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It's The Final Week Of A Fascinating Florida Legislative Session · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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May First. It's May First show number forty nine nineteen of the Morning Show
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with Preston Scott. It's Monday. Good to be with you, Day thirty
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one of America Old Hostage. That's Grant Allen. I'm Preston and with us
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of course as always, Salnuzo. It is the legislative session as we now
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are in the final week of the session. How are you. I'm doing
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good. I'm ready for it to be Friday. I bet you all you
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want to see that handkerchief fall so badly right on time. Please do not
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go over the weekend. Let me get your thoughts on what I mentioned in
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the last half hour, and it's one of the big stories in the press
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box. The legislature offered to resign to run option here by modifying it,
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and you inform me of something kind of interesting. Florida was outside the norm
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nationally speaking on this subject. So yeah, yeah, Most states do not
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have a resigned to run rule for a president and vice president of the United
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States, so their governors their senators are able to do kind of the campaign
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as well as serve as governor while they're running. And so Florida's resigned to
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run rule as we've talked in prior shows, is a bit opaque. It
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do we know where it came from and why it ended up the way it
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did. Something had to bring it about. Well, it's changed over the
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years a couple of times, and it changed around the time of Charlie christ
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in one way or another. And I had it in my head last night
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to try and figure out the direction of the change. But it's not a
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super new law. So it's one where the question of when qualifying actually happens
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as a bit in the gray zone. Yeah, it was very ambiguous.
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Yeah, and we've talked about that. And so what they did in this
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state, in this amendment to a election bill was to state that if you're
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running for president or vice president of the United States, you're set aside from
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anything here. The rest of the offices had generally viewed kind of when you
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file as the date, but this being a bit of a kind of a
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different scenario, assuming the governor announced as in some point in the next couple
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of weeks. They just wanted to make sure that litigation was you know,
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kind of forestalled. The Senate President was very clear about that. She said
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it should be the legislature's decision, not the courts. What are some of
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the just briefly, the other things in this law. It's not just about
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the resign to run and amendments and change is made there. There's broader election
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stuff inside, absolutely, and so this is the third year at a row
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for some pretty broad kind of reforms to our election system. As we've been
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involved in it at JMI over the years, we've discovered that election in Agridy
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is something that's going to be dynamic. You're going to have to continue to
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adapt your rules for technology, for different methods and different things that happen,
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different strategies from the left to try and gum it up. And so this
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change involves some things about like making it illegal for someone convicted of a crime
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or a non citizen of a felony or a non citizen to handle completed voter
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registration forms. They have to be turned in within a certain amount of time
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now, so you can't kind of like collect them all and then tamper with
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them and then try to turn them in. A few things making it more
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consistent at the county level with supervisors of election on how to maintain the list
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and consistency there, so a number of broad things. But then kind of
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in the tail end of this, they amended the law or the bill with
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the resign to run piece. Staying with a governor for just another minute.
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If I were to say to you, the best best way Governor de Santis
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can run, Yes, he's going to have to travel the country if he
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decides to do that. It's to just continue to effectively govern Florida. Oh
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absolutely, And I don't think with technology the way that it is now.
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I mean, we talk about the fact that you know, most presidents are
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out and about around the country, around the world, they are able to
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govern. The same holds true for a governor. And so to the point
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about could he effectively governed while being on the campaign, I think so.
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I mean, it'll remain to be seen how much of it is impacted.
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But yeah, the idea of the Priori this sixty day session then leading into
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his budget line item vetos, which will come and then you know, kind
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of enacting the laws that have been passed. That's going to be the kind
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of the benchmark of success that I'm imagining he's going to use as a catapult
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for the campaign. It's Weston Show with morning, Scott, what eleven minutes
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after the hour sound news it with us talking about the legislative session, the
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governor on the road, making some trips and in one special bill, there
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was kind of a meeting in Israel. Yeah, so he's on the trade
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mission to South Korea, Japan, Israel. He finished it out in London.
