Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / 2023 Florida Session - The Good, The Bad, and The Vetos

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2023 Florida Session - The Good, The Bad, and The Vetos · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

0:01
Yeah. It took me a second to get wound up here, just I
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had to get a few things in motion to begin. It's good to be
0:07
with you. It is the third and final hour of The Morning Show with
0:10
Preston Scott. I don't know, dare I say it the third and final
0:13
hour for Jared for a while. Jared's going to be released from duty here,
0:17
well for a while, but not forever. Yeah, and it's been
0:21
a lot of fun having Jared in the last couple of weeks filling in for
0:23
Grant Allen. Grand will be back tomorrow. But in this third hour,
0:26
we are joined by sal Neuso of the James Madison Institute. He is vice
0:30
president of Policy. Hello, good friend, good to see you. Good
0:33
to see you, good to be here. You're doing well. I'm doing
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great. You can join the summer all right, So we are we are.
0:40
We are now past session, we are now past signing date. We're
0:46
past it, and we're anticipating the upcoming. It's it's in those short window
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years. It's just a bit of a bear. I promoted this as the
0:55
good, the bad, and the vetos. Sure where let's start with the
0:59
governor and kind of just give everybody a snapshot of where things are. Sure,
1:03
well, the governor has signed all of the bills from the twenty twenty
1:07
three sessions signed and or vetoed. He is he has to do one or
1:11
the other. Yeah, I mean there's a there's a pocket veto option,
1:14
but I don't know that that's ever happened in my research or time. So
1:19
he has also signed the budget as well as issuing line item vetos, which
1:23
totaled up to just over five hundred million dollars, which is around average in
1:30
terms of the time frame that I've looked at. You've had some years that
1:33
are a lot lower, some years like last year or the year before where
1:37
it was like three billion, but that had to do with some COVID stuff
1:40
and some reserve things. So good solid list there, and a very limited
1:47
number of vetos, which you would expect given you have a Republican supermajority.
1:52
They're sending him stuff. But and he kind of set the He set the
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table. Yeah, oh he did indeed. And as we've written in pieces
1:59
in town halland Natural Review in other places, we call this the legislative session
2:04
of the century in any state. I would put the twenty twenty three legislative
2:09
session against any other states legislative session across the last hundred years in any state
2:15
in the United States, and say, this legislature and this governor accomplished more
2:21
and put more transformative policy in place than any other state in the last hundred
2:27
years. If you were to pie chart it, how much of that legislation
2:31
rolls back limits, curtails government at various levels inside the state, whether it's
2:37
school boards or local government. How much of it is correcting wrongs, how
2:43
much of it is new stuff new stuff? And the kind of rolling back
2:47
in retaining limited government principles is going to be the vast majority. I would
2:53
suggest that when you look at things like the school choice Bill HB one,
2:58
when you look at the permitless carry, you're pushing the envelope on policy.
3:02
When you look at things like the tort reform Bill, the sweeping tort reforms
3:08
reforms, you're kind of rolling back a little bit of the wrongs. But
3:13
then the rest of it is going to be just kind of maintaining conservative,
3:17
fiscal and regulatory limited government principles. There were a couple of vetos that I
3:23
think are notable. Yeah, yeah, there were a few, so four
3:28
of them that when we were kind of dialoguing on this two specific and criminal
3:31
justice that would have allowed the cohort of individuals who were able to get their
3:38
criminal records expunged broadened, and the governor vetoed two bills in that realm did
3:46
not give any kind of indication as to why. The notable thing is those
3:52
bills passed. I believe one of them was unanimous, and one of them
3:54
only had two votes in the House against it. In the Senate was unanimous.
3:59
So this is something where I remember it was I believe two sessions ago
4:03
or three sessions ago the House and the Senate that passed unanimously a juvenile expunction
4:10
bill. Right, the governor vetoed it, but he gave some guiding language
4:15
or guiding ideas for why he vetoed it. They came back, they addressed
4:19
the tightening of the language and got it back to him and he signed it.
