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Florida's Legislative Session Recap and Preview · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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And we are here for the third hour of the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
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I'm Preston. That's Grant. Good morning, and again thanks for being
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our pals. We really appreciate it. Cannot say thank you enough. Wherever
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however you are listening to us, we greatly appreciate and do not take for
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granted the time that you offer us so heartfelt thank you for that. Monday
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on the program means during the legislative session, a weekly visit with our guest.
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He follows what's going on in the Florida State legislature more closely, more
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thoroughly than anybody I know. Salnouzo, Vice President Policy with the James Madison
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Institute. Hello, friend, Hello to you. Good to be with you.
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How significant is it that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stopped his campaign for president
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and is now I think fairly I can say this the full time governor of
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Florida. Oh, I think it's very important from the standpoint of what are
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his legislative priorities, because if you think back to his state of the state
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on the opening data session, it was very much a nationalized speech. Was
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something that was you know, kind of right in on the heels of Iowa.
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And so now the big question as he gets back in the saddle,
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his chief of staff is back with him, who had left to be on
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the campaign with him, is where is he going to spend his time,
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talent and treasures on policy and what is the agenda and what are the things
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that he is going to be lockstep with the chambers and what are some things
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that he might not see to eye with him on such as last week he
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came out pretty publicly and said there are a couple of things with respec to
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HB one which passed the House that he's got concerns with. Now, he
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was very careful. He did not say he was going to veto it.
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He actually said he I think he said something to where he shares the concern
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of, you know, kind of what social media's impact is on our on
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our kids. But he he articulated two specific things, one being the fact
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that there's a parental rights uh you know kind of it does butt up against
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parental rights a little bit. And then he kind of uh discussed the court
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and the idea that when you have a requirement to prove your age in order
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to open an account on a platform, that is got constitutionally protected speech.
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It's it's got a concern and he wants something. I think the term he
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uses he wants something to stick. He wants it to survive the court and
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to remind listeners that may not be aware of this is about social media platforms
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and access for kids sixteen and under or under sixteen. I believe it is
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fifteen and it is under the age of sixteen, so you can open every
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every platform that is covered under the bill would have to take a precaution and
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age verification system to ensure that nobody under the age of sixteen has an account.
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Broadly speaking, the House's position is that it's no different than alcohol or
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tobacco, and that the difference, though, is that this is a case
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where there are issues. We've identified the mountain that is kids on social media,
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Yes, but climbing that mountain, there are differences in how we think
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it should be done. Yeah. And so to the House's credit, to
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the Speaker's credit, they have taken a very consistent viewpoint that I think a
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lot of people in the public hold, and that is that despite its potential
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benefit, it's social media has become a platte It's weaponized. Yeah, it's
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become weaponized. It has become akin to tobacco and alcohol and gambling and these
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other things. Where As the Speaker and others, especially the bill sponsors,
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have said there is a compelling interest to the state in regulating. Now those
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words are very important because that is what the Supreme Court has said the state
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can do when they see a compelling interest, they can act. What else
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is on the governor's radar? Yeah, interesting one that I hadn't been paying
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attention to until the governor came out. There was a bill on using state
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funds to reimburse individuals for legal fees when they're kind of sued or defamed or
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when they're discriminated against for political means. Now everyone kind of jumped on this
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as as well, the states just looking to reimburse Trump for his legal fees,
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because that was kind of the next logical conclusion that they made. It
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was endorsed by CFO Patronis at least the bill and the Governor said in no
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uncertain terms on Twitter that it was not going to survive. As veto pen
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So I believe it was Senator Ileana Garcia who had sponsored the bill. She
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kind of said, all right, well we're going to hold off on this
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and kind of we may readdress later on, but not for the foreseeable future.
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He sell news. Oh, James Madison, Institute Vice president of Policy,
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I can't even believe I just said week three. Yeah, we're a
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third of the way through. That's crazy. All right, So what happened
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last week, Well, I want to revisit HB one because I do want
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to be clear on where the issue might be with the courts. So it's
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with and that's the parental or not. That's the social media thing. That
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is the ban on anyone under sixteen, okay, And it has to do
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with respect to the method for vera. So every single person will have to
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verify their age in order to keep or open their account, and they're going
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to have to use a third party to do that, and they're going to
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have to either submit their driver's license or a face scan or something along those
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lines. Now, based on what Arkansas passed, which was a little bit
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under, it wasn't a ban. It was parental consent with age verification that
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was enjoined immediately, and the court indicated it would be the government enacting a
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regulation limiting access to speech, which is where the concern among some are generating.
