspections and repairs. And legislation to boost mental health programs in Florida and to prevent individuals with mental health from being wrongfully incarcerated. 

And a whole bunch of really bad bills failed to pass – which is a good reminder that advocacy works, even in a place as insular and captured by special interests and unfortunate partisanship as the Florida Legislature. 

I was also appointed to a new Select Committee on Property Taxes. I look forward to sharing more with you about that committee in the days ahead.

You can find lots more details in our latest – but, it turns out, not our last – session Weekly Update. And when you’re done reading it, be sure to connect with us on our various social-media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube) where we’ll keep you posted as we learn more about how the extended session will work. 

One important thing to remember: While the agenda for our extended session is supposed to be strictly limited to the budget and budget-related legislation, legislative leaders in Tallahassee have lots of tricks they could use to resurrect some of the awful bills that are supposed to be dead now.  

So don’t let your guard down yet – and keep the pressure up! 

Onward, 

A bill to undermine citizen-led constitutional amendments passed on Day 60

Unfortunately, one of the last bills we passed this year was one of the worst of the entire session: House Bill 1205, which is the latest attempt by politicians in Tallahassee to stop Floridians from amending their own state constitution. 

Florida’s ballot initiative process – the process by which everyday Floridians can change the state constitution if they collect enough petitions and their idea then gets at least 60 percent of the vote – is so incredibly important. It’s how Floridians have been able to do things like raise the minimum wage, guarantee smaller classes sizes and universal pre-kindergarten, put term limits on politicians, and dedicate funding to environmental preservation.  

But it’s been clear since the last election – in which citizen-led amendments to overturn Florida’s near-total abortion ban and permit Floridians to use marijuana recreationally fell just short of the 60 percent needed at the ballot box – that Republican leaders in Tallahassee were going to make changes to make the process even harder. 

The result was House Bill 1205, which does a lot of anti-democratic things, like forcing Floridians who freely volunteer to collect petitions without any compensation at all to still register with the state and go through a bureaucratic licensing process. The bill also imposes all sorts of intentional barriers and red tape in front of petition drives – and then threatens groups with enormous financial penalties if they trip over any of it. 

To give you one example: This legislation cuts the time Floridians have to turn a signed petition into the local elections office from 30 days to 10 days, while simultaneously jacking up the maximum fine for late petitions by 50 times. 

We did have some narrow victories around this bill. We stopped an attempt to remove the state’s chief economist – a nonpartisan professional who is not beholden to a single partisan politician – from the agency that analyzes the economic impact of proposed amendments. We also successfully advocated for language prohibiting the governor and state agencies from spending taxpayer money on advertising against proposed amendments.

The governor immediately signed House Bill 1205 into law. But I expect this legislation will be challenged in court as unconstitutional under both the Florida and U.S. constitutions. 

Rigging the rules for private schools and catering to conspiracy theorists: Concerning bills that passed

Like any session, we saw a number of concerning policy ideas passed into law – some that are simply silly but others that could do real harm to people. Here are a few that passed in Week Nine: 

