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What You Need To Know About Week 2 In Florida's Legislative Session · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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And so we begin third hour of the Morning Show with Preston Scott. Good
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to be with you. It's Grant Allen over there Studio one. A.
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I'm here in Studio one, baby. I am turning the page literally on
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the rundown, and I am joined by the vice president of Policy for the
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James Madison Institute with our legislative update. Week two is in the books and
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with us is sell news O. Hello, it's only week two. It
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feels like week six. Well, and then that happened, you know,
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I mean, yesterday Florida's governor decided to return to begin being a full time
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governor. There's a part of me that says, in his announcement, it
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looks like the way the world's been lifted off of him. Oh, he
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definitely seems a lot more comfortable. He seemed a lot more comfortable in that
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video than some of the videos that I saw. What do you make of
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it? I think he is honest. I think he is compassionate. I
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think he is realistic. I think he recognized that trying to go back to
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some of the people who have been supporting the super Pack and try to get
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more momentum there just wasn't a path and I think, Look, he's a
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young guy. He's forty three, I think, and there are futures for
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people who come out of the governor's mansion in Florida after two terms. I
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mean, we saw it with Bob Graham, We've seen it with Rick Scott.
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I think he has wisely seen the direction of this campaign. I think
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you guys hit the nail on the head, you know, prior segment any
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other primary, he is far and away the front runner. I think the
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aspect of Donald Trump, what happened to President Trump in the twenty twenty reelection
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and the passion of his supporters, he was just not going to get enough
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of them to make a viable run at it. What if I submitted that
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when it was all said and done, Maybe because of Trump, maybe for
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other reasons, the governor just did not connect with people. He can communicate,
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he's a brilliant communicator, but he didn't connect. Yeah, it may
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be a fair assessment. And I mean this is kind of an anomaly of
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a campaign. You have a you know, prior president who was you know,
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who lost his election disputably and then is now running again with just as
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much fanfare as he had prior. He also has indictments against it. I
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mean, there's so much about this race that is unlike any other race I
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think we've ever seen, and maybe the country has ever seen that. I
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just think there wasn't enough of a wedge to connect with enough voters to get
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them over to his side. In the Sunshine State special elections, do they
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make a difference. I think they make yes and no. I think they
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make a difference for PR and momentum PR in the sense that you had the
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Jacksonville mayor race which went from a Republican to a Democrat, and then you
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had the special election of last week which the House Democrats. Democrats flipped a
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slip there, Sorry about that, guys. They flipped a competitive seed.
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I mean, the registration numbers are a third, a third and a third
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non party, but the Democrats are playing this up as oh, we're beginning
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to take back Florida. So from the momentum side, it absolutely makes a
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difference in terms of the practical application a policy, not a bit. The
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Republican supermajority is still eighty four true false. Jacksonville having a Democrat mayor just
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simply signifies once again that liberals moved to larger populated areas and that's where they
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do well. And that's just Florida is kind of the same. Yeah,
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and you also have in the Jacksonville area within those city limits enough of a
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cohort of the population that was able to elect a moderate Republican Lenny Curry for
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two terms. He was not a what you would consider a hard right governing
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mayor. The mayor of a large city is still different than the demographic of
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a group in a constituency that elects somebody to the state House and those decisions.
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So yeah, absolutely going straight late seventies, early eighties. Here on
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the Morning Show with Preston Scott. That's Grant Allen. They're running the program
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and I'm joined by Sala Newsa with the James Madison Institute. So last week
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what happened, Okay, we got the legislature in the Senate. They did
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pass the Senate passed the President. Senate President's Priority builds on healthcare workforce spending,
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so as well as the what's called the Healthcare Innovation Council, both passed
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unanimously. Senate Bill seventy sixteen puts roughly eight hundred million in state funding into
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expanding the state's healthcare workforce pipeline. You've mentioned, We've talked about Florida's a
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growth state. We need more doctors, we need more nurses, we need
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more workforce, and so that is a part of it in terms of expanding
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graduate medical residency slots, a host of other things that hopefully will not only
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grow our own but attract folks. In Senate Bill seventy eighteen establishes the Healthcare
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Innovation Council. Now, normally I tend to look at these kind of blue
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ribbon task force ideas as are they kicking the can down the road or are
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they really trying to get their arms around something. I'm tempted to believe this
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one is the latter. Okay. One of the reasons is that when I
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looked up the membership of this which is kind of defined within the bill,
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it includes policymakers, agency heads like the head of the Agency for Healthcare Administration
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and others, members of the healthcare industry, patient representatives, the facilities industry,
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the insurance industry, a few others. So you have a very broad
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base of folks that they're getting to reach out to to try and collect information
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on things like, what are the impacts of technology on patient care? How
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do we do this in the best possible way. How do we attract businesses
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in the healthcare field into the state to be able to grow them. How
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do we develop more specialized facilities like ambulatory surgical centers and other things along those
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lines, So innovative approaches to delivery, and then translating that into what are
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the policy needs. So the House has taken a tenor of I believe there's
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probably going to be a proposed committee bill that combine in a number of the
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House efforts that are currently moving in that direction. It's a series of smaller
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bills. Okay, So my guess is that's a direction they're going to take.
