Dear Friend,
This is it: We’re about to begin the final week of Florida’s 2025 Legislative Session.
Sort of. The House and Senate have been unable to begin final budget negotiations so far amid a disagreement over how deeply to cut taxes at a time when recession fears are rising because of the Trump administration’s enormous tariff increases, mass layoffs, and chaotic budget cuts.
That means we’re unlikely to finalize a state budget for the state’s 2025-26 fiscal year by Friday, which is Day 60 of the session and usually the day when we would adjourn for the year (which we call “Sine Die.”) We’ll have to go into overtime, although it remains to be seen whether that means extending the current session or reconvening for a budget special session later this spring.
But unless something else changes, we still have to finish up all policy work by Friday. That means we’re going to make major decisions over the next five days on issues like citizen-led constitutional, property insurance, education and school privatization, development issues, healthcare and more.
We have the latest on many of those issues and more in our weekly Session Update, which you can find below. And after you check it out, make sure you’re connected with us on our various social-media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
This is likely going to be a frenzied week – with a lot of enormously important policy decisions made at the very last minute.
We all need to be ready.
Onward,
Education update: Censorship, privatization and propaganda
We spent a lot of time on the floor last week and, unfortunately, we passed a number of really ugly education bills.
For example, we passed House Bill 1539, which would make it much easier for a single parent to have books removed from public schools and libraries. It would do so by redefining what is considered “harmful to minors” by removing important context – like a book’s literary, artistic or scientific value.
This creates a rushed and vague process that opens the door to more politically motivated book bans that can be used to censor books center the stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people, Black and brown communities, and other identities.
Supporters of the bill know this – which is why they kept refusing to answer questions on the House floor about the impact of this legislation.
I voted no, because HB 1539 threatens students’ access to high-quality educational materials and promotes censorship over critical thinking.
Click here to watch my debate against the bill.
We also passed House Bill 1267, a bill that would dramatically increase the number of charter schools operating in Florida by allow so-called “Schools of Hope” to open up in many more locations.
That’s not all. The bill would even allow these charter schools to open up inside a public school building along an existing traditional public school. And the charter school operator would get to co-locate in the building rent-free.
I voted no, because this is a bill that continues Florida’s dangerous attempt to completely privatize public education – except now we’re even doing it from the inside the building.
Click here to watch my debate against House Bill 1267.
And we passed House Bill 1255, which is a big education package that has some good elements in it. But it also has two really problematic sections.
One part of the bill is a carbon copy of legislation that anti-abortion activists have been pushing in states across the country that is designed to force middle and high school students to repeatedly watch an anti-abortion propaganda video called “Baby Olivia.”
And another part of the bill makes sets a prohibition on “activism” that could impact well-established educational nonprofits that work to empower youth leaders and address cycles of poverty. We should be supporting these organizations – not hindering them.
Those two elements made it impossible for me to support HB 1255, so I voted no.
I offered an amendment to remove the “Baby Oliva” propaganda from the bill, though House Republicans rejected it.
Click here to watch me present the bill.
Letting companies work young people like adults while denying young people access to healthcare
Sometimes, the lack of self-awareness in some corners of the Florida Legislature takes my breath away.
On Friday, we passed House Bill 1505, an anti-healthcare bill that would prohibit medical providers from prescribing birth control or treatment for a sexually transmitted infection to a teenager without permission from a parent.
This is a really dangerous bill that’s going to drive teenagers living in dangerous family situations from seeking out important medical care – and denying them potentially life-saving interventions from nurses or doctors or other healthcare providers who could help them make smarter and healthier decisions.
Without the ability to seek confidential services, young people are more likely to delay or avoid treatment, leading to spreading infections, infertility, cancer, and even death. The bill even restricts access to mental health treatments, too.
I voted no. Click here to watch my debate against the bill.