  • Senate Bill 56: This bill feeds into the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory. It will create criminal penalties and a new government reporting bureaucracy for people to report allegations of “geoengineering” or “weather modification activities” – despite no credible evidence that any such thing is happening in Florida. At the same time, the bill also chills legitimate scientific research and lends credibility to disinformation. 
  • House Bill 443: This bill is part of a long list of policies the Legislature has passed in recent years to give private and charter schools – some of which are managed by for-profit companies – even more advantages over traditional public schools. Among other things, this particular bill will make it easier for charter schools to increase their enrollment. It will also allow them to ignore a school district’s code of student conduct and instead let the charter school write its own rules, which may make it easier for a charter school to refuse to kick out “undesirable” students. Our state should be investing in high quality public schools that serve every student – not subsidizing private and privately managed schools that lack accountability and can pick and choose who they educate. 
  • Senate Bill 606: The bill will make it easier for hotels to remove guests from their properties. While there are parts of this legislation that I support, I am concerned about families with young children being evicted from extended stay motels with no place to go. This bill – and we as a Legislature – must do far more to ensure a safety net for families who are experiencing homelessness and living in hotels or motels. We can’t just push them out with no clear path to long-term economic sustainability. 
  • Senate Bill 700: Supporters called this the “Florida Farm bill.” But it was really the “Big Ag bill.” Among other things, the bill calls for confusing and unnecessary labeling restrictions on plant-based food products – like forcing oat milk to be relabeled as “oat beverage” or “oat juice” – in order to protect the incumbent beef, dairy and poultry industries from competition. At the same time, the bill also creates taxpayer-funded advertising subsidies for beef producers. And this legislation is going to be harmful to public health, too: It will force local communities to stop adding fluoride to their water supplies – which has been known as a major achievement for public health. 
  • House Bill 1105: This is a giant education package that was completely rewritten at the last minute, just before we voted on it on Friday night. The most concerning part of the bill would allow a traditional public school to be converted into a privately managed charter school without the consent of teachers who work at the school. 
  • House Joint Resolution 1215: This bill, which the Florida Senate passed at the very last minute, will put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would completely exempt agricultural tangible personal property from property taxes. The problem here is that it would lead to a loss of $30 million for cities, counties and school districts – while mostly benefiting a handful of big agribusinesses who have multiple TPP accounts that can exploit the exemption over and over. We should be pursuing smarter and more targeted tax policy that supports smaller farmers rather than giant agricultural corporations. This language will hit small, rural, fiscally constrained counties the hardest. 
  • House Bill 1255: This is another huge education package that was completely rewritten right before we voted on it on Friday night. This one has some good policy in it. But it also further restricts the local government’s ability to ensure a charter school is compatible with surrounding zoning and land use laws. It also expands the use of the explicitly conservative Classic Learning Test in our public schools. But I am grateful that some really awful parts of the bill were removed – including a provision that could have been used to make middle and high school students watch anti-abortion propaganda videos in class under the guise of “public health.” 
  • Senate Bill 1388: This bill will put some of our springs at risk of more damage, by giving the DeSantis administration the power to allow more boat anchoring even environmentally sensitive areas. It also preempts local governments from regulating the sale or use of boats and jet skis passed on their fuel source – like a local ordinance that stops someone from using a gas-powered jet ski on a small lake. 

House and Senate agree to relief plan for Florida condo owners

I’m really disappointed to report that we failed to pass any significant reforms to help Florida home and business getting crushed by the cost property insurance. 

But we did get an important bill across the finish line to help condo owners who have been struggling to afford costly inspections and repairs that were mandated by a law passed following the tragic Surfside tower collapse in 2021. 

This was a really challenging issue because we had to balance financial stability with safety. The House and Senate finally compromised on House Bill 913, which I think threads this needle. The bill will give condo associations more time to complete structural integrity inspections and additional flexibility to meet new financial reserve requirements. It will also allow associations to finance big-ticket repairs with lines of credit and permits them to invest reserve funds, but with guardrails. 

In addition, the bill carves condos with only three residential stories from building inspection requirements. And it promotes transparency by requiring online access to board meetings and prohibits conflicts of interest in repair contracts. 

The overall goal here is to protect residents’ lives and investments while mitigating the financial burden on condo owners. No bill is perfect, but this one moves the struggles many of our condo owners are facing in a good direction. 

Protecting state parks and ending Florida’s “Free Kill” loophole: Other good bills that passed

While we obviously passed a number of bills this year that I think are concerning, we also passed a lot of really good legislation, too. Here are some from the Week Nine that really stand out: 

