A 'strange' session: As Florida budget stalemate dooms bills, here's what appears dead

Yahoo

03-05-2025

Florida lawmakers wrapped up the scheduled last day of the regular session May 2 without a budget and with several major policy bills crashing before the finish line.
The dispute means lawmakers will need to return to the Capitol to resolve it. Late in the evening, House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, and Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, said they reached a deal on a "framework" for a final 2025-26 spending plan.
Perez said the details still need to be worked out in formal talks, but there would be a $1.6 billion cut to the state sales tax. He had pushed for a cut from 6% to 5.25%, which produced a large gap in the budgets of the House and Senate, leading to the deadlock.
Lawmakers agreed to extend the session until June 6 to reach a final agreement. The budget and Albritton's signature 'Rural Renaissance' initiative to infuse rural areas with more revenue, health care, education and transportation options are included in the extension.
Despite the emergence of a "framework" for a budget deal, lawmakers in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle say the lengthy fight over the budget isn't ideal and not usual.
'It's a strange session. Probably the strangest one I've been involved in,' said Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, a staunch Gov. Ron DeSantis ally who was first elected to the House in 2014 before winning a Senate seat in 2022.
After squabbling with DeSantis for much of the session, lawmakers passed many of his top priority bills in the final days. On May 2, they passed HB 1205, which imposes new restrictions on the process of gathering petitions to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. DeSantis believes it is needed to stop fraud rampant in petition drives, but Democrats said it was a move to stamp out the citizen initiative process entirely.
More: Gov. DeSantis signs bill for tougher citizen amendment process in Florida
Bills to give condo owners more leeway to pay assessments for inspections, repairs and maintenance (HB 913) and require law enforcement to have probable cause before inspecting boats and vessels – something DeSantis dubbed the 'Boater Freedom' bill – were passed on May 1.
But for much of the session DeSantis' agenda, which typically steamrolled through the Legislature during the first six years of his tenure, faced a rockier ride.
Many of his other priorities didn't gain traction, such as rolling back gun control laws. He also saw House leaders probe a charity connected to First Lady Casey DeSantis and the Senate refuse to confirm several of his appointees.
More: Hope Florida probe halted as DeSantis allies refuse to testify
DeSantis frequently lashed out at the House, saying the GOP majority was 'stabbing voters in the back' by not moving forward with his agenda, especially on property tax cuts. Perez in turn accused DeSantis of throwing 'temper tantrums' and 'lying' about the House budget.
Still Perez, while pushing an overall reduction in the sales tax from 6% to 5.25%, this week convened a select committee to review proposals to cut property taxes next year.
The budget gridlock also stymied the priorities of the GOP legislative leaders. A set of bills backed by Perez and favored by the trial bar lobby, including one to roll back a 2022 law eliminating one-way attorney fees in property insurance claim disputes, failed to pass.
The deadlock over the budget centered on a disagreement over how much to cut taxes. Perez wants a reduction in the sales tax from 6% to 5.25%, while Albritton believes the $5 billion in revenue loss it will mean each year will prevent the state from paying for needed services for a growing state. The House's preferred budget is $113 billion, while the Senate's is $4.4 billion more.
Democrats, mired in superminority status in the Legislature, reveled in the GOP dysfunction.
Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman of Boca Raton said she was disappointed the chambers couldn't pass a budget – the one bill the constitution requires lawmakers to pass each year – in 60 days but said the infighting among Republicans was a boon to her party.
'There were a lot fewer bills than we've seen in other sessions. But I'm happy that here in the Senate that we did not see many of the divisive bills,' Berman told the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. 'The dysfunction worked in the Democrats' favor in that a lot of the really awful bills" didn't pass.
Bills backed by DeSantis to remove child labor protections failed to pass, as did other bills to erase programs in state law perceived as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and ban governments from displaying gay pride, Palestinian and other flags on its properties.
Here's a look at a few of the major bills that failed to pass this session:
Bills dealing with property insurance failed to move this year, even as homeowners continue to grapple with large premiums.
And a bill (HB 1551) to restore Florida's one-way attorney fee statute for property insurance claim disputes advanced in the House but wasn't heard in the Senate. DeSantis slammed the bill as going backwards on the 2022 changes to the law he says have helped stabilize the market.
A bill to allow guns on college campuses (SB 814) was voted down in a Senate committee on March 25. The bill was likely doomed anyway because it was sponsored by then-Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne Beach, who left the Legislature on March 31 to win a U.S. House seat.
Another measure to lower the age to buy a rifle from 21 to 18 (HB 759) passed the House on March 26, but the Senate version was never heard in that chamber.
The votes on the gun bills came before Phoenix Ikner, 20, killed two people and wounded five more on the Florida State University campus on April 17.
More: On YouTube, Phoenix Ikner backed racist conspiracy theory that inspired other mass shootings
Two bills backed by big business lobbies to undercut Florida's minimum wage law and remove restrictions on child labor also failed to pass this year.
The bill (HB 1225) to allow employers to schedule 16- and 17-year-olds for unlimited hours in a week and for 14- and 15-year-olds who are homeschooled, attend virtual school or who have already graduated to be scheduled to work more hours in a week. The bill passed the House but only advanced through one committee in the Senate.
Other legislation (SB 676/HB 541) to give workers in work training, pre-apprenticeship programs or internships the ability to opt to be paid below the minimum wage – which currently sits at $14 per hour in Florida – advanced in both chambers but never made it to the floor in either.
The revelation that $10 million from a Medicaid settlement with the state, made as a 'donation' from a Medicaid vendor to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity supporting the program championed by Casey DeSantis, put intense scrutiny on the program.
That money was then funneled to nonprofits that then gave more than $8 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee run by James Uthmeier, DeSantis' chief of staff at the time who has since been named attorney general.
The committee was used to oppose Amendment 3 on the ballot last November, which would have legalized recreational marijuana.
The scrutiny on the program helped kill bills backed by DeSantis that would have codified the Hope Florida program into law and permanently set up a Hope Florida office within DeSantis' office.
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [e-mail]. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 'Strangest session': Infighting forces Florida Legislature into OT