4:25
I am curious as too if there is a political calculus given the campaign
4:30
right now, because in addition, Florida law enforcement organizations were also supportive of
4:35
both of these two bills. I was shocked by his decision. I was
4:40
equally shocked that there was no comment. Now the question becomes, is there
4:45
a scenario where the legislature is able to deal with that and override his veto
4:51
or do they have to wait till the next session. I don't think they're
4:54
going to override it. Why with those numbers, I mean two out of
5:00
the entire legislature said no, they didn't override the veto on juvenile expunction.
5:04
So I'm just basing it kind of like on what their history is. I
5:09
think they will come back and try to work with the Governor's office staff on
5:13
trying to tighten up language where they might have thought. Just that he didn't
5:16
give an explanation on the only the only reason I can think of it,
5:19
and we're going to move on to the other veto in a second, is
5:23
that it said for anybody that had had their record expunged previously, that he's
5:29
taking the approach of, look, you were given the opportunity, you messed
5:31
it up. Oh well, there is a possibility of that. There was
5:34
also I've heard that it could be something with respect to the kind of the
5:39
age, cohorts of individuals or the window of time. Sure, we're just
5:43
going to have to see how they address it. In my guess is in
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the twenty twenty four session back with Salem News, other James Madison Institute,
5:54
other notable vetos. Yet two in the healthcare space. One was a priority
5:59
of the Senate President Pasodomo, which is always surprising when a governor veto's a
6:03
presiding officers bill if it's a priority. But it had to do with who
6:09
was entitled to use the term doctor when they advertise themselves as a practicing healthcare
6:15
person. She wanted to crack down a little bit or titan who is able
6:20
to do with. The governor viewed that as kind of an infringement on free
6:24
speech and some other things. He was backed by the Institute for Justice and
6:28
a few other Isn't that though? Kind of? I mean, you either
6:30
are a doctor or you're not a doctor, correct, correct, and well,
6:33
and there's whether or not you kind of like dentists and other healthcare practitioners
6:42
are using the term or not dentists, but other healthcare practicers are using the
6:46
term implying that they are an MD when they are either a PhD or something
6:53
else. And I think that's where the line was on that one, all
6:57
right, As it relates to others. Sure, and there was another bill
7:00
that was really something that I hope comes back, because more and more you're
7:04
having states enter into what are called licensing compacts, where they agree to recognize
7:13
the occupational licenses of other states as long as they reciprocate on that recognition.
7:19
Florida had, by legislation, had entered into one of these four counselors,
7:25
and the governor had vetoed that one. Not sure on the reasoning there,
7:29
but in speaking with the House Speaker, he has been kind of a stalwart
7:34
on healthcare freedom, and so I think we're going to see a whole lot
7:39
more in the coming session to address some of the licensing issues with respect to
7:43
healthcare inside baseball question. Sure, Is it likely that even though the governor
7:48
doesn't release any statement on why on these vetos, that he has communicated it
7:54
to the House and the Senate Why? More than likely? Yeah, And
7:58
for what it's worth, I don't know whether he has or if he has
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what it contained on those vetos, but likely the case is that there is
8:05
some communication between the governor's office staff and the staff of the presiding officers or
8:09
the chairs to kind of give them a heads up as to why, and
8:16
they can then formulate whether or not they're going to bring it back in a
8:18
future session or kind of tighten it up, or just abandoned it altogether final
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minute in this segment budget Vetos. Sure, of course there were going to
8:26
be claims of retribution. You had. You know, I think it was
8:31
Joe Gruders, who is the only member of the legislature that it endorsed Trump
8:35
publicly. He came out and said that the governor was attacking him for endorsing
8:39
it. No. I looked at the five hundred million dollars list. It
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brought the total budget figure down to sixteen point five billion. And you know
8:50
when you look at the VETOS per member or the dollars per member, he's
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like midway down on the list. You had folks that had been early endorsers
9:01
of Governor DeSantis got heavy VTOS um, but an accolade to Senator Jonathan Martin.