  • House Bill 209: This bill will protect Florida’s state parks system from development – and forbid any more harebrained schemes like the one Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to sneak through last year that would have let developers build golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts in some of our most beloved environmental preserves. 
  • House Bill 1143: This bill will prevent corporations from drilling for oil or gas within 10 miles of the Apalachicola River or Apalachicola Bay in the Panhandle – a region that relies on a healthy oyster fishery to fuel the local economy. 
  • House Bill 1445: This bill will strengthen a Florida law that is meant to prevent state officials from interfering in elections. It will close a loophole that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his senior staff tried to exploit last year when they spent millions of dollars in taxpayer money advertising against citizen-led constitutional amendments to overturn Florida’s near-total abortion ban and legalize marijuana. It will also forbid the governor and his aides from squeezing lobbyists into making campaign contributions – like they did when DeSantis ran his failed campaign for president. 
  • Senate Bill 1730: This bill will take meaningful steps to expand access to affordable housing in Florida, by eliminating some of the barriers and red tape standing in the way of projects and by expanding the areas in which affordable housing can be built. 
  • House Bill 6017: This bill will eliminate Florida’s so-called “Free Kill” loophole, which prevents some Floridians from holding irresponsible healthcare providers accountable when a parent or child is killed as a result of medical malpractice. Specifically, the bill will repeal a law that blocks parents from recovering monetary damages if the victim of the healthcare provider’s negligence is an adult child – or adult children from recovering damages when the victim was their parent. 

Advocacy works: 

In addition to passing good bills, we had a lot of success this session stop some of the very worst bills from passing, too. 

Below is a quick list. But keep in mind that we have to remain vigilant with all of these. None of these bills currently qualify to be considered during our extended session, which is supposed to be narrowly focused on the budget and a handful of budget-related bills. But with supermajorities in both the House and Senate, legislative leaders have lots of power to override the rules, if they want to. 

Here’s the list: 

  • House Bill 173 and Senate Bill 498: These bills would have slashed funding for Legal Aid programs across Florida, by allowing banks to pay lower interest rates on the law firm bank accounts that are used to fund Legal Aid.
  • House Bill 541 and Senate Bill 636: These bills would have created a loophole in the state’s minimum wage and allowed companies to legally underpay some of their own workers. 
  • House Bill 1517 and Senate Bill 1284: These bills would have given embryos and fetuses some of the same rights as a living child and allowed someone to sue for things like the  lost wages of a newly fertilized egg if an accident were to result in the loss of a pregnancy.
  • House Bill 75 and Senate Bill 100: These bills would have banned local governments from displaying Pride flags.
  • House Bill 565, House Bill 1609 and Senate Bill 1822: These bills would have completely stripped local communities of any power to regulate single-use plastics or styrofoam. 
  • House Bill 759 and Senate Bill 920: These bills would have lowered the legal age to buy a gun in Florida – undoing one of the most important gun-safety reforms that Florida enacted following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. 
  • Senate Bill 1118: This bill would have dissolved Orange County’s voter-approved rural boundary.
  • House Bill 1157 and Senate Bill 1238: These bills would have imposed more barriers to obtaining unemployment insurance in Florida – which already has the worst unemployment system in the country for workers. 
  • House Bill 1217, House Bill 1387, Senate Bill 1328, and Senate Bill 1766: These bills would have expanded a 2023 union-busting law and made it even harder for most public-sector workers to collectively bargain for better pay and benefits. 
  • House Bill 1225 and Senate Bill 918: These bills would have weakened Florida’s child-labor laws and allowed businesses to have high-school students work 10-hour days and 40-hour weeks during the school year. 
  • House Bill 1327 and Senate Bill 1144: These bills would have codified and expanded Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Hope Florida” program – the program that DeSantis used to funnel $10 million taken from a Medicaid settlement to groups supporting the governor’s campaign against last year’s marijuana legalization amendment.  
  • House Bill 1381 and Senate Bill 1414: These bills would have made it more difficult for college students and other young people to vote in Florida elections. 
  • House Bill 1505 and Senate Bill 1288: These bills would have prevented health care professionals from prescribing birth control or providing treatment for sexually transmitted infections to anyone under the age of 18 without permission from a parent. 
  • House Bill 1539 and Senate Bill 1692: These bills would have led to even more book-banning in public schools and libraries.  
  • House Bill 6033 and Senate Bill 1672: These bills would have eliminated workplace protections for day laborers and temp staffers.