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So the legislature had passed House Bill two sixty nine, which is an
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anti anti Semitism bill. It had passed the day before. Basically, it
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creates some fines and penalties for intimidating people or dumping flyers based on religious beliefs
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on their property or in public places. Randy Fine, who had passed the
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bill along with Mike Caruso, the co sponsor, flew to Israel to meet
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the governor for him to sign it in Jerusalem, and they got a great
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photo op. It was just a unique thing. I've never heard of this
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happening before, and it just it was kind of a special kind of a
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deal there. And it covers any religious anti Semitism. Yeah, it's not
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just anti Semitism, but anything that denigrates or harasses someone based on a political
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belief. Got it all right, Disney, What's up with that. Now,
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yeah, this is getting dicey because what you're seeing is not only the
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left, but now some folks on the conservative side are saying this could be
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a bit of a challenge to a candidacy given what's transpired. So Disney is
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deciding to now push back. They filed suit in federal claiming the policies that
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have been passed against them amount to a discriminatory retaliation against their First Amendment rights.
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Now, what is intriguing to me on this is that they're using many
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of the remarks that have been made by lawmakers during the debate from the special
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session. So, pardon the pun, it's going to be a wild ride
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as this transpires because lawmakers, as were coming to find out in the debates,
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they were making some claims that Disney is going to use in an attempt
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to kind of make it bite back on their claim of it being a retaliatory
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claim. Is Disney, though entitled to the special considerations it was receiving,
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and that's what the Governor's office and others and I would contend are like me,
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they are not. It is a special taxing district. And so the
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governor's legal team and the new Tourism Board will make the claim that they had
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no right to the special carve out to begin with, which makes the triggering
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of the legislation moot potentially. I mean, if you're either entitled to it
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or not, and the reasons why somebody decides to take action become irrelevant.
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If the special considerations are not legal to begin with, they will well,
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they were legal because they were in statute. But what the legislature giveth,
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the legislature can take it the way exactly, and so that's what they're going
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to claim. Now, I've said this many many times on your show.
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I'm not a constitutional attorney so or an attorney at all. So this is
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going to likely take years to wind its way through the courts unless they come
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to some kind of a detant and decide to figure it out over a beer
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or something. A minute left in this segment. What do we have in
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terms of what passed through the legislature last week? Well, the big one
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is Senate Bill fourteen fifty five past the House, it's now on to the
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governor. It is a massive reform of public sector unions in the state.
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This has been a policy priority of ours at JMI for the last five six
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years. The major thrust of the bill does three things, and this is
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important because we have a lot of public sector employees and we have a lot
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of unions information that's been paid exactly. So it eliminates dues collections by the
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public sector agency, so the unions will develop a plan for them to collect
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their own dues from members. They'll do a credit card swipe or online form.
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It ups the threshold for recertification from fifty percent to sixty percent, so
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if a bargaining unit doesn't have sixty percent of the potential members paying, they
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got a stand for reelection. Now they can still get reelected with a simple
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majority, but that's one of the cases there. It also requires each local
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union to get a certified financial audit annually, which was surprising to me because
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I didn't realize it wasn't already a requirement. So all common sense stuff.
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Unions are not going away. They will adapt, but they will have to
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do a lot of their own business on their own and be a lot more
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transparent. WFLA on your phone with the iHeart radio app and on hundreds of
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devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos, Yes and I Heearts
9:56
Radio Station VP of Policy with James Madison Institute, Salnuzo with US Morning Show
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twenty twenty three Legislative Review and look Ahead. It's so week eight. We're
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there, right, we're here. You'd mentioned that the union reform is perhaps
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the biggest in the country. Yes. Absolutely, It is the most transformational
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reform to public sector unions in the United States that we've been looking at over
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the last ten years, without question. What does that say that simply requiring
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the unions to be somewhere north of fifty percent and collecting their own dues is
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a massive reform. Yeah? Yeah, And that just strikes me as funny.