9:11
He carried twenty bills successfully in the Senate and all were signed by the
9:16
governor and did not get a single line item vetoed in the budget. So
9:22
if you are a lobbyist in the political process in Florida, Jonathan Martin is
9:28
your new best friend. They are they keeping track of that stuff. They
9:31
absolutely keep track of that stuff. So who can get things across the finish
9:35
line one? Yeah, those that that is a that is a stat that
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when it brought it to When when it was brought to me, I was
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like wow, I had to verify at first, and then I was shocked
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at his level of success. Not because of him, just because everybody gets
9:52
something vtoed WFLA at WFLAFBM dot com, on your phone with the iHeart radio
9:58
app and on hundreds of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox, and
10:01
Sono santi Hearts radio station. Coming up to twenty two minutes past the hour
10:11
with Salnuzo on the Morning Show with Preston Scott. He with the James Madison
10:13
Institute. He's vice president of policy. We talked about some of the line
10:18
item vetos that Governor de Santis rolled out on the budget. What about some
10:22
of the funding and the strategy behind it. Yeah, very interesting funding strategy.
10:28
They included a one point one billion dollar line item in the education realm
10:31
and they called it a categorical and it goes directly to teachers salary increases in
10:39
the public school systems. In school system in the state. And the reasoning
10:43
behind this, and he has explained this publicly, is they wanted to combat
10:48
a practice that had kind of evolved from when they had implemented the starting teacher
10:54
salary bumps. And what was happening was the local teachers union collective bargaining groups
11:01
would hold out on contract approvals and renewals, and by doing that, they
11:05
would lock in the prior contract rates until the new contract out approved. So
11:11
all of that money that had been appropriated and had been touted for getting starting
11:16
teacher salaries up was not getting used. Now it wasn't statewide, it was
11:20
kind of confined to various counties. But they wanted to combat this because some
11:26
of the counties were massive that we're doing this, and so the categorical goes
11:31
directly to the school systems and to the counties who are administering this. There
11:35
is no kind of tie to the collective bargaining agreements, which when you factor
11:41
in the labor reform package that's going to have a pronounced impact on teacher salaries.
11:46
Was this just to get around where basically the bonus money the at not
11:50
bonus. It's not a bonus. The added salary bypasses the collective bargaining agreement.
11:58
Correct. Yeah, it was absolutely a way to address a pretty atrocious
12:03
tactic that was being used by the teachers unions because there were there were thousands
12:09
of teachers across the state that we're not seeing the monies that were allocated to
12:13
improve their pay. And you've pointed this out on a number of occasions.
12:16
You even have teachers who were not a part of the union who are getting
12:20
hurt because they're subject to the stuck. Yeah, they're stuck. Added to
12:26
the list of reasons why I hate unions anyway. Okay. In addition,
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sure, a couple of other things that were kind of of note in the
12:35
budget. The governor vetoed an environmental program and it was called the Rural and
12:41
Family Lands Protection Program. It was a priority of Agricultural Commissioner Wilton Simpson.
12:46
The Governor's office indicated, and I'm doing some research to find out how accurate
12:50
the numbers are on this, they were indicating that there were as much as
12:54
a couple hundred million dollars left over from prior budget years, so they didn't
12:58
need another hundred million dollars. And yet I've had it in the bank.
13:03
Yeah, they had it in the bank. But you know, there's there's
13:07
kind of a note that when you have recurring programs like this, you keep
13:11
them funded. But principally they're saying we need to keep the size of government
13:18
limited, which takes me to another program. Well, before you get to
13:24
that, there's been a longstanding tradition. How true it is or not,
13:28
I don't know that in state government, if you have an allocation and you
13:33
get to the end of the fiscal year and that allocation is not used up,
13:37
you better spend your allocation or else it will not be restored the following
13:41
year. Is that? Is this a big boy version of that? In
13:45
a sense it is. At the same time, it's kind of a you
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know, you wonder, all right, does this now provide a perverse incentive
13:56
to folks to get money spent quickly in an existing fiscal cycle to ensure that
14:05
your line item isn't getting vetoed in the next one. Well, it's been
14:09
going on for you, Oh, I know, I know. It's something
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I'm going to be paying attention to because as the other part of it is,
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like the veto on Senate President Pasadomo's bill, you kind of wonder is
14:22
there anything underneath the surface on this one, given that it was the priority
14:26
of a cabinet member. This also points to the fact that on a lot
14:31
of fronts, Governor de Sandis is a principled guy. Yes, and that
14:35
is what I wanted to talk about. In terms of vetoing two programs in
14:39
the state budget together, they came in at about thirty million dollars, not
14:43
a big line item. However, what it did cause was this domino effect
14:50
where the state is now forgoing about three hundred and fifty three and forty five
14:54
million in federal block grant money through the Infrastructure Investment in Jobs Act as well
15:01
as the Inflation Reduction Acts. So him vetoing these two state line items caused
15:07
those monies to go away. Now, I wanted to unpack a little bit
15:11
the political calculus versus the principal calculus on this. Politically, he should let
15:16
those programs stand. He should not veto them. Politically speaking, it is
15:22
quote unquote three fifty dollars million dollars in free money coming from Washington. There's
15:28
only about thirty million of actual state state funding on the hook for these,
15:35
And he opened himself up to a whole range of attack from the left and
15:41
the Dems on this. Principally, he is a limited government federalist who believes
15:46
in the power of state government being supreme and that Washington has bloated and spending
15:52
like drunken sailors and they need to get it under control. This is a
15:58
kind of a warning shot to the federal government on this saying we don't care.
