Florida Legislature

An ambitious proposal to revamp the state's system for delivering mental-health services became a casualty of the Florida House's early exit from the Capitol, as the plan's Florida Senate sponsor Wednesday refused to along with changes made by House members.

The Florida Supreme Court has denied Florida Senate Democrats’ request to force the House of Representatives to get back to Tallahassee and finish the lawmaking session.

n a unanimous ruling, the justices said requiring the lower chamber to continue working until the end of the day Friday would provide no real benefit.

Florida Senate Democrats are suing the state’s House of Representatives for quitting before the lawmaking session was scheduled to end this week.

The House adjourned early this week amidst an impasse over health care coverage in the state.

Northeast Florida doctors are pleading with state officials to help pay for uninsured patients’ health care.

They raised their voices in Orlando Wednesday, as regulators held a public hearing on a request for more federal money.

This week, Florida House lawmakers went home from Tallahassee even though three days remained in the lawmaking session. For the first time in more than 40 years, a chamber quit early over a budget disagreement. The culprit: how to pay for uninsured people’s medical care, with a federal program set to expire in June.

 Updated 4/29 at 9:40 a.m.: 

The legislative session collapsed Tuesday amid an increasingly bitter budget fight over health-care funding, with the House abruptly adjourning and going home in a move that killed scores of bills and deepened the divide between the House and the Senate.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott filed suit against the federal government to try to stop the Obama administration from linking $2.2 billion in funding for health-care providers to a potential expansion of Medicaid.

The Senate unanimously approved legislation Wednesday revamping how local pensions for police officers and firefighters are funded, bringing closer to resolution a long-running debate over the retirement plans.

The bill (SB 172), which now heads to the House, cleared the upper chamber 36-0 after less than 10 minutes of debate. It relies on a deal struck between cities and unions last year &mdash one that cities have backed away from after the re-election of Gov. Rick Scott in November.

The Florida House on Tuesday joined the Senate in moving forward with a bill that would require a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions.

The full House is expected to vote Wednesday on the measure (HB 633), while the Senate version (SB 724) is poised to go to the Senate floor Thursday.

Like the Senate bill, which passed the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee on Monday, the House bill was amended to include exceptions for women who are victims of rape, incest, domestic violence or human trafficking.

Despite opposition from the governor's top elections official, legislation that would allow Floridians to register to vote online was sent to the Senate floor Thursday.

Meanwhile, the House delayed a floor vote on a similar measure because of a question about $1.8 million that would be needed to fund creation of the new high-tech application.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, in a 10-4 vote, backed a measure (SB 228) that would require the state Division of Elections to develop an online voter-registration application by Oct. 1, 2017, a year later than proposed earlier.

The stalemate between the House and Senate over billions of dollars in health-care funding deepened Tuesday, as the federal government suggested that the fate of a pool of money for hospitals and other medical providers was tied to the state's decision on Medicaid expansion.

Spirits aren't high on the future of powdered alcohol being mixed in Florida.

The Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee on Monday unanimously supported a measure (SB 998) that would prohibit the sale and possession of powdered alcohol throughout the state.

The effort to ban powdered alcohol comes shortly after the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the sale of a powdered alcohol called Palcohol by the privately held company Lipsmark LLC.

More than 7,500 St. Johns County residents have already voted by mail in special elections there. Early voting begins Saturday and runs until the day before Easter.

Lawmakers took steps Thursday that could cancel a fifth of the specialty license plates available in Florida but also advanced 26 more designs for motorists to pre-order.

House and Senate committees backed higher thresholds for plates to qualify to be produced and for the current 122 tags to remain on the road.

At the same time, the Senate Transportation and House Economic Affairs committees moved a wide range of tags toward pre-sale for Panhellenic organizations, non-profits, environmental endeavors and professional sports teams.

House members backed Gov. Rick Scott's push to reduce taxes on cell-phone bills and pay TV on Tuesday.

And they bettered the governor, by $17 million, in rolling out a $690 million tax-reduction package that offers a slew of sales-tax holidays and eliminating taxes on gun-club memberships, college textbooks, materials purchased at book fairs and vehicles purchased overseas and brought to Florida by military members.

