Your Florida Legislative Session Update: Week 4

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

The big news is that, starting today, all Floridians age 40 and up can get a COVID19 vaccine!

It’s so important that we all get vaccinated as soon as we’re legally able to. Getting vaccinated not only protects us individually from the risks of serious illness or death from COVID19, it is also how we can eventually get back to a new normal in our everyday lives.

HB 1 Passes the House but the Fight is Far From Over

On Friday, after nearly five hours of debate, the Florida House passed HB 1, a direct assault on our Constitutional rights to demonstrate and protest that Republican politicians devised in order to shut down the Black Lives Matter movement — and any other movement that attempts to challenge the status quo.

This bill is meant to scare people out of participating in protests. It gives police, courts — and even bad actors like people who drive their cars into crowds in hopes of hitting protests — tools to harm, incarcerate and even kill demonstrators. It even creates extra protections for confederate statues.

This is a nakedly political piece of legislation whose sole purpose to further stoke and exploit racial resentments. It is the single top priority this session of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is happily putting the lives of Black and brown people at risk in order to curry favor with supporters of former President Trump in hopes of fueling the presidential campaign he is so desperate to run.

The almost entirely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests that swept across our country this summer in response to police murders of unarmed Black people were meant to force our country to confront the systematic racism that has been embedded into so many of our political systems, from law enforcement and voting laws to unemployment insurance eligibility to the tax code.

But instead of attempting to address those problems — and improve our state and country for *all* of us — DeSantis and Tallahassee Republicans have responded with legislation meant to silence any challengers to their authority and the structural inequities that they are determined to keep in place.

I tried to make this bill better. For instance, I offered an amendment to make it absolutely clear that this bill would NOT prohibit the kind of nonviolent civil disobedience — such as boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and traffic blockades — that has been so important to the movements for civil rights, disability rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights and environmental projections. Civil obedience is, as I said on the House floor, as American as apple pie. But the Republican majority in the House voted it down.

Then I offered an amendment to add criminal penalties specifically for elected officials who engage in an insurrection against the Federal Government. House Republican leadership was so afraid of even voting on that issue — lest they antagonize the Trump mob they are trying so hard to appease — that they used procedural rules to prevent a vote from happening.

As infuriating and frustrating as this vote was, it’s important to remember: This fight is FAR from over. The Florida Senate hasn’t even given this legislation a single hearing yet, so we all need to keep organizing, pushing back as hard as we can, and making sure everyone of our State Senators know exactly what we think about this racist, authoritarian attack on free speech.

You can watch my full debate against this bill on the House floor here.

Bill to Give Lawsuit Immunity to Corporations Goes to the Governor

Also on Friday, the House passed SB 72, which will grant lawsuit immunity even to irresponsible and negligent businesses who put their workers and customers at unnecessary risk of infection from COVID-19.

Lawsuits against businesses related to COVID19 infections have not been a problem at all in Florida. Yet Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican leadership of the state House and Senate made this bill a major focus this session in response to lobbying by big corporations like Publix and Disney and influential industries like nursing homes and insurance companies, who are always looking for any excuse they can find to clamp down on civil lawsuits.

My biggest frustration, though, is that while our leadership does so much to help big corporations — giving them everything from lawsuit shields to tax breaks — we have yet to provide any meaningful help to genuine small businesses or workers. The Florida House hasn’t done anything to fund more emergency loans for small businesses, to protect restaurants from predatory online delivery prices or force insurance companies to honor business-interruption policies. And the House hasn’t done anything to fix or improve our designed-to-fail unemployment insurance system, where workers in Florida are treated worse than in any other state in the county.

There’s still a month left in session, so I’m hopeful we’ll finally address some of those problems, too. It’s time to focus on people instead of corporations.

You can watch my debate on this bill starting at 5:03:16 of this video.

Republican Leaders Want to Permanently Cut Affordable Housing Programs

Last week, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate announced a new plan to *permanently* cut Florida’s “Sadowski Trust Fund” — the pot of money that is supposed to pay for affordable housing housing around Florida, from construction of attainable apartments and homes to rental and down-payment assistance programs.

The lack of affordable housing — particularly in cities like Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville — is a statewide crisis that has been escalating for years. Yet, partly because our state gives away so much money in business tax breaks and a loophole-ridden corporate tax code, the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has been raiding this trust fund for years and spending the money on other things instead.