16:04
You are too overburdened with excessive spending. And I'm going to stand on
16:11
principle on this. And I'm shocked I have not read that story yet.
16:14
On it thirty six past the hour, final couple segments with Salnuzo for this
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month where monthly until the next legislative session, then we go weekly. But
16:29
Vice President Policy with the James Madison Institute I made note, talked about it
16:33
on the program. Perhaps one of the most overruled federal judges in America is
16:37
Mark Walker. I also hear he has rabbiteers, and he listens and critiques
16:44
anybody that you know comes against his rulings. But his rulings are overruled frequently
16:48
on appeal. Yeah. Absolutely, And he's got himself in the middle of
16:52
election law in Florida. Yeah, and he's gotten himself in the midst on
16:56
a couple of different bills that have passed this legislative session. But on the
17:00
election law bill that the legislature had passed and the governor had signed, compared
17:07
to prior years, it was not very like far reaching. It was.
17:11
It was a much more kind of subdued and in fact, there were some
17:17
conservatives that said it didn't go far enough and in addressing some of the things
17:19
that Florida needed to address. Um. But he issued a preliminary injunction on
17:26
that bill. Namely, he had cited some of the provisions about having non
17:32
citizens handling ballots that's absurd. Yeah, and he's lost his mind. And
17:37
to your point on kind of his perspective on his role as a judge,
17:42
he kind of vocally said something about this being the latest assault on voter rights
17:49
in the sist and yeah, he goes above and beyond. He is an
17:56
activist judge who made it his role to enact policy as he sees it should
18:03
happen. And so when the legislature passes a bill and the governor signs it
18:07
and it gets uh, it gets litigated. He views his role as being
18:12
able to put his thumb on policy. But but but from a legal perspective,
18:17
and this is why he loses on appeals so frequently on notable course case
18:22
correct, No one in their right mind can can argue that a non citizen
18:27
should come within one hundred miles of a ballot of in the US election logic
18:33
common sense would dictate that, yes, I cannot argue against you in this
18:37
realm. So what happens now is this? I mean, do we know
18:42
that this is going to be appeal always I don't know if the appeal has
18:48
already been filed, but it will be appealed, my guess, as it
18:51
will be overturned, like the majority of the remainder of his kind of high
18:56
level rulings. And so we will continue to report out how that transpires with
19:03
the rest of the time in this segment and then the next. Let's look
19:06
ahead a little bit first, in your view, was there anything that surprised
19:11
you that didn't get done in the last legislative session? As robust as the
19:17
agenda was, as good as it was for the nation to see what Florida's
19:22
done, and it was successful, were there still other things that needed to
19:26
be done. Yeah, and this kind of sets up to where each presiding
19:32
officer when they come into the office has a two year window, right.
19:37
And so there were absolutely some things that I would have loved to have seen
19:42
gotten across that began to get some traction that did not one would be in
19:48
the licensing reform kind of realm. There was some momentum for if you think
19:56
back to COVID, if a doctor practicing in South Georgia wants to come into
20:03
the state of Florida and practice, there are a ton of hurdles and obstacles
20:07
that they have to go through in order to get themselves prepared to do that
20:12
and licensed to do that. During COVID, we weighed a lot of those
20:15
regulations to get healthcare providers in. The question then comes is why if you
20:22
are waiving a regulation during a global pandemic, are you even having the regulation
20:27
to begin with. So there was some momentum to get some of those licenses
20:33
for healthcare practitioners and other skilled professions kind of recognized in other from other states
20:38
and whatnot. That kind of fell by the wayside about midway through the session.
