By STAFF REPORTS
Editor’s Note: Please visit www.floridaspecifier.com for post-session updates, when they are available
Florida legislators and Gov. Ron DeSantis volleyed insults back and forth for weeks; legislators lost a week to a rare Florida snowstorm, completed a special session, and will need extra time to complete this year’s legislative session, leaving many policy proposals and budget items on the cutting room floor as time was crunched.
On the last day of the normally 60-day 2025 legislative session, lawmakers announced they had finally come to a top-line budget number agreement, but would require more time to finish the state’s budget. Budget negotiations by each budget area were to begin in mid-May with session extended to June 6. The next fiscal year begins July 1.
But then on May 9, Speaker Daniel Perez said Senate President Ben Albritton broke his commitment to the budget talks they both announced on Day 60 of legislative session.
“I was disappointed when the Senate President informed me of his decision to no longer bring the House’s historic tax proposal to the Senate floor,” he wrote in a memo. “As I’m sure you can appreciate, this blew up the framework for the budget deal we had negotiated.”
Albritton responded shortly later with his own statement.
“As I am sure you are aware, earlier this week Governor DeSantis expressed concern regarding the tax relief framework announced last Friday. Specifically, that the proposal for an across-the-board sales tax cut would unduly benefit tourists and foreigners and is, ‘dead on arrival,’” he wrote. “From speaking with Senators, I know many of you share concerns with both the number and the policy of that framework and instead favor targeted tax relief that benefits growing families and seniors aging with dignity, including options the Senate proposed in SB 7034.”
Albritton stated the Senate “has been and remains committed to tax cuts that offer broad-based and meaningful tax relief for families, seniors, and small businesses.”
During the session, priorities of both chambers were caught in the middle of squabbling, with bills on one side sitting in limbo, waiting for the other chamber to take them up on the floor. As of April 28, just four days before the annual session was scheduled to be completed, only 66 bills had been passed by both chambers. That number jumped to 252 by Day 60. During the 2024 session, 325 bills were enrolled and sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Both Perez and Albritton praised a $2.8 billion tax cut on their respective floors on Day 60 of the legislative session. Perez lauded the budget deal as “historic.”
Each chamber stayed in recess for hours on the last day of session, effectively killing bills on one side or the other. They eventually left for the day as midnight was nearing.
The Florida House initially proposed a more than $5 billion tax relief package that focused on a permanent sales tax cut, while the Florida Senate’s proposal was a more modest roughly $2 billion tax relief package with a mix of permanent and temporary measures.
The scale of tax cuts – which would affect projected revenues for the budget – sat at the center of the budget negotiations between the two chambers and which delayed the end of the annual session. Legislators’ only constitutional duty is to pass the state budget each year.
Bills that moved
SB 80/HB 209 State Land Management: PASSED
Requires public hearings for all updated conservation & nonconservation land management plans; requires Division of State Lands to make available to public electronic copies of land management plans for parcels of certain size & for parcels located in state parks; revises duties of Division of Recreation & Parks; specifies requirements for management of parks & recreational areas held by state; requires division to comply with specified provisions when granting certain privileges, leases, concessions, & permits; authorizes division to acquire, install, or permit installation or operation of camping cabins that meet certain requirements in state parks; prohibits division from authorizing certain uses or construction activities within state parks; requires that individual management plans for parcels located within state parks be developed with input from advisory group; and requires that advisory group’s required public hearings be noticed to public within specified timeframe.
HB 1143/SB 1300 Oil Drilling: PASSED
Permits for Drilling, Exploration, and Extraction of Oil and Gas Resources; Requires the Department of Environmental Protection to consider certain factors when determining whether the natural resources of certain bodies of water and shore areas are adequately protected from a potential accident or blowout; and provides requirements for a balancing test to make such a determination, etc.
HB 733/SB 736 Brownfields: PASSED
Revises & removes provisions relating to institutional controls for mapping purposes; monetary compensation; site rehabilitation agreements; tax credits; brownfield area designations; & participation in brownfield program; and prohibits DEP & local pollution control programs from denying specified status or refusing to issue specified order for certain brownfield sites.