Now, the COVID19 pandemic and economic crash has made our affordable housing emergency even worse. But instead of finally and fully funding our housing trust fund, the Republican response is to permanently reduce it — because they need the money for other problems, like polluted water and rising seas.

Water quality and sea-level rise are urgent problems that we absolutely address. But we shouldn’t do so at the expense of housing security for everyday Floridians.

What’s especially infuriating about this plan is that this same Legislature is about to pass an online sales tax increase (HB 15) that will raise more than $1 billion a year in new revenue. But instead of spending that money on affordable housing, water quality and sea-level rise, Republicans want to give that money to businesses in the form of another gigantic business tax cut.

During a recent Ways & Means Committee meeting, I offered an amendment to HB 15 that would have used the new revenue for affordable housing instead of business tax breaks. Republicans voted it down.

Today at 12:30pm, I’ll be hosting a virtual press conference focused on protecting the affordable housing trust fund with fellow lawmakers and coalition partners. You can learn more here.

GOP Senator Backs Down on Bright Futures

I know the Florida Legislature can be a frustrating place, but organizing and activism makes a difference. We saw an example of that, when Sen. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) backed down from his terrible proposal to cut Bright Futures scholarships for students who decide to major in subjects that Tallahassee politicians don’t like.

This is a direct result of pushback from directly impacted students and families from across Florida, including dozens of brave students who have traveled to Tallahassee to testify against the bill (SB 86). One online petition against the legislation has collected more than 120,000 signatures.

We still have work to do. The current version of Baxley’s bill would still make it easier for the Legislature to cut Bright Futures scholarships in the future. We’ll keep fighting that, too.

Advocacy works, y’all.

Florida Senators Commit to Increasing Unemployment Benefits

In another example of advocacy working, the Florida Senate last week committed to moving forward with a bill to raise the maximum weekly benefit amount for unemployment insurance by $100.

The bill (SB 1906), which would raise the maximum benefit from from $275 a week to $375 a week, will get its first hearing today at 3:30 p.m. in the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee. The current $275 cap hasn’t been raised in more than 20 years.

Raising benefit payments isn’t enough by itself. We also need to expand eligibility so more of our workers can qualify for unemployment benefits and aren’t frozen out of the system entirely and eliminate all the designed-to-frustrate obstacles meant to prevent even eligible workers from collecting.

But this is an important first step. Keep up the pressure!

Report: DeSantis Gave No Bid COVID Contract to Son of a Trump Donor

You might have seen recently that Gov. Ron DeSantis, who once ordered a million doses of hydroxychloroquine to suck up to Donald Trump, is now questioning the value of contact tracing to track and control the spread of COVID19.

Turns out, the governor’s skepticism hasn’t stopped him from paying $4 million for a contact-tracing app developed by a company with little experience in epidemiology — but which is owned by the son of a Palm Beach billionaire and donor to Trump, DeSantis’ political puppet master.

According to a report by the Tampa Bay Times, the DeSantis administration took advantage of its emergency powers during the pandemic to award the contract without any competitive bidding and did so even though it also had another contract for a contact-tracing app produced by a different company. The Times also found that there has been little oversight of this contract or accounting of how the public’s money has been spent. I encourage you to read the full story here.

Budgets are Coming Out

The House and Senate began rolling out their proposed budgets last week, and Republicans are already proposing everything from gutting Medicaid funding for hospitals to shutting down prisons.

The House and Senate will continue to develop their own budgets this week and next, and then the two chambers will negotiate a final spending plan by the end of the session. We’ll be advocating for things like arts funding, healthcare coverage and affordable housing.

Keep an eye on this process and make sure to make your voice heard.

Improving Maternal Health, Especially for People of Color

Last week was a big one for Floria’s mommas and babies.

We’ve known for many years that there are significant racial disparities in the postnatal healthcare system. Black women accounted for roughly half of all the women who died due to pregnancy-related complications in Florida in 2018. But last week we took big steps toward addressing this structural inequity when House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor), announced that the House will expand Medicaid to cover a full year of healthcare for new mothers — up from the current limit of just two months.

This will be especially helpful to women of color, who are more likely to be lower income and Medicaid eligible.

