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With the clock ticking, Florida budget negotiations continue

To borrow from an old song, Florida's legislative leadership is dancing in the dark, unseen by the public as they negotiate differences in a proposed state budget for 2026-27.

Senate Appropriations chair Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater, and House Budget chair Lawrence McClure, R-Dover, have been out of the news and made no public comments in the two weeks since the Florida Legislature adjourned their regular session without a spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1.  

It's the only bill lawmakers are constitutionally required to approve, and it pays the bills for Florida to educate its children, care for the elderly and needy, and protect clean water and air. The individual proposals from the House and Senate are about $1.4 billion apart: The House wrote a $113.6 billion spending plan, while the Senate’s is $115 billion. 

Lawmakers have until June 30 to work out their differences. If they don’t, state government shuts down, meaning non-essential services will be suspended and many state workers will go without pay, state parks will be closed, and transportation projects will come to a screeching halt. 

From elections to redistricting, Jenna Persons-Mulicka’s footprint grows in the House

Fort Myers Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka emerged from the 2026 Session with high-profile policy wins on election integrity and efforts to curb foreign influence.

Now in her sixth year in the Legislature, Persons-Mulicka has carved out a policy portfolio focused on election law, government accountability and state security, while also holding one of the House’s most influential budget posts as Chair of the PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee and serving on the House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting.

“I’m proud that I had the opportunity to work on many pieces of significant legislation that I think will impact our state for generations to come,” Persons-Mulicka said. “Everything I work on, I look at, ‘How will this bill make our state better for the next generation?’ As a mom of a 2-year-old and a 22-year-old stepson, it is incredibly important to me to not only have a vision for the present but a vision for the future.” 

Persons-Mulicka sponsored a sweeping election package (HB 991) aimed at tightening voter identification standards and expanding citizenship verification requirements. The proposal, which ultimately passed after the House agreed to a Senate rewrite, reflects a yearslong focus for Persons-Mulicka on election law.

‘Leaders in the world’: Byron Donalds outlines ambitious education vision

Gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds moved to the state for his higher education at Florida State University. And as he prepares to potentially lead the state, he sees education as paramount to its future.

Central to that is the acquisition of basic skills from “pre-K through 20.”

“Our goal is that every child in our state masters math, reading and writing by the time they graduate high school. Because the economy of the future is going to be even more dynamic than the economy that we know today. The economy of the future is going to be much more based upon information and leveraging information than it is today,” Donalds said.

“And for our children in Florida, for them to be the leaders in the world, they are going to have to graduate with a robust liberal arts education based in cultural literacy and mastery of mathematics, of reading, and then being able to communicate in writing to their fellow men, to their community. And they’re not going to be able to rely on ChatGPT to do it.”

Donalds, a Congressman from Naples, argues that “it is now time to relook at how we not just grade our schools, but how we communicate to parents, what the various schools in the state of Florida bring to the table — how they’re going to prepare their children to be excellent, how they’re going to prepare their children to be able to have the skills or the credentials or the academic knowledge to make them economically viable in the world that they are going to inherit.”

Gov. DeSantis trying to figure out ‘timing’ of property tax phaseout

Gov. Ron DeSantis reveals that one of the hang-ups in introducing his proposal to end homestead property taxes is when the relief would actually take effect.

“I think the question is timing. How quickly can you get to where your personal residence is excluded from property?” DeSantis said on “Hang out with Sean Hannity.”

While some legislative leaders have said DeSantis wants to wait until the last possible moment to roll out the proposal so people don’t have time to mount opposition, these comments suggest that months after he first pitched the idea, DeSantis is still workshopping its components and can’t figure out when to make it take effect. That’s assuming the Legislature puts it on the ballot and voters support it sufficiently.

DeSantis has floated the idea of the state subsidizing the mere “budget dust” of what would have been property tax collections for 32 of the state’s 67 counties, an idea that incoming Speaker Sam Garrison says he opposes, suggesting that whatever Special Session is called for this concept will have some give and take and drama in the final product.