On the very same day, we also passed House Bill 1225, which would let businesses put teenage employees on the same sorts of work schedules as adult workers. The bill would permit companies to have high school students working 10-hour days and 40-hour workweeks during the school year.
Obviously, we should not be weakening Florida’s child-labor laws – especially when our current laws are already too weak as it is. This bill is being pushed by large corporations who are looking for a source of cheap labor and by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said publicly that he wants to replace immigrant workers with child laborers.
And yet here we are: Passing bills that assume young people are too immature to obtain basic healthcare services – but mature enough for corporations to treat them the same as adult employees.
I voted no on HB 1225, too. Click here to watch some Q&A on the bill.
Trying (again) to close corporate tax loopholes
The Florida House passed its “tax package” last week, which includes a cut to the statewide sales tax.
Specifically, the bill would cut the sales tax from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. I really like the idea of cutting the sales tax, which is the most regressive form of tax there is – which means it ends up falling harder on working- and middle-class people than wealthier folks.
The challenge is that the sales tax is Florida’s main source of revenue: This tax cut would rip a nearly $5 billion hole in the state budget. This is why House Republicans have proposed an austere budget that would cut funding for everything from affordable housing to advanced placement courses in public schools.
There’s a way we could solve this problem. It’s called “combined reporting,” which is a policy that would close longstanding loopholes in our corporate income tax code that giant multinational companies are using to dodge Florida taxes. Independent analysts estimate combined reporting would generate more than $2 billion in revenue from the world’s biggest corporations – which would go a long way to offsetting the impact of a sales tax cut.
And more than that, combined reporting would also go a long ways to creating a fairer playing field for small and Florida-based businesses who can’t exploit the current system like giant corporations do when they shift income out of Florida and into tax havens like Delaware, Ireland and the Cayman Islands. It’s also a bipartisan idea that drawn support from a number of prominent Florida Republicans in the past. And it’s a policy that more than half the states in this country have already passed.
I tried to add combined reporting to the tax package. Unfortunately, Republicans in the House rejected it – after a lobbying group for corporations like Walmart, Pfizer, Amazon and ExxonMobil sent a letter opposing my amendment.
This is my seventh year in the Florida House – and the seventh year in which I’ve tried to pass combined reporting. And while it failed again, we’re getting more support every time.
We’re going to win this fight eventually.
Click here to watch me present the combined reporting amendment.
A terrible TDT plan
I also wanted to fill you in on a really problematic part of the tax package – a section that involves the Tourist Development Tax (TDT), which is obviously an important revenue source in central Florida.
This part of the bill – which also appears in a standalone bill, House Bill 1221, that passed the House last week, too – would essentially open up intentional shortfalls in county budgets and force counties to use their TDT revenue to fill it.
This is a really troubling idea that would weaken local control over how TDT dollars are allocated. In large, tourism-driven counties like Orange County, we depend on flexibility to invest TDT revenues in ways that reflect the unique needs of our communities – whether that’s supporting arts and culture, improving infrastructure, or promoting sustainable tourism.
For years now, I have been pushing hard for TDT reform that would allow us to use these dollars supporting tourism industry workers and offsetting some of the negative impacts that tourists have on quality of life issues like traffic congestion.
The Senate, for instance, has put language into its tax package that would finally give Orange County the ability to invest some of its revenue in a SunRail extension to Orlando International Airport and workforce housing projects. That would be a game-changer for our community.
But while I support thoughtful TDT reform, I do not support stripping away the authority of local elected officials – the elected officials who are closest to the people they serve – to determine how these funds are spent.
This House proposal moves us in the wrong direction by centralizing decision-making and limiting the ability of local leaders to respond to the economic challenges, community priorities and long-term planning goals that are unique to their communities.
A win for wheelchair users
In happier news, I’m so thrilled to report that the House passed House Bill 311, a bill I’m sponsoring that would empower wheelchair users to repair their chairs when they break.