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And the Dems tried to make it out like it was the legitimately in
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committee and on the floor tried to make it out like it was the second
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assassination of MLK. They referenced that in objection to a common sense. Yes,
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public sector reformed. So all right, some other big news. Sure,
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on the economic development front, it looks like after a number of years
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of trying about the House Enterprise, Florida is going away. Is this a
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good or a bad thing? Both? Yeah, a little bit of both.
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They only had a twelve million dollars appropriation, but and they were a
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public private partnership. But the House has been saying they just do not provide
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enough ROI and the Department of Economic Opportunity could kind of absorb a lot of
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what they were doing. So the compromise on this one is the group is
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going to fold some of their operations into d EO and then close up shop
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entirely fair. Is it a fair argument that it was deplicative in some areas?
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Absolutely? Absolutely, Yeah, there were arguments to be made that they
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raised a lot of money from the private sector to do a lot of the
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things that they were doing to supplement that twelve million, but still it was
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a twelve million dollars appropriation. So however, on the flip side of that,
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the debate on Visit Florida looks like it might have been a compromise.
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Visit Florida is going to continue to receive state funding at the eighty million dollar
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level, so I think they were at seventy five this year, so they're
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bumping up a little bit. The governor wanted one hundred million, but they
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only came in at eighty. There was an attempt to make the local tourism
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boards pay the freight on visit Florida, but that's not going to happen.
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I like visit Florida for a whole lot of reasons. I think it's I
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think it's good for the state of Florida, absolutely, as do I and
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I think it only works. The model only works in two states, Florida
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and Hawaii. And that's just where statewide marketing of tourism. It's one of
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our big three. It should. You could argue that it is perhaps the
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driver, along with maybe tax policy, of the migration to the state.
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Oh. Absolutely, And it planned seeds. Yeah, it planned seeds.
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It gets people here, it provides a it's also the impetus for why we
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don't have a statewide income to because so much of the tax revenue is coming
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in for people who don't live here. And so when you're talking one hundred
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and twenty five hundred and fifty million people a year visiting, I get why
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we need it. So all right, give us kind of a lightning round
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check of the other bills that have passed for short preemption of local ordinances on
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landlords. So you had some cities and counties enacting local tenants Bills of Rights
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both chambers voted to preempt those. It's onto the governor. This is one
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I'm watching to see how he moves on it. He has vetoed some laws
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and prior sessions that in his mind went against local control, So I'm paying
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attention to that one. Social Media education a great bill from Senator Danny Burgess
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and Representative Yeager requiring school districts to offer either a short course or a seminar
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that outlines the benefits and risks of social media for kids. New tests for
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colleges and Bright futures. It looks like they're approving a modification to the college
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entrance applications by allowing the use of what's called the Classical Learning Test in lieu
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of the SAT, as well as allowing it for Bright Futures. CLT is
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based on the Classical Education model, which is a kind of Socratic method and
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the like great idea there we've talked about. The bill banning any form of
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gender affirming care and interesting development transpired last week. Both the American Academy of
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Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association. They actually endorse the procedures involved in this
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care, which grow kids, mutilating kids as well as like putting these chess
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things on them and all of that. The House Speaker authorized the Health Committee
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Chair Randy Fine to commence an investigation of their policies. Last week they issued
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subpoenas to both of those organizations to find out the underlying reasons why they're endorsing
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those things. So I am sorry to continuous exactly HGR eleven fift seven.
