Lawmakers brief community on session

BY DAN HILDEBRAN

ClayCivic.com Publisher

State Senator Jennifer Bradley, Rep. Sam Garrison, and Rep. Bobby Payne recapped Florida’s 2023 legislative session during a briefing hosted by the Clay County Chamber of Commerce at the Thrasher-Horne Center on Wednesday, June 14.

Garrison, who appeared by video, said lawmakers passed more legislation in one week during 2023 than they typically approve in a month during other years.

Money for Clay County

The Fleming Island representative highlighted what he said were pro-family Clay County budget appropriations approved by the legislature. That funding included $3 million for a substance abuse treatment center, funding for the Intercept Task Force: a multi-agency effort to protect children from online predators, and record funding for Wolfson’s Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville.

“We really tried this year to put our money where our mouth is in the legislature,” he said. “We say we want Florida to be the most pro-family state in the nation. This is part of that effort.”

Bradley said Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 19-point win in the 2022 governor’s race set the stage for putting Florida at the center of the country’s conservative movement.

“There is no doubt that Florida is the epicenter of national politics right now,” she said, “The state of Florida returned Ron DeSantis to the governor’s mansion with a decisive victory, with a mandate, and also returned super majorities to the House and the Senate. So, as the session opened, we really were in a position to be able to move an agenda that I think a lot of the State of Florida really wanted to see.”

Bradley added that even though controversial bills grabbed headlines, much of the work accomplished in Tallahassee received bipartisan support.

“There were more than 3,000 bills filed this session,” she said. About 300 were passed. The vast majority of those bills were bipartisan with unanimous or near unanimous support.”

Payne said even the controversial laws the legislature passed dealt with issues that were not new.

“Many of the issues have been around for some time,” he said, “whether they are parental rights in education, whether they are issues with choices for school choice, whether they’re voucher programs, whether they’re transgender athletes.”

He added that the conservative position on social issues is balancing competing constituencies.

“We in Florida take a position that we think is a great conservative position: not to harm anyone, but to find balance,” he said.

Sales tax cuts

The Palatka Republican said one major accomplishment of this year’s session was a record $2.7 billion in sales tax cuts. Those cuts included sales tax holidays for back-to-school items and disaster preparedness, in addition to a freedom summer sales tax holiday for recreational items and children’s toys. The package also included a permanent sales tax exemption for baby and toddler necessities like strollers, cribs, diapers, and baby wipes.

“We felt like we should give the money back to those who earned their money and have the opportunity to spend their money the way they should feel like they should spend it,” he said.

Water, highways, and agriculture

Payne also highlighted his role in leading a new committee in the lower chamber this year that focused on infrastructure strategies. He said the committee sought to preserve the state’s water, transportation, and agricultural resources with the challenge of around 1,000 people a day moving into Florida.

“We know that there have to be some areas that we conserve…and then we have to look at what the water issues will be (such as) nutrient loading over the upcoming years,” he said. “At the same time, we have to have good transportation corridors so that we can move people around the state and effectively do business without affecting agriculture.”

Payne added that subcommittees like resiliency, water supply, and water quality focused on components of natural infrastructure.

“Our Department of Transportation budget every year is about 12 to 12-and-a-half billion dollars,” he said. “We bumped that this year to close to 18 billion so that we can focus on the areas around the state where we have traffic congestion.”

He said FDOT’s work plan is fluid because “it’s hard to pick out the areas of demographic growth that will be affected in the state.”

“Our goal is to start focusing on it now,” he continued, “so that in 20 years, 30 years, Florida will still be the Florida that we know and love with its pristine areas, protecting springs, protecting waterways, estuaries, rivers, lakes and at the same time have transportation corridors that work and have lands that are still productive for the State of Florida. (Agriculture) is our second leading revenue stream in the state behind tourism.”

Department of Corrections

Bradley discussed her work chairing the Senate Civil and Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee.

“Our budget this year was $6.4 billion,” she said. “It includes a host of agencies like the (Florida Department of Law Enforcement).”

Bradley said the committee raised pay for law enforcement officers around the state and increased the budget for the governor’s protective services.

“We have a governor with a young family, which is new in the state of Florida,” she said. “We haven’t seen that in a while, and quite honestly, with the state of affairs, we needed to bump up protective services for his family to make sure as he travels around the state and Casey DeSantis and the kids are either in Tallahassee or traveling with him that they were safe.”

Bradley added that her committee also oversees the budget for the Department of Corrections.

“The Department of Corrections is an institution that for many, many years was really in a state of crisis,” she said. “We were losing staff members at record rates. The institutions and the facilities were having people work double shifts, triple shifts, and we just kept losing them.”

She said last year’s average vacancies of 2,400 have been nearly halved.

“We still have work to do,” she said, “but we are getting better. We’re seeing that retention go up, and we’re seeing our recruiting go up, which is really good news for the Department of Corrections.”

The senator said her committee also funded investments in inmate education and training.

“These folks are coming back to our communities, and the average reading level and the average education level for our inmates is sixth grade, and that number is actually going down,” she said. “We have a responsibility as a state that when we return these citizens, they are in a position to be productive where they’re not going to recidivate. We will be safe, and they will be productive, and that is a win-win.”

School choice

The two lawmakers also discussed Florida’s expansion of school choice, which Bradley said is the most significant expansion of school choice in Florida history.

Payne said the Parental Rights in Education Bill was a pushback against teachers’ unions promoting inappropriate materials to young students.

“They were pushbacks maybe on some school teacher unions to make sure that they understood the curriculum that they should be teaching our children is a curriculum of primary learning skills and critical thinking and not social skills,” he said. “Some of the social skill issues should be taught at home.”

Bradley said the school choice expansion changed the state’s revenue focus from funding the system to funding the students.

“For too long, we have been accepting of kids not being able to be in the best school because of what zip code they lived in,” she said. “And this year, we said parents know what’s best for their kids, and parents should have the flexibility and have the choice to be able to send their child to whatever school they think their child will succeed in best, and I trust the parents to make that call.”

She added that Gov. DeSantis just signed her bill that enhances students’ online privacy.

She said education technology companies routinely collect student data and exploit that information for profit.

“They were amassing profiles about (students),” she said. “They were selling it. They were using it to advertise to our kids and their families. So, I passed a student online protection bill, which tells these companies that they may not amass profiles; they can’t sell, disclose, or share any of our kids’ data. They can’t collect more than they need, and they have to delete it when the child is through the system.”

Digital Bill of Rights

Bradley noted that on June 6, Gov. DeSantis signed into law her Senate Bill 262, which outlines a digital bill of rights for Florida residents.

“This is the third year that I filed a data privacy bill for Floridians,” she said. “The first year I filed it, there were only a few states, maybe two states in the country, who had successfully passed a digital privacy bill. It’s a huge issue, and you hear about data privacy, and the word ‘data’ just sounds so sterile, but it’s incredibly personal.”

The lawmaker added that the first year she filed the bill, 350 lobbyists lined up against the proposal, and only two supported it.

“And the reason for that is clear,” she said. “Your data and your information are incredibly valuable. Companies make you their product against your will and without your consent.”

Bradley said the new law gives Florida residents the right to be able to correct or delete their information that a company holds.

“It gives you the right to opt out of targeted advertising.,” she added. “If you don’t want a company to use your personal information to reach you with ads, you have the ability to say no.”

Bradley said the new law also requires algorithm transparency, forcing social media companies to disclose the information they amplify or suppress.  The measure also includes safeguards to protect children.