Dear Friend,
We’re getting close to the end of the 2025 Legislative Session now.
We just finished up Week 7, which means there are only two more weeks remaining in the 60-day session. A bunch of bills have now moved through all of their committees and are starting to pass out of the House and Senate – including “Gage’s Law,” which passed both chambers unanimously last week and will hopefully prevent future fentanyl deaths. It’s named in honor of an Orlando man who died from an accidental fentanyl overdose.
We actually passed a bunch of good bills last week, including bills to protect Florida’s state parks, reduce political meddling when universities hire new presidents, and stop staffers in the Governor’s Office from leaning on lobbyists for campaign contributions.
But some uglier bills are coming, including controversial legislation the Senate resurrected last week that would make it much easier for homebuilders to build urban sprawl subdivisions on the farmland surrounding cities.
And amidst all of it, the scandal involving Ron and Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida Foundation – which was used to turn money meant for the state’s Medicaid program into funding for political campaign ads – continues to grow.
Read about those developments and more in our latest weekly Session Update, which you’ll find below. And after you do, make sure to connect with Team Anna on our social-media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube – for breaking news updates during the week.
There may not be a lot of time left. But we still have lots of work to do before session ends.
I also wanted to acknowledge the tragedy this week at Florida State University. On Thursday, a 20-year-old FSU student and son of a Leon County sheriff’s deputy killed two people and wounding five others on campus with a handgun that belonged to his mother. This is a devastating tragedy, and my heart is with the victims, their families, and the entire FSU community. No student should ever fear for their life while pursuing an education and no parent should have to fear for the safety of their child while at school.
To the first responders and medical personnel on the ground: thank you for your bravery. To everyone at FSU and in Tallahassee: we stand with you and we will not stop fighting for a future where these horrors are no longer part of American life.
Common-sense policy measures like safe storage requirements, background checks, and violence intervention can save lives. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need real leadership, real reform, and a real commitment to keeping our communities safe. You can count on us to push for this, and more.
Yours in service,
Bills to protect state parks and the Apalachicola River pass unanimously
We had a really busy floor session in the House of Representatives last week, but I’m pleased to report that we actually passed a bunch of really good bills.
For instance, we unanimously passed House Bill 209, a bipartisan bill to protect our state parks – and ensure that Gov. Ron DeSantis can never again try to help developers sneak through plans to pave over some of our most cherished places with golf courses, lodges and pickleball courts.
Click here to see my floor debate in favor of this bill.
We also unanimously passed House Bill 1143, which would prevent any oil- or gas-drilling within 10 miles of the Apalachicola River, which is a vital waterway for our oyster industry. The same bill would also prevent drilling near the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve near St. Augustine and Rookery Bay near Naples.
House passes bills to end political meddling in university presidential searches and government interference in elections
We passed a bunch of good-government legislation, too. For instance, we passed House Bill 1321, another bipartisan bill that would reduce political meddling and favoritism when our public universities and colleges hire new presidents. Among other things, the bill would repeal a terrible public-records exception that allows schools to do their presidential searches in public.
I’m proud to be a co-sponsor of this bill – a fact that apparently enrages Ron DeSantis, who referred to me as “the most flamboyantly left-wing” member of the state House while criticizing this legislation. He’s obviously upset because he’d no longer be allowed to hand high-paying college president jobs to his unqualified cronies.
That’s not all. The House also passed House Bill 1445, a fantastic ethics reform bill that would prohibit public officials from using their position to interfere with elections. It would also prohibit state employees from fundraising for political campaigns – so the governor’s aides could no longer squeeze lobbyists for money for DeSantis’ campaigns.
‘Gage’s Law’ goes to the governor
All of the bills I just mentioned still need to pass the Senate. But another great bill is now going to the governor: House Bill 1195, which would require hospitals to test for fentanyl whenever they receive a patient with a suspected overdose.
This legislation is known as “Gage’s Law,” after Gage Austin Taylor, a 29-year-old Orlando man who died after an accidental fentanyl overdose.
Gage’s law passed the House and Senate unanimously.
Click here to watch my debate in favor of it.
Bill would make Florida’s unemployment system even worse for workers
Unfortunately, we also passed some bad bills last week.
Most notably, we passed House Bill 1157, which would new more obstacles for Florida workers trying to claim unemployment benefits. Florida already has the worst unemployment system in the nation for laid-off workers, one in which the Legislature has imposed intentional administrative burdens that are meant to deter people from even filing claims in the first place.
House Bill 1157, which would add even more intentional red tape – while also giving state officials and businesses more excuses to disqualify workers from benefits.
Click here to watch my debate against his bill.
Education update: Bills would tie locals’ hands on charter schools, forbid cell phones in schools
I also wanted to flag two significant education bills we passed out of the House last week:
- House Bill 569 would continue to the hands of local communities when it comes to regulating charter schools. Among other things, this would preempt cities or counties from making charter school operators comply with local parking and vehicle-stacking ordinances that might limit how big a charter school can get. I voted no on this bill.
- House Bill 949 would expand a state law prohibiting students from using their cell phones while in school. Current law forbids students from using their phones during instructional time; this legislation would extend that law to cover all hours during the school day. I voted yes on this bill.
Senate tax package has huge news for Orlando
The House and Senate both began to move forward last week with their proposed “tax packages” – which are basically giant packages of tax cuts.
There are a bunch of special interest tax breaks in these packages that I really don’t like. The House proposal, for instance, includes tax cuts for airlines and poker rooms and a tax break for the National Christian Foundation, a giant conservative nonprofit that funds abortion-bans and anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy.
