$88.7B budget passes, ending 2018 session
Lawmakers fund school safety, environmental buys, education, more.
TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Legislature wrapped up an extended 2018 session Sunday with the passing of a budget that pushes hundreds of millions of dollars toward spending on K-12 and higher education, improving school safety and battling the opioid crisis.
Approved by a 95-12 vote in the House and 31-5 vote in Senate, the $88.7 billion budget also includes $100 million for the Florida Forever program, which allows the state to purchase environmentally critical land, a $130 million increase in Medicaid funding for nursing home rates and $109 million for affordable housing.
The votes on the budget — the only bill the Legislature is required to pass each year — took less than an hour to complete after the chambers convened in a special Sunday session, which was required because lawmakers didn’t complete work on the budget until Thursday, and they are prevented from voting on the budget (HB 5001) for at least 72 hours after it is completed and delivered to all lawmakers. The 2018-19 budget will take effect July 1.
The two chambers on Sunday also passed a bill providing $170 million in various tax cuts, mostly for farmers and property owners with damages from Hurricane Irma, then made the traditional motion to adjourn “sine die” and, by 4:30 p.m., met in the Capitol Rotunda for the drop of white handkerchiefs by the House and the Senate sergeants-at-arms, Russell Hosford and Tim Hay, respectively.
Addressing the end of the session — his last as governor — Rick Scott praised House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron for their leadership during “an incredible session.”
That included the passage of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, drafted
in just three weeks after the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 14 students and three staff members dead at the school in northern Broward County.
The killings — and subsequent marches on the Capitol by Douglas survivors, parents and supporters — spurred Scott and lawmakers into action. Both chambers worked quickly to produce proposals that addressed increasing mental health services for students and restricted access to firearms.
The process was proof that lawmakers could “come together” and pass bipartisan legislation, said Scott, who signed the bill Friday.
“I’m very proud of what happened,” he said Sunday, joined by members of both the House and Senate. “I’m proud to (have) stood with those families to say we did something to make schools safer.”
Before the Legislature convened for the day Sunday, Scott held another ceremony with lawmakers in the Capitol at 1:30 p.m. to sign House Bill 7055, an omnibus education bill that includes vouchers for bullied students, and Senate Bill 4, a major higher-education bill that expands Bright Futures Scholarships. HB 7055 was a session priority of Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, and SB 4 was likewise for Negron, R-Stuart.
Under SB 4, money for Bright Futures scholarships is increased, including covering 100 percent of tuition and fees for 45,000 Bright Futures students known as “academic scholars,” plus allocating $300 per semester for their textbooks and allowing the scholarships to be used for summer classes. Funding also was increased for 48,000 “medallion” scholars, and a new scholarship was created for students from farmworker families.
Now more students will finish their education on time and in less debt, Negron said.
One of the things HB 7055 will do is let students who face bullying or harassment in public schools transfer to private schools using tax-funded vouchers. The vouchers will be paid for by vehicle buyers, who in registering their cars will be able to select the option of donating a portion of their sales tax to the “Hope Scholarship” program.
The law builds on Corcoran’s two-year effort to expand voucher and charter school programs. The legislation is coupled with a budget that provides $140 million to the “schools of hope” program, which is aimed at allowing more charter schools to serve students in areas with “persistently” low-performing schools.
That law also contains a controversial provision that could force teachers unions to disband if their membership falls below 50 percent of the employees they represent in the contract-negotiating process.
Sunday’s pomp was the cap on a whirlwind session that started under a cloud of sex-related scandals in the Senate and ended with the passage of some of the state’s first gun-control laws in more than two decades.
Opening day of the session was abuzz with claims from an anonymous website that Anitere Flores, R-Miami, and Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, were “actively engaged in inappropriate extramarital activities with each other.” The two released a joint statement acknowledging that “our longtime friendship evolved to a level that we deeply regret.”
It was the latest sex-related controversy in the Senate, which had seen the pre-session resignations of Republican Sen. Jack Latvala of Clearwater and Democratic Sen. Jeff Clemens of Atlantis. Latvala, head of the budget committee and a candidate for governor, resigned from the Senate in December after an investigation found credible evidence of sexual misconduct. Clemens gave up his seat in October after admitting an extramarital affair with a lobbyist.
The controversies eventually gave way to the routine operations of the session, in which lawmakers filed hundreds of bills. Among them, one banning sanctuary cities, another prohibiting sports franchises from building on municipal and other public lands and yet another giving the state rather than local governments the power to regulate vacation rentals of homes — all dead now.
In the latter half of the session, practically all issues gave way to the Douglas High school security bill and the budget, although an opioid crisis bill was passed late Friday night.
In the budget, legislators, of course, did pass a $21.1 billion spending plan for the 67 school districts. It would boost per-student funding by $101.50, or 1.4 percent, to $7,408 during 2018-19. It also means a $485 million increase in state funding and local property taxes.
For the opioid crisis fight, about $53 million will be allocated for the treatment and prevention to battle the state’s opioid crisis. It includes $991,000 to upgrade a statewide database known as the prescription drug monitoring program, to interface with physicians’ offices and electronic health records used by doctors.