Florida Lawmakers Fail To Pass Fiscal Budget

The 2026 Florida Legislative session will end this Friday without a state budget being passed. The Florida Constitution requires lawmakers to pass a balanced budget every year. But right now, the House and the Senate are in a budget stalemate. Florida Democrats blame infighting between their Republican counterparts. This is supposed to be the last week of the 60 day legislative session. But once again, it looks like the budget won't be done on time. Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the governor's office. And yet they can't stop fighting to do anything serious to tackle the affordability crisis that Floridians are struggling with every day. We hear about this from all across the state. Floridians don't care about the culture wars. They do not care about Republican infighting, and they do not care who is running for what office next. They want their government to focus on improving their lives. With the Republican controlled House and Senate in a deadlock over a number of key proposals. We are now joined by a WGCU reporter and host, John Davis, to sort things out. John, thank you so much for joining us today. Of course, it sounds like lawmakers right now in Tallahassee, they are stuck on a budget and it will not pass correct by Friday. That's the one thing we know for sure. There's a 72 hour mandated cooling off period once a budget proposal is presented in order for a session to end on time, by this coming Friday. That would have had to have been introduced by Monday. That didn't happen. So we know for sure that we're not going to have a budget passed by the scheduled end of session this Friday. Now, lawmakers could go into overtime where they simply extend the session, or they could, you know, shut things down on Friday and then come back at some point before July 1st for a special session just to hammer out the budget. And again, this has to happen by July 1st. It's the only thing lawmakers are constitutionally mandated to pass. And if they don't pass it by July 1st, we will enter a state government shutdown, at least partially. And there are $1 billion off. Is that correct? Yeah. It hasn't really changed since the last time we spoke. The House and Senate budget proposals are about a billion and a half dollars off. And House Speaker Daniel Perez says this is an issue that is not budging on the Senate, as far as he's concerned, wants to spend more money than he's comfortable with. So again, that hasn't really changed since we last spoke. Is there any chance of any significant legislation still being passed before the session ends on Friday? Well, one significant piece that I think there is still a stand a chance of passing is, a bill, but sponsored by, Fort Myers Republican Representative Gina Persons. Malika. And this would enact tough new proof of citizenship requirements for voting. This could lead to eligibility questions for potentially thousands of voters. And the move is staunchly opposed by Democrats. But again, they really don't have enough cloud in either legislative chamber to keep anything from passing. And it's been a priority of Secretary of State Court Bird for a couple of years now. It would require proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration using specific documents like birth certificates, passports, naturalization papers. And it would restrict what IDs and that have been acceptable, as photo IDs at the polls in the past. Things like, student IDs for college students, far fewer college students these days actually have driver's licenses than did in the past. So you might be thinking that's not that big a deal. But for younger voters, it really could be. So again, that's still just a wait and see. It's passed in the House. But in these final three days of session, it could pass in the Senate. We just don't know yet. And what is the latest on this property tax relief that has taken so much of the focus of the of the legislatures this session so far? So this is one of the measures that has passed in the House. They passed a proposal that would, again, it would have to go before voters in November to actually take effect. But what it proposes is incrementally reducing non-school homesteaded property taxes over a ten year period until they're eliminated. Now, the Senate hasn't taken this up yet. So given that this has been priority legislation of the governor, I would not be surprised at all if we see yet another special session called Just to Deal with property taxes. And that's on top of the special session DeSantis has already called for late next month that would deal with congressional redistricting. That's exactly what I was going to touch on. We have this special session already set up. When does that start? That starts in late April. And again, that's just a short five day session, because congressional redistricting is the only thing that's going to be on their docket. What does all of this mean to the voters? Do you think voters are sort of losing their, I don't know, their focus. They're saying legislate. Our our legislators are not getting much done. It seems like in Tallahassee. Oh, yeah. Well, that's been the story of this session. You have bills like, the proposed AI Bill of rights. And, you know, that's been passed by the Senate, but it didn't go anywhere in the House. And it's been a back and forth like that with a lot of priority bills where one, chamber of the legislature is all in. They pass it on to the other chamber, and then it doesn't even get a committee hearing. And you had mentioned to me that, there is no extra pay for our lawmakers once they do go into special session. That's right. Most lawmakers make around a little less than $30,000 a year. So, you know, truly a service position. But if they end up going into overtime, they are still compensated them and their legislative aides. So the lawmaker plus 2 or 3 aides for things like meals, hotels and travel and a University of Central Florida political scientist, doctor Aubrey Jewett, estimates, and this is a conservative estimate, that that would cost taxpayers an additional $50,000 a day. Goodness, it seems like a lot of money when you look at it that way. It really is a shot on the bucket when you put that up against what they're dealing with, which is proposing a $100 billion budget. But again, to, you know, the average person just trying to make ends meet and especially with, you know, the affordability crisis being what it is today, it's the optics. It doesn't look good. All eyes on Tallahassee for sure. And we will be watching and tracking any updates. Thank you, John, for joining us today. Thanks.