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Like I might say, great idea, it's just not going to survive
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a legal test. Yeah, And I think if the court hadn't done what
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it did in Arkansas, it would be clear sailing. This is the big
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concern that as you're putting all of your kind of your your emphasis on your
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biggest priority, HB one, you want to make sure that it's going to
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stick along with that HB three, which is the age verification for adult content.
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So if you've got a website that hosts pornography or gambling or alcohol or
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something along those lines, that's an age verification for there. That passed unanimously.
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So I expect that one to sail. I expect the governor to sign
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it. And it doesn't face the same potential legal hurdles. I don't necessarily
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believe it does, because a couple of other states have passed this and it
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hasn't had a peep out of the courts on it. Virginia, Louisiana.
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I think we're the latest ones to do this. Okay, tort reform always
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fun, Yeah, always fun, and there's more of it. So Senebill
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two forty eight it got a favorable hearing in its first committee. What it
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would do is it just medical malpractice rules and create caps on damages. It's
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notable because the last time this went through the legislature, which was years and
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years ago, the Florida Supreme Court struck it down. But that was a
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very different court than what we have now. Because the governor has named I
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believe it's four of the justices, and it's a six to one conservative originalist
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majority, so I think the court may be far more favorable to medmole lawsuit
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changes. The House companions haven't been heard yet, so I'm paying attention to
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see if they do move those. Okay, eleven seventy nine on the House
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side cracked down on third party financing of litigation. And this was a genesis
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from if you remember, Hulk Hogan sued the website Gawker for defamation and bankrupted
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Gawker. What many people don't know is that Hulk Hogan was financed by a
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billionaire named Peter Teal to file that who paid for all of his litigation expenses.
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And so this bill would say that Peter Teal couldn't do that anymore.
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I believe it places some restrictions on when that happens, some disclosure things,
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some transparency pieces. There may I'm not sure I have to read it if
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there's an outright ban on it, but it's one I'm paying attention to be
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interested in the tour system. Okay. HB forty nine. We've mentioned this
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a few times. It passed its last committee stop in the House. It's
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set for the House floor. It would loosen the restrictions for sixteen and seventeen
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year olds to work additional hours during non school time. The companion bill in
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the Senate got its first committee hearing Tuesday. I expect this one to continue
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to move. And one on Senator Collins, I want to highlight streamlining licensing
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for out of state healthcare providers, a few other occupational categories past easily.
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The reason I'm mentioning it is in prior years you'd have a lot of the
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trade associations opposing it. Not a peep out of them this year. Talking
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about the legislative session, that is. And the third week was last week,
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and so before we move ahead and look ahead to week number four,
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Salnuzo with us and we're talking about the rest of week three. Let's talk
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about Senate Bill four thirty six. It's an interesting bill, yeah, and
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it's one that it's kind of I'm pondering it because this is not an issue
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that JMI works in. It's so lea me personally kind of feeling a little
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flummoxed by it. It would provide it for a one stop website for pregnancy
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resources. So if you think about, you know, if you're a single
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mom, or you're younger, or you're a new parent and not knowing where
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things are that you can access. So I wanted to mention this one because
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it seems on the surface to be a no brainer policy and it's good government.
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But in its Senate committee it had three no votes, and one of
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those no votes was Senator Laura Book and her main effort at the same time
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that she's opposing this is to champion the Amendment to guarantee the right to abortion
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for any Floridians. So pro abortion, anti pregnancy, it's kind of it's
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just making me really really confused. Let me help. That's stupid. I
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mean, it is, Senator Book. If your people, if you're listening,
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that's just dumb. I don't pretend to know the motivations in there,
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But motivations don't matter. What matters is the vote or in this case,
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the lack of a vote, or whatever the case might be. All Right,
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what else? On healthcare? Health care? We had talked about Senate
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Bill sixteen hundred before the break. It's notable because a lot of the occupational
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categories in there are healthcare related and so doctors, nurses, antithesiologist the like.
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But you is there a lobby fighting this? No? And that was
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the point that I was thinking through is I can remember in years past when
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they would try to do less of a kind of recognition, but the lobby
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and special interests from the trade associations would always oppose it. There was not
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a peep out of it. This it tells me that the people in the
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profession have told their lobbyists enough, we need help. Well. And when
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you look at the numbers, and I actually testified in committee on this one,
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the shortages are in the thousands, depending on the role I think I
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remember, I think the stat was we are thirty first or thirty second,
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maybe it's even lower. In primary care physicians per capita, we're thirty eighth.
