Dear Friend,
Every Monday morning we’ll be sharing a review of what we’ve been up to during Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session. (Click here for last week’s review).
Also, if you’re not doing so already, please consider keeping up to date with us through our social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our legislative updates are thorough but will never be all encompassing — remember you can also watch Committee Meetings and Floor Sessions live on the Florida Channel.
Onward together,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani
UPDATED COVID19 GUIDE
We start, as always, with the latest version of our COVID-19 Guide (español), along with our Unemployment Issues blog post and our guidance for renters/homeowners. If you are facing issues with your unemployment claim, please fill out our DEO escalation form here.
COVID-19 Vaccine News and Updates
Starting Monday, people 40 and older can get vaccinated at the Orange County Convention Center, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings announced last week.
Meanwhile, people 50 and over will be able to get vaccinated at all other sites, because of tighter restrictions imposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 
Unite Here! Local 362, the largest union at Walt Disney World representing 9,000 custodians, food-service workers, ride attendants and others, has asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to make all hospitality workers vaccine-eligible. This comes as vaccination sites around the state are reporting slowing demand for the vaccines.
Unfortunately, the DeSantis administration continues to try and hide information about its COVID19 response. So last week, the Orlando Sentinel sued DeSantis, in an effort to force the governor to abide by Florida’s public-records laws and release details about the locations of rapidly spreading variant strains of COVID19. It’s the second time the Sentinel has had to sue DeSantis to get access to vital — and legally public — COVID19 information.
President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is now law and it contains an enormous amount of help for struggling Floridians. Many of these new changes and benefits are included in our updated COVID19 guide, but I’ve compiled more links and information in a Twitter thread you can find here.
Lastly, the city of Miami Beach was forced to institute a new curfew last week because of massive, disorderly Spring Break crowds violating local ordinances — including not wearing masks.
Y’all, we are *so close* to being on the other side of this pandemic. But we’re not quite there yet. Please continue to stay safe and responsible, wear a mask and follow public health guidance and try to remember that you’re not just protecting yourself from a potentially devastating virus — you are protecting others, too.
Republican Legislators Advance Plan to Cut Bright Futures Scholarships
The Florida Senate began moving forward last week with an awful plan to limit Bright Futures scholarships.
This bill (SB 86) would cut off Bright Futures awards and other financial aid to students who pursue majors in subject areas that *politicians* decide aren’t worthy of study. It would also reduce Bright Futures eligibility for students who earn college credit in high school through Advance Placement, International Baccalaureate and dual-enrollment programs. 
This is both an ideological attempt to restrict academic freedom and an obvious effort to cut spending on popular and important social program — even as this same Legislature pushes billions in tax breaks for businesses.
As the daughter of working-class immigrants who struggled every day to provide for their children, I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t received a Bright Futures scholarship. These scholarships are crucial to helping Florida’s students move up the economic ladder — especially kids from low- and middle-income families who can’t afford college tuition on their own.
The Bright Futures program is also important to building a better economy for all of us because it’s how we keep our smartest, most talented and most creative young folks living and working in our great state — rather than driving them away to other places that embrace independent thinking and intellectual curiosity.
Our office has already received hundreds of emails opposed to this terrible idea. And I promise you, I will fight it every step of the way.
Republican Leaders Side with Big Sugar Over Sick Families
On Wednesday, the House Civil Justice & Property Rights Subcommittee advanced one of Senate President Wilton Simpson’s top priorities this session — a bill to project Big Sugar and its toxic sugarcane burning.
I voted against this bad bill (HB 1601), which is designed to undercut a class-action lawsuit that’s been filed against Florida Crystals Corp. and U.S. Sugar Corp. over their practice of pre-harvest burning of sugarcane fields.
This burning causes soot and ash — which locals call “black snow” — to fall miles away. Exposure to these toxic particles has been linked to many health problems, from respiratory disease to cancer, with young children and the elderly especially vulnerable.
I voted against this bill, which prioritizes the profit margins of an industry that spends millions on campaign contributions over the health and safety of farm workers and other people — many of them people of color — who live near these burning fields.
These sugar companies could choose to switch to green harvesting, which uses mechanical harvesters to separate sugarcane leaves and tops from the sugar-bearing stalks — eliminating the need to burn. But they are far less likely to switch if we’re going to give them lawsuit immunity from all the public health problems caused by their current burning.
