FLORIDA – With Friday marking the final day of the regular legislative session, Florida’s state budget is being delayed for a second-straight year in Tallahassee.
As a result, lawmakers plan to reconvene next month in the state capitol.
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Political experts called it an “unproductive” session.
“The senate is more focused on agricultural needs, and the house wants to conserve more land for environmental purposes,” said Matthew Corrigan, Professor of Political Science at Jacksonville University. “They’re going to have to work that out. I know the senate is very committed to agricultural issues, so we’ll see how that goes.”
Lawmakers left unresolved a roughly $1.4 billion gap between the House and Senate budget proposals and are scheduled to return in April to address both redistricting and the budget.
Among the measures that passed both chambers and are headed to Governor Ron DeSantis’ desk:
- An increase in pay for high school coaches, an issue the local station has reported on for years.
- A bill that would allow some staff at state colleges and universities to carry firearms on campus if they enroll in a program, and that would require institutions to adopt an “active assailant” response plan.
- A prohibition on using city and county funds for programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, commonly known as DEI.
Several high-profile proposals failed to advance, including measures to ban vaccine mandates for schoolchildren and legislation intended to provide protections related to artificial intelligence; neither made it past the House.
“The first six years of Gov. DeSantis’ administration, he basically got anything he wanted through the legislature, probably 90% of what he wanted,” Corrigan said. “The House under Speaker Perez has really put its stake in the ground in saying, ‘Listen, we’ve got separation of powers here, we want to be a co-equal branch of government,’ and so that has really slowed a lot of things down.”
DeSantis has said he prefers a special legislative session devoted solely to property tax issues, a move backed by Senate President Ben Albritton.