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I expect it to happen very quickly. The House, on its side,
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passed HB four sixty one from Representative Amnesty. It provides a jury service
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excusal for new mothers. The Senate version has passed two Representative Amnesty made a
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proposal for some amnesty Amnesty. Yeah about that. How ironic is that I'm
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a poet and I didn't even know it? Unbelievable. The Senate version has
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passed two committees unanimously. It's got its last stop on rules. I expect
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this to become law, maybe one of the early ones. They also passed
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HB three. Sure. I got an email from from some folks about that.
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Oh okay, and and they're like, do they do they think that
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that's when mother ing stops? You know? In other words, you know,
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moms are more and more staying at home, more and more not putting
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their kids in daycare or preschool and have a kid by their side and on
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their hip a lot. A couple of things I would respond to that with.
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One is there are other exceptions that working moms or single moms can use
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later on, so that's also there. There's also an exception for a pregnant
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mom to be The other thing is, at some point we have to say,
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look, jury services a civic responsibility when are in kindergarten. Yeah,
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well, and maybe that's the case, but there's a you know, there's
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a line that's got to be drawn somewhere, so all right, fair enough.
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Yeah, the House passed three eighty five unanimously, and it mandates a
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safe custody exchange site in every county. Now, I was curious about this
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one, and I did some digging, and it makes sense now. It's
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being called Cassie's Law because of an incident that happened a couple of years back
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where a woman vanished. They later found her body. It was after a
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change in the exchange between her and her ex to a a remote location,
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some things along those lines. And so this is just something good governance,
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like it's the place has to be like about it an alternative, yeah,
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and it's good policy. Okay. The Senate moved SB seventy sixty two.
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This is establishing the Gate Program Graduation Alternatives and Technical Education. The main objective
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is to enable students age sixteen to twenty one who've not obtained a standard high
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school diploma to be able to earn post secondary course credits without the financial burden.
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So there is some money behind it for kids to get scholarships. It
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combines adult secondary education with career education, focusing on both kind of academic vocational.
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We've talked about this with you know, the need to fill highly skilled
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technical trades at the rate that Florida needs. This is something that I'm paying
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a little bit more attention to now and not provide a barrier financially to that
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exactly because I mean technical schools, they're seeing a win because they're get off
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the welfare roles exactly, and technical trade schools can be really pricey, especially
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for working class individuals. If that's a direction that they want to take back
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with Salnuzo, James Mandison Institute, GOLP, you wanted to make a correction.
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Yeah, one quick correction on that Gate Program bill. It is Center
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Bill seventy thirty two, not seventy sixty two. I had a transcribing error
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there. I just wanted to make sure that was clear then. So the
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bottom line, though, is the legislatures identify that there's a pocket of people
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that might be helped by removing certain hurdles for them to get because there is
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vocational work out there available, there's vocational workout there, there are gaps in
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there are jobs available right now. There are also people out there who do
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not have a high school diploma or a GED that would like to get into
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a training program for something like this, but are kind of the obstacle is
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that they don't have the GED and the cost of it. So this is
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a a policy goal of getting people into kind of a productive, tax paying
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role that then reduces the Welfare States Nice yep YEP. Senate Bills eleven six
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in the property insurance arena from Ed Hooper. So currently there's a cap on
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the home value that can be covered by Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Which is
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the state run insure of last resort. That cap is seven hundred thousand dollars.
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It has not been updated in a while. Hooper's bill would increase that
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to a million dollars. It also opens up another one hundred million dollars for
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the Micea Florida Home Fund, which provides matching grants to make homes more storm
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and wind resistant. Okay, House Bill nine oh one from David Barrero.
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This became a huge issue in committee display of flags in government buildings. Now,
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I think about that and the title seems innocuous. It should be happened
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to be in the committee hearing for another bill. But because the left latched
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onto this and they're calling it out because it would in fact ban pride flags
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and other flags from being displayed in schools, municipal buildings, et cetera.
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The House committee hearing, they had to endure dozens of people coming up to
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testify in opposition, claiming somehow that kids would die because of this bill.
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Literally, they said children will die. So it's the end of the practice
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of floating whatever the flavor of the month flag is, even the Christian flag.
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Correct, it's just state, city and United States flags. That's it.