You can watch my remarks on this bill starting at 1:12:32 of this video.
Helping Formerly Incarcerated Folks Find Jobs
On the other hand, I was very proud to support a different bill Wednesday: HB 953, which will help people coming out of our criminal legal system get back on their feet.
Right now, the licensing boards for certain professions regulated by the state — construction trades contractors, electrical contractors, barbers and cosmetologists — may deny a license to someone who has committed a crime within the past five years.
HB 953 shortens that review period to two years (although the licensing boards may still consider older forcible felonies and sex crimes in certain circumstances).
Those licensing boards also set educational and training requirements that someone must complete before they can obtain a license. HB 953 requires those boards to accept any credits that someone earned while in prison through prison vocational training programs or through industry-certification courses.
This bill, which passed the House Regulatory Reform Subcommittee where I serve as the Ranking Member, is a small but important step towards helping our returning citizens find a job and avoid cycling back through our criminal legal system. But there is so much more we need to do, including investing in more and better education and training programs for incarcerated folks and removing other barriers to rehabilitation and rights restoration. I’m hoping this step is the first of many we take this session.
You can watch my remarks on this bill starting at 1:01:06 of this video.
Stopping Eviction Stigmatization
Another good bill that started moving last week was HB 1193, which will help ensure that people who have been evicted are not stigmatized forever.
The bill would allow a tenant or mobile-home owner who is faced with an eviction to have the court records sealed and their name removed from the public record if: 1) The tenant and their landlord jointly agree to it; 2) The case was dismissed; 3) The case was settled and the tenant has complied with all the terms of the settlement; 4) A default judgement was entered against the tenant but the tenant has paid off the monetary award; or 5) A judgment on the merits was entered against the defendant but at least five years have since passed and the tenant has paid off the monetary award.
This another small-but-important first step to eviction reform, and ensuring that a brief period of financial struggles don’t destroy someone’s life forever. Allowing an evicted tenant who was able to work out a solution with their previous landlord — or who has worked hard to stabilize themselves since their eviction — will protect them from stigmatization by future landlords and help them find new homes for themselves and their families.
I was proud to vote for this bill on Thursday in the House Civil Justice & Property Rights Subcommittee. And as with criminal legal system reform, I hope this only the first of many reforms that my colleagues in the Legislature will consider this spring.
You can watch my debate on the bill starting at 32:24 of this video.
The Legislature Attacks Trans Kids
The rights of transgender folks are under attack by demagogic Republicans around the country — and, sadly, Florida is no exception.
Last week, the Florida House started moving HB 1475, an ugly, dehumanizing bill that aims to isolate and ostracize trans kids by banning them from playing school sports with their peers.
Florida schools already have policies for trans kids playing sports and those policies are working very well. This bill is nothing more than another attempt by Republicans to create culture-war divisions and distract from a GOP economic agenda that takes money and power away from working-class folks — of all races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities and gender identities — and transfers it to the super-rich people and big corporations who finance their campaigns.
I’m fighting this bill, and I hope you will, too. Click here to send an email to your legislator calling on them to stop playing politics with the lives of transgender children.
New Findings on Abuse in Florida’s Child Welfare System
As the legislature attacks trans kids, a cache of documents pried loose after USA TODAY’s investigation in October into Florida’s child welfare system reveals allegations of foster care abuse are more widespread than previously reported. I encourage you to read this report and demand that your state lawmaker take action.
Sending Love to Our Asian-American Community
The targeted murders last week of Asian-American women in shootings at Atlanta spas was a grotesque hate crime.
A new report by the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate documented at least 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans from March to February — violence that has been fanned by irresponsible and ignorant political leaders who have attempted to demonize Asian-Americans amid the COVID19 pandemic.
And Stop AAPI Hate noted that the 3,795 attacks it documented — which range from verbal harassment to shunning to physical assaults — likely represents only a fraction of the total number of attacks that have occurred, because many were not reported to the organization.
Hate is hate, no matter what community is targeted. 
Join us on Thursday March 23rd at 6:00 PM (EST) for a Virtual Vigil Against Asian Hate, against the heinous violence born from white supremacy. We will be honoring the Asian lives that have been lost and those that have been harmed. This peer-led event will have speakers, performances, and calls to action. RSVP to attend at this link. There is also an event taking place at UCF this Tuesday hosted by the Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC), click here for more details.