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It will be on the ballot for next year. It enshrines the right to
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hunt and fish in the Florida Constitution. Something will get to vote on SB
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seven seventy four, increasing financial disclosure requirements for the local officials, which brings
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them in line with state officeholders. And then a big state employee change five
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percent raise and boost to the pension benefits that reverse some rollbacks from about a
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dozen years ago right now retirement at twenty five years down from thirty years,
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and an age drop from sixty to fifty five. It also expands the window
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for the drop program to eight years from five, with a boost in the
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growth rate to four percent from one point four. So some good stuff for
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state employees who I mean arguably have gotten the short end of it over that
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dozen years back at it Morning show at Preston Scott sal News O JMI with
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us talking about the legislative session. All right, the budget, the budget,
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It is the only constitutional requirement. We say that, but for the
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sake of the hundreds of thousands of new people in the Sunshine State. Yeah,
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you have moved to a state that requires a balanced budget, and g
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look what happens. Yep. We pass a balanced budget every year and we
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have surpluses. Yes, we have surpluses. We have reserves, we have
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growing tax revenues despite not having a state income tax, and amazing how that
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works. Conservative policy does in fact work. So as we look at the
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budget and what you're hearing right now and conferencing, how are we it's coming
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along. They had said that they thought they would finish up by Saturday,
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but they didn't. But they have until Tuesday in order to get it to
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the chambers, to get it to siny die on Friday. What do you
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make of the set aside of three hundred and fifty million for school districts that
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I mean, I look at school choice and I say, well, if
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they're leaving the public school system, there's a good reason. So what's the
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three fifty four. Well, this is it's a couple of things. One
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I think is there's a policy argument for it, and then there's a political
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argument for it. On the policy side, you are going to, in
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fact, have a large number of parents now choosing to do something different with
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their child than the traditional public school that, given the way that we fund
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education in Florida, will have an impact on school district budgets. So they
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set aside three hundred and fifty million to kind of help in the initial phases
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of this. It's not recurring dollars. They don't get it every year.
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It's something that you know, if, as we see it, it will
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help glide path and allow for public schools not to just kind of fall off
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the reservation, so to speak, or fall off the cliff in terms of
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funding. By my math, that's an allocation of what about five million of
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school districts. Well, yeah, but it's going to it's not going to
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be dispersed that way, I understand. But but just from a rough perspective,
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so how far does that really go, Well, it's going to depend
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on how many how many students within each district are shifting and the procedures that
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d OE comes in for how to access that money. So a lot to
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be said for where that goes. Is it easy to misread bills that are
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remaining to say that, well, these must just be really contentious bills or
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overly complicated. In some cases they are, and in some cases it represents
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a difference of opinions between the chambers that they just haven't worked out yet.
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And in some cases it's just a timing issue. They got filed, they
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were going through committees later in the cycle, and so they were put in
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kind of the choreography for how all of these go. At the tail end,
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what are the bills left to be done? Sure, we've got Senate
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Bill seventeen eighteen, which is the immigration bill from Senator Angolia. It's been
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voted on by the full Senate, it's through all the House committees. But
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the House version does not have a provision in it making it a felony to
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knowingly transport an illegal immigrants. So there's a bit of a difference there.
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Yeah, that's a pretty big difference. YEP. So twelve fifty nine more
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money for charter schools made it through the House full chamber, and all of
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its Senate committee meetings were waiting to see on that one. I think that
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one's just a timing issue. It kind of came a little bit later.
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How is that separated from money for the school district because charter schools underneath the
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school district, it is, but they got a lower portion of the pot
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in the FEFP. So this kind of brings that, which is why a
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lot of those charter schools only pay eighty percent of what a teacher makes elsewhere.
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Correct. Okay, does that right that wrong? Or does it help?
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It helps it a lot, not necessarily one hundred percent yet all right.
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Trying to be responsive to listeners here sal question why police and fire unions
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were exempted from the union issue. It's a very good question. So police
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and fire are what they call special risk categories there, legislation impacting them is
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almost always done in a very separate bill that has to get reference to specific
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committees. And so for those reasons, as well as the way in which
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those collective bargaining agents bargain with their management, it's just a different animal.
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And so you could see a bill specific to them, it just wasn't one
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that they took up at this point. Send a bill fifteen fifty fifteen fifty
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the big PBM reform bill, meaning pharmacy benefit managers pass the Senate unanimously.
