Weekly Roundup: ‘Long and Winding Road’ in the Rearview

By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — House and Senate leaders brought the gavel down on the 105-day legislative session before midnight on Monday, celebrating with the traditional hanky drop signaling a wrap to their work.

Attention now is focused on which items in the $115.1 billion state spending plan, which took 45 days longer than regularly scheduled to patch together, will survive Gov. Ron DeSantis’ veto pen.

SINE SIGH

“Here we are at the end of the long and winding road,” House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, opined as the House session drew to a close on Monday.

The budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, which begins July 1, stands at about $3.5 billion smaller than the budget for the current fiscal year and weighs in a little leaner than the $115.6 plan the governor proposed in early February.

Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Miami Republican who chairs the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, described the spending plan as “lean yet strategic.”

Lawmakers used the budget and linked bills to pay down state debt and to give most state employees pay raises.

The only dissenting votes on the budget were cast by Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, and Rep. Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami. While she voted for the budget, Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said it represented “a lot of missed opportunities” for working families.

Lawmakers also approved a $1.3 billion package of tax cuts, dominated by the elimination of a commercial-lease tax that has long been a target of business lobbyists.

Some of the heaviest debate Monday came on bills linked to the budget, including on what is known as an implementing bill (SB 2502). Democrats criticized part of that bill that could lead to the governor’s Office of Policy and Budget reviewing the budgets of local governments.

Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, asked if the governor would “send a bunch of 20-year-old bros” to review local governments. But Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Sunny Isles Beach lawmaker who has no party affiliation, backed the measure.

Cities in Pizzo’s district are “blowing untold amounts of money on really stupid things. On trips all over the world. On productions and shows,” he said.

Lawmakers did not pass property-tax rebates championed by DeSantis or reduce the overall sales-tax rate as sought by Perez. But Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, and Perez said cutting property taxes remains a goal that lawmakers will revisit during the 2026 session.

IN WITH THE NEW

DeSantis’ effort to reshape higher education continued to advance this week, as his allies took over the helms of three universities and a state college.

The state university system’s Board of Governors on Wednesday signed off on former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez as president of Florida International University, Marva Johnson as president of Florida A&M University and Education Commissioner Manny Díaz Jr. as interim president of the University of West Florida.

Nuñez, who stepped down as lieutenant governor to become interim FIU president in February, is getting a base salary of $925,000.

Díaz, a former state legislator from Hialeah who has served as education commissioner since 2022, has indicated he’s interested in a permanent position at the Pensacola university.

Johnson, whose base salary will be $650,000 a year, was a Charter Communications executive and former chairwoman of the State Board of Education.

Members of the audience at the board meeting at Florida Atlantic University booed when her nomination was introduced.

“As students, as primary stakeholders … we are very concerned about the future of our university,” FAMU student Devin Nobles Jr. told the board. “The candidate does not meet the qualifications as set for us by our own presidential search committee.”

Board of Governors member Alan Levine defended Johnson, saying she demonstrated “resilience and spine” amid the public attacks.

A day earlier, Eric Hall was named president of Pasco-Hernando State College. Hall, who had been serving as interim president, was a senior chancellor at the Florida Department of Education before being appointed by DeSantis in 2021 to lead the Department of Juvenile Justice.

OUT OF ORDER

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on Tuesday found Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in civil contempt because of a letter he sent in April to police after she ordered a halt to enforcement of a new state immigration law.

The decision came after a series of events that started April 4 when Williams issued a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the law, which passed during a February special legislative session and created state crimes for undocumented immigrants who enter or re-enter Florida.

“Uthmeier’s role endows him with a unique capacity to uphold or undermine the rule of law, and when he does the latter by violating a court order, the integrity of the legal system depends on his conduct being within the court’s remedial reach,” Williams wrote in a 27-page decision.

The Florida Immigrant Coalition, the Farmworker Association of Florida and two individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit on April 2, contending, in part, that the law violates what is known as the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.

In issuing a preliminary injunction, Williams said the state law likely was preempted by federal immigration authority.

Uthmeier has argued that the temporary restraining order — and a longer-lasting preliminary injunction issued later — should only apply to him and local state attorneys because they were the named defendants in the underlying legal challenge to the law (SB 4-C).

“I think she’s overstepped her bounds,” Uthmeier said during an interview on Fox News. “But if being held in contempt is the price to pay for standing on principle and standing on the law, then so be it.”

DRILLING INTO DRILLING

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Monday denied a permit for Louisiana-based Clearwater Land & Minerals Fla. to drill for oil near the Apalachicola River.

The ruling upheld recommendations of an administrative law judge and gave a temporary victory to environmentalists and Northwest Florida residents.

While Clearwater is expected to appeal, critics of the permit now await DeSantis’ action on legislation (HB 1143) that would effectively prevent drilling within 10 miles of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve.

The bill was delivered to DeSantis on Wednesday.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Florida lawmakers finalized a $115.1 billion state spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “We want to make sure we don’t create sticker shock for students that are here currently.” — State university system Board of Governors member Alan Levine, referring to plans that will allow universities to raise tuition for out-of-state students by 10 percent this fall and impose another hike next year.