But there’s also something that would be an enormous win for Orlando. The Senate tax package (Senate Bill 7034) includes a provision that would allow Orange County to finally begin using a portion of its tourist development taxes on critical infrastructure projects – like a SunRail connection to Orlando International Airport or affordable housing projects.
Other communities can already do this. But Orange County has been frozen out of using TDT on local capital projects because of behind-the-scenes lobbying by the tourism industry.
That provision isn’t in the House’s version of the tax package yet, but I’m hopeful we can get it there. And the House package (House Bill 7033) does include some other promising TDT language – including a provision that would allow small coastal counties to use some of their hotel taxes hiring and training more lifeguards, which are obviously very imporant in communities that rely on beach tourism.
A long hearing in the House State Affairs
We had a a long hearing in the House State Affairs Committee last week. Among other things, we heard House Bill 477, a bill inspired by the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory that alleges the government is secretly injecting chemicals into the atmosphere using commercial airliners.
This bill would basically require the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to set up an email address for people to report alleged chemtrail sightings. But DEP would only have to actually investigate complaints that “warrant” further review or report potential violations to the Division of Emergency Management “if appropriate.”
And, of course, the bill doesn’t explain how the agency would make such determinations or what would happen if the agency ignored all the complaints entirely. It honestly seems really patronizing.
But the bill also imposes a bunch of bureaucratic reporting requirements on airports, too. It could also impede research at our higher-ed institutions, focused on better understanding the Earth’s atmosphere.
I voted no.
Good news and bad news for Florida workers
Here’s the bad news: The House and Senate both continue to move forward with bills that would let corporations handcuff some of their workers to longer and stronger non-compete contracts. Senate Bill 922 and House Bill 1219 both passed committees last week – and the House bill has already been scheduled for a floor vote next week.
But here’s the good news; The bills have been narrowed so they would apply to fewer workers. We still shouldn’t pass them –non-competes are anti-competitive tools that suppress workers’ salaries and Florida should ban them entirely. But at least these bills are becoming less harmful.
More bad news: The House Education & Employment Committee passed House Bill 1225, which would roll back child-labor laws on teenagers as young as 14-years-old.
But more good news, too: The Senate Rules Committee postponed a hearing on Senate Bill 1672, which would roll back workplace-protection laws on day laborers and temp workers.
Senate resurrects controversial urban sprawl bill
A dangerous urban sprawl bill has begun moving forward again.
The Senate Rules Committee passed Senate Bill 1080, which includes some really controversial “agricultural enclave” language that would essentially make it easier for homebuilders to turn farmland around urban areas into more sprawling subdivisions.
This is an idea that was initially included in Senate Bill 1118, which got stalled in committee amid backlash from voters all across the state. But the idea is obviously moving forward again in the Senate.
We also have to be especially careful of this bill because it could become a vehicle for an amendment that would completely undo Orange County’s new rural boundary charter amendment. That’s exactly what lobbyists tried to do with Senate Bill 1118, before it stalled.
In a more promising development, the House Commerce Committee last week postponed a hearing on a similar bill: House Bill 578, which also has the “agricultural enclave” language in it.
Senate passes ugly special-interest bills
The Senate spent some time in session last week, too. There are a couple of bills that are worth mentioning.
Senate Bill 700 does a bunch of things – most of them bad. For instance, it would force local communities to stop adding fluoride to their water supplies, even if local residents don’t want to stop.
The bill would also impose a bunch of anticompetitive rules on plant-based food products meant to stop them from using words like “meat,” “milk” and “eggs” on their labels.
And it would expand right-wing banking laws that are designed to force banks to lend money to environmentally destructive businesses. Banks that refuse to lend to, for instance, a corporate agribusiness that pollutes the environment could face civil lawsuits.
Speaking of corporate polluters and civil lawsuits, the Senate also passed Senate Bill 832, which would defend mining giant Mosaic Co. against lawsuits stemming from radioactive contamination left behind on formerly mined lands.
On the bright side, the Senate delayed a floor vote on Senate Bill 7016, the bill that is designed to crush all future citizen-led constitutional amendment petition drives. The House has already passed a different version of the bill (House Bill 1205), and the two chambers have yet to agree to a final product.
I still expect that Republican leaders in Tallahassee will make a big push to pass a bill stopping citizen-led constitutional amendment this session – they want to prevent another attempt to overturn the state’s near-total abortion ban, after Amendment 4 got more than 57 percent support last year.
But when you’re getting this late in session, any delay on a bad bill is welcome news.
Hope Florida scandal deepens
Lastly, I thought I’d end this week with an update on the scandal that has consumed much of the Legislature: The Governor’s use of Hope Florida to launder Medicaid money into campaign ads.
Just to recap: The DeSantis administration negotiated a $67 million legal settlement with Centene Corp., a contractor accused of overbilling Medicaid. But instead of paying all that money to the state, DeSantis had Centene give $10 million of it to the Hope Florida Foundation, the charity founded by the governor’s wife, First Lady Casey DeSantis.
Hope Florida then immediately gave that money to a pair of dark-money groups that then made big donations to a political committee chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff, which spent the money campaigning against Amendment 3, the constitutional amendment on last year’s ballot that would have legalized weed in Florida.
The House has been holding oversight hearings on Hope Florida, including one last week that revealed that Hope Florida’s board of directors made no attempt to monitor how the $10 million was spent after they gave it to the two dark-money groups and that they were relying on advice from an attorney who doubles as one of Ron DeSantis’ top political fundraisers.
We also learned that DeSantis’ then-chief of staff – James Uthemier, who the governor recently appointed attorney general – instructed the dark-money groups to ask for the money from Hope Florida before they turned around and made giant donations to Uthmeier’s anti-marijuana political committee.
This story isn’t even close to over yet. The House is going to hold more hearings this week.