Seeking to make Florida more "meaningful" in choosing a Republican presidential nominee, the Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to moving back the date of the state's presidential primary elections.

Senators, with little debate, unanimously backed a bill (HB 7035) that passed the House last week. It now goes to Gov. Rick Scott.

The bill would lead to the presidential primaries being held on the third Tuesday in March, which would be March 15 in 2016. Under current law, next year's primaries would be on March 1.

Following controversial presidential searches at some public universities, a Florida House panel Tuesday easily approved a bill that would offer confidentiality to candidates during the early stages of searches for new college leaders.

With only one dissenting vote, the House Higher Education and Workforce Subcommittee approved the measure (HB 223) by Rep. Neil Combee, a Polk City Republican who argued that the move would increase the pool of applicants to become president, provost or dean at public colleges or universities.

The city of Jacksonville could have to pay $3.3 million dollars to the family of a boy who was paralyzed by a falling tree limb four years ago. As the News Service of Florida reports, a state Senate committee approved a bill Thursday that would require the city to compensate the family of Aubrey Stewart. The bill’s sponsor, Rob Bradley (R-Fleming Island), said the city had received multiple complaints about the conditions of trees but did not take action before Stewart was injured.

A plan that would make changes to the management of the state's natural springs and address drinking-water issues across Central Florida and the flow of pollution in and out of Lake Okeechobee was approved Thursday by the House on the third day of the legislative session.

Calling on something he termed "Florida exceptionalism," Gov. Rick Scott used the annual State of the State address Tuesday to try to reinvigorate his legislative agenda after a difficult opening to his second term.

During the 21-minute speech, Scott pushed lawmakers to adopt his proposals to slash taxes, hold down the cost of higher education and boost public education spending to the highest per-student level in state history.

When Florida lawmakers return for session tomorrow, one issue they’ll wrestle with is local pension reform. Here in Jacksonville, pension debt is more than 40 percent unfunded. University of North Florida Professor Michael Hallett says part of the city’s problem stems from a state-imposed cap on local tax increases.

“The Police and Fire Pension Fund debt in Jacksonville is in part driven by a longer standing failure to pay into the Police and Fire Pension Fund at the levels that were agreed to contractually,” Hallett said. 

  Florida's university system wants state lawmakers to holster the idea of allowing guns on campus.

A joint statement from the university system's Board of Governors, university police chiefs and the 12 public universities expresses opposition to a legislative proposal (SB 176 and HB 4005) that would allow people with concealed-firearms licenses to carry guns at state colleges and universities.

A "child support-esque" formula could determine the amount of alimony divorcing spouses would receive under a radical overhaul of the state's alimony laws now in the works.

In contrast to hotly contested legislation that prompted an outcry from the National Organization for Women and pitted alimony-reform advocates against divorce lawyers two years ago — and ultimately resulted in a veto by Gov. Rick Scott — the new plan floated by House Rules Chairman Ritch Workman so far has the blessing of people on both sides of the issue.

Voters in Northeast Florida are heading to the polls today to choose Republican nominees for three legislative districts expected to be easily carried by the GOP in special elections in April.

The highest-profile race pits Rep. Travis Hutson (R-Elkton), Rep. Ronald "Doc" Renuart (R-Ponte Vedra Beach) and Flagler Beach Republican Dennis McDonald for the nomination in a Senate district vacated by Sen. John Thrasher (R-St. Augustine). Thrasher resigned from the Legislature last year to become the president of Florida State University, his alma mater.

Making good on a campaign promise, Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday he will ask lawmakers to provide the highest per-student funding for education in state history during the legislative session that begins in March.

Scott said his "Keep Florida Working" budget would include $7,176 per student, about $50 above the previous high in the 2007-08 budget year. That spending plan was approved before the financial crisis that caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

  TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Taxpayers are on the hook for at least $307,000 – and perhaps much more – to cover legal expenses in Gov. Rick Scott's repeated failed efforts to convince courts that a onetime campaign pledge to drug-test welfare recipients is constitutional.

A federal appeals court last week ruled that the state's mandatory, suspicion-less drug testing of applicants in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program is an unconstitutional violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.