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Yep. Now, the bill was moved by David Barrero. Randy Fine
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was a co sponsor. David Barrero had to go present another bill, so
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Chair Fine came and did what I would consider one of the best closes of
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a bill in committee that I've heard in many years. You can go check
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it out on the Florida Channel if you'd like to see there. It now
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moves up to State Affairs. The Senate Committee version has three stops on it,
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the big ones, the big ones, HB one and HB three.
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They had their final House Committee hearings. Interesting both bills passed, but in
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this case, the testimony from the public, specifically on HB one, remind
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everybody what it is. So HB one is an all out band for anyone
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under the age of sixteen from having a social media account, Facebook, Instagram,
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TikTok, all of those. You will not be able to have one
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if you're under sixteen, and the platforms will have to delete the existing accounts.
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HB three is age verification for adult content sites or platforms, so slight
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difference there. You had traditionally conservative groups opposing it right alongside of folks from
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the LGBT community also opposing it, so kind of what we would somehow sometimes
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call the Baptist and the bootleggers kind of getting together. Also had a very
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impassioned testimony from a state attorney in South Florida who came all the way up
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to testify in support of HB one. The questioning of the bill's sponsors,
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Tyler Sorroy and Fiona McFarlane, it was incredibly substantive because a point I gleaned
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from the hearing, so they were asking are they were basically the sponsors were
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making it in kind of couching it that social media is no different than tobacco,
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or alcohol or gambling. Because as members of the committee were asking,
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well, how about a parental consent to allow their fifteen year old to have
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an Instagram account? The response was, we do not allow parents to consent
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to allow their kids to smoke or to drink. So that is the tack
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that the House is taking on this. They have been consistent. It goes
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to the House floor this week, and I'm imagining it's going to pass.
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With that being said, the Senate version has not been set for an agenda
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yet. I don't think it's gonna be dead. I can't imagine that that's
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the case. The tactical nature of it just leads me to believe they're gonna
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move something. My question is do they move something that is so strict as
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what HB one is back with sal Newso the James Madison Institute, we're catching
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you up on what happened last week and again, even if you can't digest
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it all in one sitting, go back, check out the podcast or subscribe
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to the Conversations podcast because we distill this down for you just there so you
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can get in one dose what's going on and what matters. Yeah, and
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another thing is recognize that you know, we do our best in five segments
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to unpack as much legislation as we can. There are countless bills that are
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just as important that you know we don't get to. So you know you've
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gotten emails you forward it over to me that have resulted in me taking a
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harder look at something and bringing that up to segments, so you know,
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we do our best to get through. Fortunately, I talk fast, a
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lot of caffeine and upbringing in the Northeast helps senate bill to eighty Yeah from
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a senator to segue. The vacation rental bill, it's back, It got
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a hearing, it passed through. This would set up a state level regulatory
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system and preempt local rules and ordinances to a degree on short term vacation rentals.
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What's the problem they've identified. So the problem that they've identified is you
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have this butting up of an issue where people with property rights are in conflict.
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So you have a person who owns a home that wants an airbnb it
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and allow people to rent it for short terms next to a home that doesn't
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want that airbnb there, and a city that may want to restrict the number
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because you do have issues where you have party houses and people are in residents,
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residential areas kept up to all hours of the night. So it's a
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conflict of property rights. We get it. And what you know Senator di
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Sege has tried for a couple of sessions now is to say, okay,
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what should the regulatory mechanism be? And he seems to be balancing it right,
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And basically I think it would be where the city can pass an ordinance,
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but they can't pass an ordinance that only applies to airbnbs. It has
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to apply across the board. And that makes sense for the standpoint of managing
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property rights in a way that that treats all equally. How spill fifty seven
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fifty seven from Rep. Saltzman County Commission term limits. It is moving so
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that city county just county in this one, So it would set up an
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eight year term limit for the county. I believe city city commissions are charter
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in a way that they are. The legislature wouldn't be able to do it
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uniformly. The Senate and House committees both moved it, so that is something
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that's on track. You know, we've talked a little bit about this in
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the past with school boards. I'm a fan of term limits. I think
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they're important. I'm not sure eight years is the right number. I'm more
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preferable to maybe twelve. It gives individuals a little bit more time to get
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knowledge. And what do you say to people like me, I'm a coin
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flip on it because the part of me is that term limits. I love
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it in concept, but I also hate the fact that that just empowers the
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bureaucrats even more. It does, in fact do that, and I would
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suggest that in Florida, I like it more because we have such a great
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bench of conservatives, especially at the state house level. We do not see
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that at the local levels as much. You have areas of the state that
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are very conservative in sending there in who they send to the State House and
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Senate, very left leaning, and who they send to their county commission,
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and it does have an impact. All right, we've got we got one
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segment left, and believe it or not, you're going to have to deal
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with getting everything that's on the table this week done in one five minute segment.
