As DeSantis and lawmakers flail, gridlock grips Florida Capitol in session's final days

Yahoo

28-04-2025

Florida has a $2 billion surplus, a thriving economy, and one party controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Lawmakers should be putting the finishing touches on a budget at this point in the legislative session, originally set to end May 2. Instead, budget talks are at a standstill, claims of 'defamation' and 'fraud' are being slung among Republican leaders – and Democrats can't avoid dysfunction either.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, his agenda largely thwarted by House GOP leaders and several of his appointees rejected by the Senate, has accused House Republicans of 'stabbing voters in the back' and 'sabotaging' the progress made by the state during his term in office.
House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, has set an aggressive stance on a range of budget and policy areas that's resulted in fierce clashes with DeSantis and the Senate. He's probed a payment of $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity associated with First Lady Casey DeSantis, that was funneled to a political committee controlled by DeSantis' then-chief of staff James Uthmeier, now Florida attorney general.
Perez also debuted a plan to cut the state sales tax from 6% to 5.25% midway through session, contributing to the $4.4 billion gap between the chambers' budget plans. On April 24, Perez called some of the offers from the Senate to bridge the divide 'patronizing.'
'We disagree right now on the current state of our conversation,' Perez told reporters April 24. 'I don't believe the way we see the world is the same way Senator Albritton sees the world.'
Unable to reach an agreement on top-line spending numbers, Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, said April 24 lawmakers won't get a budget deal done in time to end the session by the scheduled May 2 end date.
The stalemate between the chambers extends beyond the budget.
With one week left in the 60-day legislative session, lawmakers have sent 18 bills to DeSantis' desk and he's signed 11 of them into law. Two of them (HB 575, HB 549) changed every reference to the Gulf of Mexico in state laws to the Gulf of America, in line with President Donald Trump's executive order renaming the body of water bordering Florida to the west, and directing state agencies and new textbooks to do the same.
DeSantis is accustomed to getting most of what he wants from the Legislature, but entering the last two years of his term in office, he was initially rejected in his push for stricter immigration enforcement laws when he called the Legislature to a special session in January. He eventually reached a compromise bill with Perez and Albritton, but the episode showed his agenda wouldn't enjoy a smooth ride through the Legislature as it had done in the past.
That has proved to be the case. DeSantis has bemoaned the lack of progress on a range of issues on his agenda: Resolving looming condo assessments, cutting property taxes and codifying the Hope Florida program into law and placing the program directly under his office.
The Hope Florida bills were officially declared dead by Albritton on April 24, after a review by the House revealed the $10 million payment was part of a Medicaid vendor settlement that went to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit raising funds on behalf of the program.
The payment was part of a $67 million settlement in October 2024 between the state and Centene, a health insurer and one of the vendors operating Florida's Medicaid managed care program – a contract worth billions of dollars per year. The settlement was about alleged overpayments for prescription drugs.
Lawmakers, though, weren't told of the settlement payment to the Agency for Health Care Administration, the department that runs the state's Medicaid program. And the Hope Florida Foundation gave the $10 million within days to two nonprofit groups that quickly funneled the money to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee run by Uthmeier. The committee helped defeat Amendment 3 last year, which would have legalized recreational marijuana. DeSantis campaigned heavily against it.
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, chairman of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee that investigated the settlement payment, has called the maneuver of the funds from the Medicaid settlement through to a political committee controlled by Uthmeier a 'fraud.'
Jeff Aaron, an attorney for Uthmeier who also advised Hope Florida Foundation leaders, said the accusation amounts to 'defamation.' Aaron declined to appear before Andrade's committee, citing attorney-client privilege.
When the House and Senate passed their budgets earlier this month the House plan was nearly $113 billion, or $4.4 billion lower than the Senate version and $5.6 billion less than the current budget.
Much of the difference comes from the House move to cut the sales tax by 0.75%, saving consumers in Florida $5.5 billion but costing state coffers $5 billion and local governments about $500 million.
Albritton released a counter-proposal to eliminate the sales tax entirely on clothing items of less than $75. Perez has insisted on an overall reduction in the sales tax and said the Senate didn't move toward their higher tax cut plan during negotiations.
But Albritton is wary of cutting taxes by too much, handing off shortfalls in future years to later legislative leaders: 'Make no mistake about it, I am committed to passing historic, unprecedented tax relief. However, it won't be at the expense of the long-term financial stability of our state,' he said.
State economists project a nearly $7 billion shortfall in two years if current spending years continue. The surge in revenues and in spending brought by an infusion of federal money and from inflation, which was a boon to Florida's coffers that rely heavily on sales taxes, has brought fears of a budget imbalance as revenues flatten out over time.
For Perez, though, the answer is to cut spending as well as slash taxes. Albritton has countered that Florida's growing population means it will need more resources to provide services and pay for vital programs such as schools, environmental projects, understaffed prisons, health care and infrastructure.
Apart from the budget, the chambers are at odds with each other on major issues, too.
Bills to give condo owners a reprieve from looming large assessments have major differences. The assessments stem from legislation passed in the wake of the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers building in Sunrise left 98 dead, which required condo associations to hold more in reserves and undergo inspections for needed maintenance and repairs.
The House, too, has moved to repeal laws passed in 2022 and 2023 to eliminate or reduce lawyers fees for suits against insurers. DeSantis, Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky and insurance companies have touted as essential to limiting lawsuit costs and tamping down rates, which had skyrocketed in recent years. The Senate hasn't advanced those measures, leading to another stalemate.
Stuck in superminority status, Democrats had been enjoying some schadenfreude watching the intra-Republican squabbling.
At least until the afternoon of April 24. That's when Senate Democratic Leader Jason Pizzo of Miami-Dade County announced he was stepping down as leader and leaving the Democratic Party. He'll stay in office, but as a "no party affiliated" member – the first in decades.
He declared the Democratic Party in Florida 'dead,' saying he 'long had a feeling, confirmed I think empirically by seven years of service in this chamber, that partisanship holds us back rather than propels us forward. Our constituents are craving practical leaders, not political hacks.'
The condemnation from Democrats was swift and fierce: 'The party needs strong Democrats who are ready to stand up to Trump, not big egos more interested in performative outrage than true leadership,' House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa stated. 'Legislative Democrats will be fine without him.'
The lingering animus within the Legislature means it's an open question how the current gridlock gets unstuck.
House budget chief Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Dover, said they'll keep working to break the impasse. 'We have a roadmap: Keep having conversations (and) iron out the differences,' McClure told reporters April 24.
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: Session snarled by controversies, GOP infighting with DeSantis