This is what’s known as a “Right to Repair” bill. It would require manufacturers of powered wheelchairs – which is yet another heavily consolidated industry, dominated by only a couple big companies that control much of the market – to share parts, tools and records needed to repair broken wheelchairs. The manufacturers would have to share these critical materials with both wheelchair owners and independent repair shops.
This would help ensure that wheelchair users can make or find affordable repairs when their chairs break. After all, these are not luxury devices – wheelchairs are essential to a person’s life, health and safety. And they can be incredibly expensive to buy new, sometimes costing as much as a new car.
House Bill 311 passed the House unanimously. It now goes to the Senate, which we’re hoping will take the bill up this week.
Click here to watch me present the bill on the House floor.
Checking in on anti-worker bills
I have some updates on several anti-worker bills we’ve been keeping close tabs on this session.
First, the House and Senate both passed House Bill 1219, which would let corporations bind some of their workers to longer non-compete contracts.
This is a bill that was pushed through the Legislature this session by lobbyists for a hedge fund run by a billionaire who has become one of the biggest donors in all of Florida politics. It now goes to the governor, who I expect will sign it.
Non-compete agreements are harmful to workers, innovation and the broader economy. These contracts restrict workers from leaving for a better-paying job at a competitor or from launching their own start up business. This ultimately suppresses wages, because, when people can’t freely move between jobs, employers have less incentive to improve pay or working conditions.
So I’m obviously sorry to see the bill pass, though at least the final bill was a bit narrower than the original version filed this session.
But there were also some positive developments. House Bill 6033 and Senate Bill 1672, which would eliminate workplace protections for day laborers and temp workers, both stalled last week and now appear unlikely to pass this session.
Click here to watch my debate against House Bill 6033 in last week’s Commerce Committee meeting.
In addition, the Senate President said that bills to open up a new loophole in our state minimum wage – House Bill 541 and Senate Bill 676 – are dead and will not pass, either.
We’ll have to stay on guard all the way to Sine Die, but these are both encouraging developments.
Stopping developers from destroying rural lands, but letting them prey on new homebuyers
There are some interesting twists to a couple of big development-related bills last week.
On the positive side, a bipartisan group of senators rejected Senate Bill 1080, which would have triggered more unchecked urban sprawl by making it easier for homebuilders to throw up subdivisions on farmland.
The bill was later revived through a procedural maneuver, so we still need to watch it. But I’m hopeful that the worst parts of that bill will be removed before the Senate tries to pass it again.
On a more ominous note, the House added some dangerous provisions to House Bill 579, including one that could enable residential subdivisions to engage in predatory practices that lock new homeowners into paying fees forever.
That bill is likely to be heard on the House floor this week.
Round-up: Property insurance reform, charter school conversions, and a merger of church and state
We’ll end this week’s newsletter with a quick round up of other interesting bills that moved forward last week:
- The House passed House Bill 643, a fantastic insurance bill that would crack down on accounting tricks insurance companies have been using to shift profits out of Florida even as they claim to be losing money. The Senate hasn’t passed the bill yet, and it’s not really clear if it will.
- The Senate passed Senate Bill 140, which would allow a charter school to take over a traditional public school without consent from the teachers who work at the school. The House version of this bill (House Bill 123) is ready for a floor vote, so there’s a good chance some version of this bill passes this week.
- The Senate also passed Senate Bill 820, which would create an “Office of Faith and Community” that would be controlled by the Governor’s Office and used to coordinate activities between state agencies and churches and religious groups. Unfortunately, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have made clear that these employees could not engage in political activities while on state time – something we saw DeSantis staffers do last year during the Amendment 4 campaign. The House version of this bill is also ready for a floor vote.
- The Senate Rules Committee passed Senate Bill 1288, which is the Senate version of House Bill 1505 – the bill that would forbid a 17-year-old from obtaining birth control or treatment for a sexually transmitted infection without permission from a parent. That means this bill is in position to potentially pass in the final week, too.