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Insurgeons per capita, And when you factor in the population growth of Florida,
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not only the growth, but the fact that two thirds of it is
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over the age of sixty. We are going to need more and more and
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more doctors. And so one of the things we can do is get them
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from other states, recruit them in. How do you do that? You've
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got to make the licensing plan streamline, all right? What else? You've
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got House Bill eleven seventy three from Rep. Cheney, which would adopt a
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new practitioner title for oral care along the same lines. We have shortages in
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dentists and whatnot. This would create dental therapists and it's basically more than a
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hygienist, less than a dentist, if you think about it, similar to
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a physician's assistant. It's a mid level care provider. About a dozen states
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have them. They help address some of the oral care shortages, especially in
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rural areas. And what can they do? What couldn't they do? And
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it's very clearly articulated in the bill. They can't do the root canals,
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they could do fillings, they could do minor extractions like non surgical extractions.
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The main focus of them is to really get people, especially younger people in
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the Medicaid arena that have not had any kind of oral care at all in
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years. Get them in the pipeline. It allows dentists to perform the higher
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level stuff that's really needed because those are causing major health issues as well.
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HB sixteen thirty nine would require burth certificates and driver's license in some other official
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documents to list an individual sex versus their gender. That past committee, it
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certainly brought out a lot of animated testimony and opposition. There's currently a Senate
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there isn't a Senate companion, but I'm paying attention because there may be a
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proposed committee bill this week or next. And then you've got Senator Bradley with
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eleven ZHO four requiring insurers to continue coverage on hurricanes damaged homes up to ninety
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days after the home repairs have been completed. It passed unanimously, but it's
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one of the first bills I've seen that goes more to insurance company practices versus
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the sparts and the litigation environment. So I'm kind of paying attention. Insurers
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don't like it because they're going to have to eventually pass along, and he
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actuarially increases down to premiums. So I'm looking and dissecting this one a little
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bit more ahead. Your sensey of sensibility, communicator of common sense amplified.
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It's The Morning Show with Preston Scott. Final two segments for this week with
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Salnuzzo of the James Madison Institute, where he serves as vice president of Policy.
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And so we come to the budget, the one thing they have to
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do, the one thing they have to do. And I meant to do
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this before, but I just forgot over the weekend. I wanted to look
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at it seemed like the spending plans this session were released a little earlier.
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I may be wrong on that one, but I'll take a look. But
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that each chamber unveiled their spending plans. Now these are very preliminary because they
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start in kind of appropriation, subcommittees and whatnot. The Senate has a figure
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of one hundred and sixteen billion dollars. The House is about three hundred and
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fifty million below that, which is typical. House has generally been just a
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little bit more conservative fiscally. But the unique thing about the Free State of
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Florida is both proposals are less than the existing year's budget, and that is
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incredibly notable. It is because I, well, nobody, I mean we
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I was listening earlier this morning and we're talking about kind of the even Jamie
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Diamond is championing the fiscal train wreck that the federal government is on, and
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you've got folks in states around the country dealing with massive budget gaps. California's
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falling apart. I think I read something about it was either Connecticut or Massachusetts,
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and here we are. We have no state income tax, we have
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a very light regulatory and tax system as it stands. Could probably carve property
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taxes out of that. But with that, we have a spending plan that
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is actually a real cut in spending for the state one year after another.
