Florida lawmakers finish legislative session, leaving behind a daunting to-do list

When lawmakers wrapped up their annual legislative session on Friday, they celebrated laws aimed at the state’s practical problems, like health care, affordable housing and school choice.

With a Republican supermajority in the House and Senate — and Gov. Ron DeSantis focused more on a presidential campaign at the beginning of thesession than on culture-war issues at home — legislative leaders forged ahead with what they said were common-sense solutions for Floridians.

“I think we’ve fixed a ton of problems,” House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said Wednesday. “We’ve set in motion major reforms during the last two years.”

And yet, when Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, end their terms as legislative leaders this year, they will leave behind a daunting to-do list.

Health-care reforms passed this year still leave an estimated 789,800 Floridians without health insurance. Years of property insurance reforms haven’t lowered Floridians’ sky-high homeowners and automobile insurance premiums.

Passidomo’s attempt to create more affordable housing has done little for low-income Floridians so far.

House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, said the policies sent a message to Floridians.

“Republican leadership in Florida cares about you,” she said, “but only so much.”

INSURANCE, HEALTH CARE STILL ISSUES

Even though Floridians’ painfully high homeowners insurance premiums are the top issue among their constituents, lawmakers’ main relief this session was a modest tax cut that could save people at most a couple hundred dollars.

Passidomo and Renner said they needed to wait as past reforms took hold. They pointed to moves they made after gaining power in November 2022 to make it harder to sue insurers, which the industry blamed for rising costs. (Lawmakers have not conducted studies on the causes of rising premiums.)

“I don’t think we want to do anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on the insurance market at this time,” Renner said last week.

In the meantime, premiums have not gone down, and some lawmakers say the crisis is unresolved.

“At our political peril, we ignore this issue,” said Rep. Spencer Roach, RNorth Fort Myers.