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It is a priority of the governor. I believe the House is going to
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take it up and send it to him. Did have to go through committees
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yet, Nope, they've passed all of its committees. It's just going to
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go. I think this one was a timing issue. Eight ninety two living
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wage preemption, living wage whatever, unanimous through the Senate as well. Houses
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looking to take it up. It would preempt any local governments from establishing living
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wage ordinances, which means if you want to do business with our county,
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you have to pay your employees twenty five thirty fifty dollars an hour. Things
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like that. Whatever. We were stupid enough to vote the fifteen INDs,
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So whatever we were. Senate Bill two fifty two ban on gender affirming care.
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Now each chamber has passed a version. The Senate President does not like
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the portion of the bill that bans private insurance companies from covering the care.
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In her mind, that's a bit of a potentially a litigation point maybe where
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it could be viewed as a kind of a government imposing an undue restriction on
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a private contract. So the governor, so an insurance company could say,
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yeah, we'll pay for it, but you wouldn't be able to do it
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in Florida. Correct, Correct? Okay. Nine thirty one the Higher Ed
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Diversity Bill. It would be a ban on any employee or speaker, requiring
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the university from making an employee or speaker sign onto a political loyalty statement,
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something along those lines. I think this one's a timing one has generally been
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a party line, of course, but didn't see any any kind of hurdles
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to this one. The one that I'm paying a lot of attention to now
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is two fifty two the ban on gender affirming care. Oh no, we
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talked about that one. I'm sorry. Twenty one the bathroom bill. That's
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the one where it's gone back and forth. I don't know that the Senate
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is really comfortable taking this one up why? And I don't know the Senate
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President has said she's not fully on board with it. I don't know what
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her misgivings are. Yeah, so I'm paying attention to. Is this something
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where we sometimes use the term one chamber rolling the other where they might attach
22:56
it to something else and force them to take it or they view something there.
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But I'm paying a lot of attention to see where this lands. I
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was going to ask, do you see the legislature having to take this issue
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up and expand it the general issue like Kansas is done and settling the whole
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thing, which I was listening to your segments articulating what Kansas did. And
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if this bill dies, I could absolutely see one or several lawmakers wanting to
23:25
take a look at the Kansas model legislation and see how they can comport it
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for Florida. What's a coin toss out there? Yeah, some stuff in
23:32
limbo. There's a bill related to credit card swipe fees. Now it's very
23:37
wonky and in the weeds, and if you're not paying a whole lot of
23:41
attention, you won't understand it. But it's been bouncing back and forth,
23:44
and big retailers love it, the banks and credit card companies and a lot
23:48
of small businesses don't. We've taken a position against the bill, so I'm
23:52
intrigued to see how it goes in the last week and then does the legislature
24:00
finally get data privacy across the finish line? Senate bill was amended heavily last
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week to address a lot of the concerns from the small business community. It's
24:08
on the calendar, but it could be amended further, and if it bounces
24:11
back and forth, it could die because of the timing. And then the
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last one that we're paying attention to is the big higher ed package nine nine
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from the Border Regents. It would it's kind of the anti d EI legislation.
24:26
It's been softened a bit, and so I think it's going to make
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it through, but still kind of a tolling cost coin toss because it's late
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in the game. You it happens if you turn that bill nine upside down
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though. Yeah, there was a House Bill six sixty six, and I
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said, if I ever were to be elected, which will never happen,
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I would automatically refuse to sponsor or vote for any House bill or send it
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Bill six six six. Thank you amen? Shape that amen? All right?
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Maybe next week it might be the week after. We're gonna recap this
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whole thing. Absolutely looking forward to it. Thank you. Always a pleasure.
25:03
Sald News with the James Madison Institute. He's vice president of Policy.
25:07
Learn more about them online. James Madison is it's James Madison dot org.
25:14
Right, you got it. Yeah, we'll have Salon next week or so
25:18
back and we'll put a nice bow on this whole thing and have some longer
25:22
discussions about all these issues.