The most important vote of the session

The Florida Senate pulled a bait-and-switch to help the Big Business lobby screw working Floridians.

Photo credit: Urban Tallahassee

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Two weeks into this year’s session of the Florida Legislature, one of the Big Business lobby’s top priorities seemed to be in trouble.

Republican leaders in the Florida House of Representatives were muscling a bill through their chamber that would, among other things, stop cities and counties across the state from enforcing local laws that require government contractors to pay higher wages and businesses with outdoor workers to follow heat-safety rules.

But the legislation — House Bill 433, which records show was written at least partly by lobbyists for the Florida Chamber of Commerce — faced a more difficult path forward in the Florida Senate.

To have any hope of passing, the Senate version of the bill first had to clear the chamber’s Commerce and Tourism Committee, where Republicans held a slim, 4-2 majority. And one of the Republican members was Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez of Miami, where more than 28,000 workers were facing potential pay cuts under the bill. Rodriguez is also one of four Republican senators in Tallahassee elected to swing districts with help of spoiler-candidate schemes orchestrated by GOP political strategists using Big Business money.

Even if Senate Bill 1492 somehow survived that stop, it would then have to get through the Senate’s Community Affairs Committee. And the chairperson of that committee — the person who, at least ostensibly, decides which bills to put on the agenda and which to let die without a hearing — was Sen. Alexis Calatayud, another Republican from Miami sitting in a possible tossup seat.

So the Senate sponsor — Sen. Jay Trumbull (R-Panama City) — offered a compromise. He agreed to remove the part of his bill that would have wiped out living wage laws in places like Miami. The scaled-back version of the bill would only stop communities from establishing their own heat-protection rules, which wasn’t something that any city or county had done yet (though Miami has been considering one).

“I felt that for our purposes— in this committee, on this particular bill, today — that it would be better just to have us just talk about the heat issues in the bill,” Trumbull told the committee that day.

The compromise was enough to get SB 1492 through the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee by a single vote.

The compromise was also enough to get the bill onto the agenda of the Senate Community Affairs Committee — where it once again survived by a single vote.

The compromise was also a fraud.

Because seven weeks later — on the final day of the Legislature’s 60-day session — Republican leaders in the Senate decided to take up the House version of the bill anyway. Just two hours before gaveling this year’s session to a close, the Florida Senate voted 24-15 to pass HB 433, which, though it had been tweaked, largely resembled the legislation that senators had seemingly abandoned before.

(The House bill is actually even worse for workers, because it would also prohibit local communities from passing “fair work week” laws that require businesses to give hourly workers advance notice of their weekly schedules.)

The bait-and-switch ultimately accomplished two goals for Senate Republican leaders.

It helped them sidestep a couple of tough committees in order to pass a priority bill for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which records show gave more than $400,000 last year to a fund controlled by Senate GOP leadership.

But it also helped them protect their potentially vulnerable incumbents. Because both Rodriguez and Calatayud were ultimately allowed to vote against the bill — but only after their votes no longer mattered.

Billtrack

In honor of Capitol Update, here’s a look at some of the bills that passed the Florida Legislature during the final week of the 2024 session. All of these bills now go to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who can sign them into law, veto them, or allow them to become law without his signature.

• House Bill 3: The bill would ban teenagers under the age of 14 from certain social media platforms, as well as 14- and 15-year-olds unless they have permission from their parents. Passed the House 109-4 and the Senate 30-5. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 49: The bill would loosen child-labor laws and allow businesses to employ teenagers for longer hours, primarily on the weekends and over the summer. Passed the House 76-33 and the Senate 27-11. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 87: The bill would allow people to shoot black bears if they feel threatened. Passed the House 83-28 and the Senate 24-12. (House vote; Senate vote)

• Senate Bill 280: The bill would limit the power of cities and counties to regulate homes rented out on platforms like Airbnb. Passed the House 60-51 and the Senate 23-16. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 433: The bill would erase local “living wage” laws beginning in fall 2026, prevent local communities from passing “fair work week” or “predictive scheduling” laws, and block local communities from setting heat-protections standards for businesses with employees working outside in extreme heat. Passed the House 74-36 and the Senate 24-15. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 549: The bill would impose longer prison sentences on shoplifters. Passed the House 83-27 and the Senate 36-3. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 601: The bill would limit the power of cities and counties to independently investigate and discipline police misconduct. Passed the House 81-28 and the Senate 32-0. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 917: The bill would allow homebuilders to employ more 16- and 17-year-old teenagers on residential construction sites. Passed the House 105-3 and the Senate 32-0. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 931: The bill would allow school districts let religious chaplains counsel students in public schools. Passed the House 89-25 and the Senate 28-12. (House vote; Senate vote)

• Senate Bill 1084: The bill would ban the sale of lab-grown meat in Florida and prevent local governments from regulating electric vehicle charging stations. Passed the House 86-27 and the Senate 26-10.  (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1285: The bill would lower the standards to become a teacher in a classical school and impose new limits on the ability of people to challenge books in public schools. Passed the House 84-29 and the Senate 28-11. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1291: The bill would extend Florida’s “Stop Woke Act,” which sets limits on the teaching of racism or sexism, to education-preparation courses. Passed the House 81-31 and the Senate 28-12. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1347: The bill would allow consumer loan companies that target lower-income borrowers to charge higher interest rates. Passed the House 104-10 and the Senate 21-18. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1365: The bill would effectively make it illegal for homeless people to sleep on public property in Florida, unless they are inside a state-sanctioned camp. Passed the House 82-26 and the Senate 27-12. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1451: The bill expands last year’s Senate Bill 1718 by prohibiting local governments from recognizing identification cards issued by nonprofits that provide community IDs to undocumented immigrants. Passed the House 81-32 and the Senate 28-9. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 1503: The bill would allow unregulated surplus lines insurance companies to takeover policies covering second homes from state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Passed the House 113-0 and the Senate 40-0. (House vote, Senate vote)

• Senate Bill 1628: The bill would expand last year’s Senate Bill 170 by empowering people and businesses to block new land-development restrictions set by local governments. Passed the House 84-30 and the Senate 30-1. (House vote, Senate vote)  

• House Bill 1645: The bill would reduce regulations on natural gas pipelines, prohibit offshore wind energy, and erase most mentions of climate change from state law. Passed the House 81-29 and the Senate 28-12. (House vote, Senate vote)

• Senate Bill 1746: The bill would expand last year’s Senate Bill 256 by imposing more regulations on some public employee unions but also expanding the number of unions that are exempt from those regulations. Passed the House 77-36 and the Senate 21-14. (House vote, Senate vote)

• House Bill 5001: The bill would set a $117.5 billion state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Passed the House 105-3 and the Senate 39-0. (House vote, Senate vote)

• House Bill 5003: The bill would cut tolls for commuters and prevent local communities from imposing restrictions on gas-powered leaf blowers. Passed the House 105-3 and the Senate 39-0. (House vote; Senate vote)

• Senate Bill 7014: The bill would weaken enforcement of state ethics laws by only permitting complaints based upon personal knowledge of a violation and prohibiting local ethics agencies from initiating their own investigations. Passed the House 79-34 and the Senate 26-4. (House vote; Senate vote)

• House Bill 7073: The bill would reduce taxes and assessments on homeowner and flood insurance policies for one year, reducing the average homeowner policy by about $55. Passed the House 110-0 and the Senate 38-0. (House vote; Senate vote)