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10 big issues from Florida’s 2024 legislative session

The 2024 legislative session ended Friday with an annual hanky-drop ceremony in the rotunda between the House and Senate chambers. Here are snapshots of 10 big issues from the session:

Budget: Lawmakers passed a $117.46 billion budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which will start July 1. The budget includes such things as increased funding for public schools and pay raises for state employees. A related tax package includes a series of sales tax “holidays.”

Dozier students: Decades after they suffered abuse, former students of the shuttered Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna and another reform school in Okeechobee will receive compensation from the state under a $20 million program approved by lawmakers.

Education: In a fiercely debated issue, lawmakers passed a measure designed to keep “identity politics” out of teacher preparation programs. They also approved a bill that would allow volunteer chaplains in schools and a plan to ease regulations on school districts.

This spring break, remember: Florida is for sharing

The mood here has been hostile lately, hasn’t it? By here, I mean Florida. By lately, I mean as far back as memory can reach before blacking out for self-preservation.

Florida’s lawmakers are routinely hostile to the state’s own residents. Non-Floridians are hostile to Floridians. Now comes the season for Floridians to be hostile to nonhostile non-Floridians. Follow? No? It’s like being caught in an episode of “Real Housewives” with no safe word. So much pinot grigio and sun poisoning.

The heightened party awareness begs the question: Will spring breakers iced out of Miami flood Tampa Bay?

Well, we don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone used to the singular thrills of South Beach finding us a sexy enough replacement, even with this area’s profound increase of neon signs in restaurants. But we’re going to get people. We’re already getting people. Tampa International Airport broke its single-day passenger record at the end of February and is prepping for as many as 100,000 passengers every day in the coming weekends.

Legislature locks out bills to cap rent increases, require AC in apartments

‘We need to find a happy medium.’ Twin bills aimed at giving renters a leg up in an increasingly landlord-friendly environment got locked out of the legislative process this year.

As written, the measures (SB 64, HB 31) would have restricted rent hikes to once a year and capped the annual increase at 30% of the existing rate. The bills would also have added air conditioning units to the list of things landlords must provide to tenants.

No such obligation currently exists in state statutes despite past efforts to mandate the “no-brainer” provision; however, there is a requirement that landlords provide renters with heat during winter. Tamarac Sen. Rosalind Osgood and Palm Beach Rep. Jervonte “Tae” Edmonds, both Democrats, sponsored the bills, which went unheard in both chambers of the Legislature.

Osgood told Florida Politics last year that the changes the legislation proposed were “reasonable” and that lawmakers need to look at “housing as a human right.” “As legislators, we need to find a happy medium,” she said. “If property owners continue to raise prices of rent and people can’t afford it, it’s going to create more homelessness.”

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation, gender ID under ‘Don't Say Gay' settlement

Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don't Say Gay.”

The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves as LGBTQ+ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms.

Other states used the Florida law as a template to pass prohibitions on classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina are among the states with versions of the law.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn't prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn't apply to library books not being used in the classroom