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Don't miss it. Next on the Morning Show. Welcome to m a
19:12
D Radio Network, where we challenge you to make a difference. And this
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is the Morning Show with Preston Scott. No pithy comments from me, no
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interruptions or questions, sound news, Oh, James Madison Institute. What's coming
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up this week? All right, we've got HB one and HB three or
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going before the full House, so they'll get a vote there if we kind
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of back up appropriation. Subcommittees will begin moving spending proposals, which begins the
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budget process in ways and means. Today, House Bill eleven ninety five gets
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its first stop. This is what I've coined my favorite bill of twenty twenty
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four. What is it? It would require a two thirds vote of the
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of the commission of a local government to raise the millage rate of the commission,
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not the voters. The Senate has both versions of that one, so
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we'll see how it shakes out in the Senate. Part of the occupational licensing
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reform agenda, Senate Bill eleven forty two will get its first stop, along
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with a bill that we're looking at, Senate Bill six seventy six, that
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prevents local governments from meddling in the food delivery app business. You've got some
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data privacy issues going on there on the House side. This one's quirky to
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me. Randy finds attempt at socializing Florida's drug pricing system House Bill fourteen thirty
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one, we'll get its first committee hearing now. He wants to index drug
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prices in Florida to what the European Union sets, essentially establishing price controls along
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with that House Bill sixteen thirty nine, which would require licenses and certifications,
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including birth to identify a person's sex, not their gender, and would also
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require any health insurance plan that covers sex reassignment to also cover de transitioning.
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So interesting there. Senate hearing on property insurance bills today in Committee House Commerce
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will hear HB forty nine from Rep. Cheney. This expands the labor options
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of sixteen and seventeen year olds, as well as House Built fourteen fifty nine.
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That's a bill on artificial intelligence from Rep. McFarlane. We've been tracking
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it quite a bit on kind of establishing what the regulatory beginnings are for the
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state and local governments with the kind of advent and growth of artificial intelligence.
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Senate Health Policy Committee first hearing for Senate Bill sixteen hundred from Senator Jay Collins,
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would recognize many healthcare licenses in other states. Now this is important because
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the Senate's passed the Senate Priority Bills of the President. This reform fits nicely
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within those. We need a doctor who's certified in Georgia to be able to
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come in into Florida if he or she would like, and be able to
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practice quickly. This would help streamline that. On Wednesday, you got the
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Rules Committee, they'll hear and likely pass blazing Golia's call for congressional term limits.
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I mentioned HB one and HB three. I'm intrigued to see if the
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Senate agenda for later on this week, which will come out Tuesday Wednesday,
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if they begin to move the Senate bills. Let me ask you a question
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about HB sixteen thirty nine. Yes, is there a reason why we're not
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doing the Okhams raise your razor version of this, which is simply, let's
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require hospitals when a child is born to designate a DNA test male female period.
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I believe this does that without a DNA test. Why not a DNA
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test. I don't know the whether or not that would be a violation of
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a person's rights collecting DNA. I'm always a little, you know, touchy
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when we're collecting someone's DNA. With that being said, when a child is
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born, I think an eyeball does the trick. I don't disagree with you,
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except that we are in an age where hospitals are leaving those things blank
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and are finding workarounds. But this bill would require the hospital to put that
23:30
in the birth certificate. But again I'm just I'm looking at what I see
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people willing to do to leave that door open for gender determination later when there's
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awareness whatever that means. DNA is the arbiter. It settles it all.
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Yeah, and I can't take it as another step further. Okay, it
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also lays the groundwork to protecting women's sports. I'm with you completely on the
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intent, just like I am with the speed on the intent of HB one
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to get kids off of social media and paying more attention in school. I
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think at this juncture, collecting DNA from babies is just a maybe a bridge
24:12
too far for some. Like I said, I think if we're concentrating on
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you have a baby in a hospital, the doctor looks, the doctor determines
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that sex is placed on the birth certificate, and that is a vital record.
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So I think, and I hope it gets at exactly what we're trying
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to get at. And if I argue that they're collecting DNA anyway when the
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birthing process happens, it just happens naturally in the birthing process. We're just
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going to put it through a tube and they're not analyzing it, I would
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suggest that there's there are some civil libertarians that would would have some concerns about
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the potential slippery slope that happens when you start collecting DNA at any point without
25:00
a person's consent, and I can understand those concerns. All right, sala
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news Oh with us back next week. Thank you, sir Oh. It's
25:07
a pleasure, my friend. And he's with the James Madison Institute, vice
25:11
president of Policy and more importantly here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott