Florida's Latest News

Senate passes health care ‘transparency’ bill as end of 2024 Session draws near

The bill is one of several proposals included in Senate President Kathleen Passidomo's Live Healthy initiative, but was championed by House Speaker Paul Renner.

The Senate passed a health care transparency bill and priority of House Speaker Paul Renner unanimously and has sent it to the House for final passage.

It was one of the last bills Senators passed before the chamber adjourned for the evening. The Senate will reconvene at 10 a.m. for what promises to be a relatively light final day. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo earlier predicted the Senate would adjourn Sine Die and end the Session by noon.

HB 7089 increases patient access to health care cost and coverage information from hospitals and insurers for nonemergency services and procedures. It requires hospitals to provide a good faith estimate of services to patients — and their insurance companies — for scheduled services and procedures.

Legislature passes bipartisan ‘Safe Waterways Act’ to streamline contamination reporting

Florida lawmakers are sending a bill to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk designed to streamline the state’s reporting process following the contamination of public waters.

The bill (HB 165), aptly titled the “Safe Waterways Act,” would create a statewide system under the Department of Health (DOH) to send warnings and issue beach, canal and pool closures within 24 hours of a safety issue.

It also establishes an official process for city and county governments to report water problems to DOH and to display health advisory signage at affected areas.

Moreover, the bill requires the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to display its own health advisory signs for state-owned beach waters and public bathing places if they contain elevated levels of fecal coliform, E. coli or enterococci bacteria, which all typically come from sewage, fertilizer runoff and livestock byproducts.

Legislature approves bill creating harassment-free zone around first responders

After years of failed attempts, South Florida lawmakers have successfully passed legislation to enable police, firefighters and paramedics to establish a harassment-free zone around themselves while working in public.

Supporters have long maintained that it’s needed, citing a rise in violence and distrust of police and difficulties emergency medical technicians sometimes encounter at large-scale events.

Critics of the bill (SB 184), including a majority of County Commission members in Miami-Dade who voted against a 2021 resolution to support it, say it’s a veiled attempt to stop citizens from filming cops behaving badly.

The bill’s sponsor, Miami Springs Republican Sen. Bryan Ávila, reminded his colleagues before a 39-1 vote for the measure Thursday that nothing in the legislation prohibits recording police. That, he said, is a “constitutionally permissible” action.

Measure loosening rules for public schools clears Legislature

A package of education legislation that frees public schools from several existing requirements will next head for the Governor’s desk after unanimous House and Senate support, but without provisions that grabbed headlines at its introduction.

The bills represented an effort to allow public schools to compete with their private and charter school counterparts on a more even playing field. Fewer rules for public schools were part of the bargain a few Democrats struck in return for supporting universal school choice that passed last year, which allows all families to use tax-funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition.

These bills — at first more than 200 pages of legislation — would, with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature, overhaul requirements for teacher training, governance issues and student promotion requirements. It was dubbed “Learn Local.” And it’s just the beginning of thinning the thick stack of rules that public schools must comply with, according to Senate President Kathleen Passidomo of Naples, who made school deregulation one of her top priorities.

“The result is a tremendous win for Florida’s traditional public schools as Florida begins the process of reevaluating what level of state oversight is necessary in an environment of universal school choice,” Passidomo said in a prepared statement released upon Wednesday’s Senate approval of the bills, which were consolidated from three bills to two, SB 7002 and SB 7004.