Authorities Accuse Former Republican Lawmaker of Rigging Election
Tallahassee was rocked by scandal this week when police in Miami-Dade County arrested a former Republican state legislator on charges that he illegally financed a sham “independent” candidate to help the GOP steal a tight state Senate race last fall.
I encourage you to read the whole sordid story, which saw the GOP plant with the same last name as the Democratic incumbent siphon more than 6,000 votes in Senate District 37 — a race in which Republican challenger Ileana Garcia defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez by just 32 votes.
I hope investigators will keep digging deeper into this election-rigging plot , especially because we saw similarly suspicious, Republican-linked “independent” candidates pop up in other close Senate races last fall, too — including in Senate District 9 in Seminole and Volusia counties. 
Our Nation’s First Native American Cabinet Secretary!
Congratulations to new Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who is officially the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet-level secretary!
Haaland, who was appointed by President Biden and sworn in last week, has an inspirational life story: A single mother who once lived paycheck-to-paycheck and relied on food stamps, she put herself through college, ran her own small business and became the first Native American woman to lead a state political party and one of the first Native Americans ever elected to Congress.
And congratulations, too, to Florida’s former U.S. Senator, Bill Nelson, who was just named the new leader of NASA.
A Lawmaker’s Recipe for Fixing Problems Laid Bare by COVID
To mark one full year into the COVID19 pandemic in the United States, the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board asked me to write a column about how my office has responded, what we’ve learned and how we can fix the problems that the pandemic has exposed.
In the past year, our small but mighty House District 47 team has helped more than 21,000 Floridians from across 66 counties access their unemployment benefits — as well as helping so many other struggling folks pay their rent, put food on their table and keep their vehicles from being repossessed by debt collectors.
We’ve learned firsthand just how thin Florida’s safety nets really are — if they even exist at all. But we’ve learned how to fix them. In the column, I lay out an agenda that includes expanding health care coverage, fixing our deliberately broken unemployment system, stopping corporations from dictating economy policy, and becoming intentionally anti-racist in everything we do.
I encourage you to read the full column here.
Big Developers and Fossil Fuel Companies Are Writing Their Own Legislation
We learned this week that one of Florida’s biggest landowners wrote a piece of legislation that Republican lawmakers are now carrying and that could make it harder for government agencies to deny oil- and gas-drilling permits in environmentally sensitive areas like the Big Cypress National Preserve.
And just so happens that this company owns the oil and gas rights in the Big Cypress National Preserve.
Meanwhile, it turns out that a bill rushing through the Legislature that would prevent local governments from prioritizing renewable and climate-friendly energy sources over natural gas could financially benefit one of the state’s largest corporate utilities.
Building Power, Together
Whether in person or online, we’re still meeting with lots of folks this session — from constituents visiting from HD47 to groups trying to pass good bills and stop bad ones from becoming law.
We’re in this fight together, y’all!
Nowruz Pirouz!
Last week marked Nowruz, the start of the Persian New Year and one of the most important holidays in Persian culture.
Many of you know that I am the first Iranian-American elected to office anywhere in Florida, and so I try to introduce folks to Persian traditions and build bridges between different cultures and communities.
We celebrated Nowruz in a few ways last week. We partnered with the Iranian-American Community Center of Central Florida to host virtual Persian New Year celebration. My twin sister, Ida, and I did a traditional jumping over fire ceremony, in which we give the fire our “yellow” (paleness, sickness) and take the fire’s “red” (heat, energy.)
And we even cooked a vegan version of the traditional Persian New Year’s dinner!
ANNA IN THE NEWS
Florida took an aggressive approach to unemployment fraud. Was it worth it?
Bill would preempt unwritten local gun rules
Civil Cy Pres bill passes House panel
Floridians still struggle with unemployment system a year into COVID-19 pandemic
Florida lawmakers advance $73M plan to upgrade CONNECT unemployment site to cloud system
Study shows Legoland, Disney boost nearby home values
GOP’s DeSantis helped by windfall from Washington Democrats
UPCOMING EVENTS
World Water Day Panel
Monday is World Water Day and we are a committed voice for the environment in the state of Florida. Join us and the Democratic Environmental Caucus for a virtual event focused on supporting Florida’s environment and our waterways! RSVP here. The event will also be livestreamed at facebook.com/AnnaForFlorida.