20:44
I was surprised because you had an appetite for it in both chambers.
20:48
It just it could have been the bandwidth, It could have been everything else
20:51
that they were taking up. They just didn't get the time. But that
20:52
was one in particular I would love to see come back. All right,
21:06
going through a list of things that we think might at least get sort of
21:12
kind of talked about. Sure in twenty twenty four, what about criminal justice?
21:18
Sure, criminal justice is going to be this big question mark. I
21:22
think you've got a huge appetite historically in the Florida Senate to address some of
21:30
the issues with respect to both the front end when individuals come in contact with
21:37
with law enforcement in the courts, and then the back end when they're leaving
21:41
and returning to society. We want them to be upstanding, tax paying citizens,
21:45
though you can argue it's the middle that makes the biggest difference. Yes,
21:48
indeed, and so the House has been reluctant over the last probably eight
21:56
to ten years to take on full scale comprehensive reform. You had a big
22:02
data push a few years back when Speaker Corcoran was in power. But I'm
22:08
really looking to see whether or not they take on programmatically some of the things
22:15
that returning citizens need in training certifications. An individual goes and gets trained in
22:25
prison to become a barber. Now they come out, making it easier for
22:30
them to get a job as a barber versus having to go now to barber
22:33
school and pay the fees and the schooling costs and take the tests and everything,
22:38
when they may have spent five years and do a great job. So
22:42
there are some things like apprenticeship programs and a host of other things that we
22:48
should be tackling, not necessarily in kind of like this comprehensive form, but
22:53
like really targeted reforms that I'm hoping the House House leadership is to take a
23:00
look at. We talked about the fact that Florida lives off of a consumption
23:03
tax, and it's a wonderful thing what we do here in Florida. Indeed,
23:07
it is where is tax policy in all of this, because you can
23:11
look at it and say, well, we kind of have it right.
23:12
We do largely I would say ninety five percent of our tax policy is spot
23:18
on, which makes tax relief a lot more targeted, a lot more challenging
23:23
to do, because you know, with twenty two twenty three million people and
23:29
revenues coming in as aggressively as they do, and a large portion of the
23:33
taxes that we do get are paid by the one hundred and thirty seven million
23:37
people who come and visit Florida from out of state. So a couple of
23:42
things that we're looking at are the Communication services tax. It's one of the
23:47
highest in the United States, and it's levied at the state and local levels,
23:51
so we've been looking for a number of years at ways to kind of
23:55
target and do some reductions. The other one, which we're going to can
24:00
tinue to monitor is the business lease tax will order. It's still the only
24:03
state that levies a sales tax on a commercial space if you lease it,
24:07
so that's a big thing. There's still a lot of room to work.
24:11
In insurance, We've got a lot that's still i mean, the market places
24:15
upside down, right, yeah, and people are still not getting the relief
24:19
that they think they're supposed to be getting. That's going to be coming later
24:22
in the year. But a big challenge is the reinsurance market. And reinsurance
24:27
is the insurance that insurance companies purchase to help undergird their claims. So you're
24:34
going to see some reform there. We're continuing to press the issue. There
24:40
Also, companies are not as quick to return to the state because the reinsurance
24:44
market isn't as solid as it needs to be. In your opinion, is
24:48
the insurance issue ever going to be one where we, as as the people
24:52
being insured, see some relief on all fronts or are we just now hoping
24:59
to cap it where it is? I think you can see relief, but
25:02
there is always going to be challenges present. It's just in a question of
25:07
where they present themselves. We will always be a peninsula jutting out into Hurricane
25:12
Alley with thirteen hundred miles of coastline. That risk is always going to be
25:17
there. It's going to present challenges in the regular rates, the reinsurance rates,
25:22
the catastrophe fund programs, all of that's always going to be challenged.
25:26
But there should be relief for consumers later this year and into next is my
25:30
guests. We'll talk next month with sal News. Oh thank you sir.
25:33
Always a pleasure, my friend. All right with James Madison Institute. My
25:37
guest on The Morning Show with Preston Scott