The 2021 legislative session ended Friday with a conventional hanky-dropping ceremony within the fourth-floor rotunda of the Florida Capitol.
Lawmakers took up a variety of points throughout the 60-day session, together with passing a price range for the fiscal 12 months that may begin July 1.
Listed below are 10 huge points from the session:
BUDGET: Buoyed by billions of {dollars} in federal stimulus cash and rebounding state tax revenues, lawmakers handed a document $101.5 billion price range for the upcoming 12 months. The price range consists of things like bonuses for first responders, offering companies to extra folks with developmental and mental disabilities and addressing results of rising sea ranges. Additionally, lawmakers scrapped proposed cuts in Medicaid funding for hospitals and nursing houses.
COVID-19: Lawmakers handed a measure geared toward shielding companies and health-care suppliers from lawsuits associated to folks getting sick or dying from COVID-19. Additionally, they authorised making everlasting a ban on COVID-19 vaccine “passports.” Gov. Ron DeSantis in early April issued an govt order to ban companies from requiring folks to indicate they’d been vaccinated to achieve entry — the difficulty that has change into often known as COVID-19 passports.
EDUCATION: As a part of a greater than two-decade effort by Republicans to increase college alternative, lawmakers handed an overhaul of school-voucher packages. Partly, the plan would enhance an earnings threshold so {that a} household of 4 making practically $100,000 a 12 months might qualify for vouchers. In larger training, the Senate thought-about controversial adjustments within the Brilliant Futures scholarship program earlier than largely backing away amid an outcry from college students and different opponents.
ELECTIONS: Regardless of fierce opposition from Democrats, the Republican-controlled Legislature handed a wide-ranging elections invoice that features putting new restrictions on voting by mail. Supporters mentioned the invoice, which addresses points akin to the usage of drop packing containers for mail-in ballots, is required to make sure election safety and integrity. However Democrats contended that it’s designed to position limitations to voting and likened it to measures geared toward Black voters within the Jim Crow period.
INSURANCE: After years of debating the difficulty, lawmakers authorised ending Florida’s no-fault auto insurance coverage system. Underneath the invoice, motorists would not be required to hold personal-injury safety, or PIP, protection. They must carry bodily-injury protection. Additionally, lawmakers authorised adjustments within the property-insurance system, together with permitting bigger annual fee will increase for patrons of the state-backed Residents Property Insurance coverage Corp.
PROTESTS: DeSantis rapidly signed a controversial law-and-order measure that was sparked by nationwide protests final 12 months after the demise of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The legislation creates a brand new crime of “mob intimidation,” enhances riot-related penalties and makes it more durable for native officers to scale back spending on legislation enforcement. However opponents mentioned the measure is rooted in racism and would give police an excessive amount of leeway to arrest peaceable protesters.
SOCIAL MEDIA: After former President Donald Trump was blocked from Twitter and Fb early this 12 months, Republican lawmakers handed a plan to crack down on social-media firms. The plan, a precedence of DeSantis, consists of barring social-media firms from eradicating political candidates from the businesses’ platforms and threatens hefty fines. Critics questioned the invoice’s constitutionality and described it as a “huge authorities” transfer.
TAXES: In a significant win for enterprise teams, lawmakers handed a plan that may require out-of-state on-line retailers to gather gross sales taxes on purchases made by Floridians. The roughly $1 billion a 12 months generated by the change will likely be used to replenish a depleted unemployment belief fund. Later, will probably be used to offset a minimize in a industrial hire tax. Florida companies have lengthy argued on-line retailers loved a bonus as a result of they didn’t acquire gross sales taxes.
TOLL ROADS: Two years after then-Senate President Invoice Galvano pushed via a legislation to construct and increase toll roads, lawmakers largely scrapped the plan throughout this 12 months’s session. That included nixing the concept of constructing a toll street from Collier County to Polk County. Lawmakers, nevertheless, determined to maneuver ahead with tasks akin to extending Florida’s Turnpike west from Wildwood to attach with the Suncoast Parkway.
TRANSGENDER ATHLETES: After the difficulty appeared useless within the Senate, lawmakers within the last days of the session handed a invoice that might ban transgender feminine athletes from competing on high-school women’ and faculty ladies’s sports activities groups. Whereas invoice supporters mentioned transgender feminine athletes might have a bodily benefit, opponents mentioned the invoice targets youths already in danger for suicide, ostracism and bullying.
9(MDAyNDY5ODMwMDEyMjg3NjMzMTE1ZjE2MA001))