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Okay, so the key of this is going to be I had mentioned I
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think it was a couple of weeks back. You've got a lot of federal
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dollars that flow from DC. And I say federal, but they're tax dollars
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that flow from DC. I'm taking a look at how much of a component
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those play into this budget, especially in the Medicaid arena. Medicaid is grown
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in the state of Florida from about twenty eight to about thirty one thirty two
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percent of our state budget. That's not an unsizable figure. And so one
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of the things that I'm going to take a look at and maybe we can
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unpack, if not this session then later, is how it relates to what
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the Agency for Healthcare Administration is doing, which is, we have a waiver
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from the federal government to operate what's called a Medicaid managed care system. So
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all of the people in Medicaid in the state of Florida go into anhml,
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a private provider, which is very different than what other states do. The
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next couple of weeks, we're going to see those spending plans kind of coalesce
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into a formal budget that each chamber will vote on their own budget plan,
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and then they develop what's called the Conference committee, and that's it could be
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twenty thirty I forget how many from the House from the Senate. They all
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get together. Takes usually about seven to ten days. They work out the
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differences, and then they vote on a final budget that they send to the
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governor. Okay, all right, this week it brings us to the week
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ahead. Monday, We've got the House considering the Artificial Intelligence bill. It's
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moving quickly. It's getting its second committee hearing now. I've started to pay
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attention to this because the biggest issue in this and I really like the direction
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that Ret MacFarlane is doing because you have this growing industry of what they call
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deep fakes yep, and it's growing in the political arena, and so you
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have areas where a politician's voice, their likeness are being just created into something
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that you think is that is that person. Senate version is also coming up
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in committee Monday. I mentioned the licensing bill from Senator Jay Collins. It's
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getting its second hearing today. I'm paying a whole lot of attention to this
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because I want to see this one move, and the House and the Senate
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seem to be in more alignment than they have in in past weeks. Final
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segment with Sal sort of like my cousin VINNI, my buddy Sal here on
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the morning show. All right, so we're now to Tuesday. Tues expected
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tomorrow, So we've got the Senate is beginning to move the companion to Rep.
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Cheney's HB forty nine on the employment of minors, along with a bill
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from Senator Decegli that would allow some foreign trained professionals to apply their experience that
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they got in their foreign country for a degree if they want to get licensed
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in the state. So you have some licenses where it requires a higher education
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degree. You've got a person that may have been a practicing engineer maybe and
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I don't know if that's in the bill, but a practicing engineer has been
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an engineer for twenty five years is great at it moves to the United States,
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becomes a citizen, and now they're faced with, oh, I've got
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to get a degree from a US institution there. You know, there should
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be some kind of as that allows that experience to carry over. The Fantasy
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Sports Bill from Senator Travis Hudson. It's up in committee, and if it
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shows some signs of moving, I definitely want to take some time in a
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week ahead to unpack this one. I know there are tons of people that
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use fantasy sports platforms all over the place, and I have to read it
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in depth because there's some issues at how fantasy sports and I'm not talking about
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you get you know your friends together and do it on your own. We're
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talking about fan duel and the other online stuff and the regulatory touch that kind
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of ties them to gambling regulations versus not gambling regulations, and so I'm going
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to spend some time on that in the week ahead. One quick question is
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Senator Travis, the fantasy sports guy. I don't know that. I'd be
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curious to know. It might it might lead to his stance on this bill.
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I have no idea. We've also got the TikTok bill from Senator Gruiter's.
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It's going to require platforms owned by foreign adversaries, and that is TikTok.
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It's owned by the Chinese Communist Party or a company controlled by them,
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to disclose their algorithms and curation methods. And as our tech policy director was
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unpacking this, he said there were some concerns in the language about how much
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information and data we would be providing to TikTok. I'm going to get some
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some additional insight onto that one. A couple of weeks ago, we talked
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about Senator Corey Simon and the Senate's Education Deregulation Package. House Billed seventy thirty
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nine is the companion to that. It's on its last stop before the House
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floor, and then it'll begin to kind of align with the Senate. There's
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a first of a few long rules committee hearings as bills that require a rule
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stop get stacked up. And then on Wednesday, and again I think this
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is earlier than prior years, the full Appropriations and Fiscal Policy committees have their
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first marathon hearings, which go from like nine am to six pm. This
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is where if you have any bill that has what's called a fiscal note it's
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going to impact the budget, that bill has to go before these committees.
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It's typically the last stop before it goes to the full floor, and as
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you could imagine, a lot of stuff has a fiscal impact, and so
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it kind of backs up and you have these marathon hearing where you got to
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get those bills through really really quickly. All Right, sometime in the next
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couple weeks, I'd love to get your thoughts on what are the bills that
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each chamber wants to desperately get passed so much so they'll bargain to get it
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done. And I think it's a really cool topic to cover. I think
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we probably need maybe one week maybe two before a lot of those things come
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into play, because you still have proposed committee bills that can get filed and
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that'll be a tell from one or the other on how that moves. Always
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a pleasure, absolutely, I know. I wanted to see what you would
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say if I took care because I always say that I'm such a jerk.
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You're killing me. I took your clothes and glide to see what you do.
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Thanks for the time. Always a pleasure. Money, I knew it.
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There we go sal Noozo with me on the Morning Show with Preston Scott