There has been no bigger champion in Tallahassee for maternal health and maternal health equity than my colleague and friend, Rep. Kamia Brown (D-Orlando). And last week, the House Professions & Public Health Subcommittee passed two other important pieces of legislation related to this issue that Rep. Brown is sponsoring this session.

One bill (HB 1381) expands a Florida Department of Health grant program to fund projects aimed at decreasing racial and ethnic disparities in maternal health. The bill will also test a new telehealth minority maternal care program in Orlando and Jacksonville, which, if successful, could eventually be expanded statewide.

Rep. Brown’s other bill (HB 183) requires the Department of Health to develop and promote statewide implementation of policies and practices that eliminate health disparities and increase health equity for racial and ethnic minority populations.

I’m a member of the Professions & Public Health Subcommittee and I was so honored to vote with Rep. Brown — and with all women of color — in favor of both of these important pieces of legislation.

One of my Republican colleagues expressed concern about the financial cost of these programs, so I used my debate to make sure we all understood that it is absolutely critical — for all Floridians — that we make these investments in addressing health disparities.

You can watch my debate starting at 1:24:18 of this video.

Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault

Sexual assault is a horrific tragedy — and the trauma for survivors is sometimes magnified by the state when it lets DNA rape kits linger untested for years and survivors are left in uncertainty about whether their attackers are still out there.

HB 673, which passed the House Justice Appropriations Committee Subcommittee, would empower sexual assault survivors by requiring the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to create a new statewide database — accessible to sexual assault survivors — that tracks the location and status of rape kits from collection to processing to storage.

I’m a proud co-sponsor of this legislation, which is being pushed forward by my friend, Rep. Emily Slosberg (D-Boca Raton). It’s known as “Gail’s Law,” for a survivor whose rape kit was left untested for more than 30 years — but whose powerful personal story is now pushing the Florida Legislature to act.

Big Tobacco Lobbying the Legislature

On Wednesday, the House Regulatory Reform Subcommittee introduced and passed an awful bill that amounts to a giant gift for Big Tobacco.

The bill (HB 987) would raise the legal age for smoking or vaping from 18 to 21. But it would also prevent local governments — the city councils and county commissions that are the closest to the people — from ever enacting any local control over the sale or advertising of any tobacco or nicotine products, including marketing meant to lure young people into smoking e-cigarette.

Persuading states to prevent cities and counties from regulating smoking has long been the number one goal of Big Tobacco companies like Altria and Reynolds — who are the same companies behind electronic cigarettes and vaping devices.

In addition, the legislation targets the problem of underage smoking and vaping in a backwards manner. It imposes stiff penalties on children and young people that buy them — but weak, toothless penalties on the stores that sell to them.

Punishing young people — rather than the businesses selling to them — is not the most effective way to change behavior.

You can see my debate on this bill starting at 41:41 of this video.

Despite More Mass Shootings, the Legislature Continues to Block Gun-Safety Bills

A week that saw seven mass shootings in seven days across the U.S. — including the attacks against Asian-American spa workers in Atlanta and inside a supermarket in Boulder, Colo. — is another terrible reminder of the need for new gun-safety laws in our country.

And yet Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature continue to block any progress at all in this state.

My Democratic colleagues and I have once again filed a sweeping package of gun-safety reforms this year — from a bill I am sponsoring (HB 709) that would prevent the sale of guns to people convicted of domestic violence to others that would ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require background checks for ammunition sales, improve gun-storage safety and allow cities and counties to set even stronger gun-safety laws.

Republicans have so far refused to give any of these bills even a single hearing.

What are they afraid of?

Florida May Not Penalize Students or Schools for Tests Scores in a Pandemic Year

Florida State Assessment exams are about to begin across Florida, but the state may not count the test scores toward student retention, teacher pay or school funding after an unprecedented year in which so many kids were forced into virtual learning by the pandemic.

The federal government is allowing states to seek waivers from federal laws tied to test-score accountability. Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said last week that he’s now having discussions with school superintendents around the state to decide whether Florida will seek a waiver.

From Bringing Your Legislator to School to Distributing COVID Vaccines

Between all the debate against bad bills and advocacy for good ones, we squeezed in a bunch of meetings and events — from meeting with Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell in Tallahassee to organizing two Orlando vaccine events over the weekend (plus another today).

Here’s a sampling of who Team HD47 saw and what we did!