TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Florida lawmakers are divided on whether to putmoney towarda Tampa Bay Rays stadium, how much to spend to prevent thousands from losing their AIDS drugs and what to do with Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 embattled State Guard.<\/p>\n
In initial budgets released by the House and Senate this week, senators would assign $50 million<\/a> to Hillsborough College to relocate buildings for a potential Rays stadium. The House, where no member requested the money, would spend nothing.<\/p>\n The House and Senate spending plans buck some of DeSantis\u2019 key priorities and come in less than the $117.36 billion he proposed<\/a> for the upcoming fiscal year. The House\u2019s budget comes in at $113.5 billion, while the Senate\u2019s is $115 billion.<\/p>\n Both chambers must negotiate an identical budget before they close the legislative session, which is set to end next month.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where the two chambers stand on major issues this session:<\/p>\n Lawmakers were blindsided last month when they heard that the Department of Health was removing thousands<\/a> of Floridians from its AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which provides life-saving medications.<\/p>\n The department blamed Congress for a sudden $120 million shortfall, but the Times\/Herald reported this week<\/a> that the department\u2019s own actions are crippling the program.<\/p>\n As lawmakers investigate, the House would spend $68 million to keep it going. The Senate would fund $118 million, ensuring that all current recipients would keep receiving their medications.<\/p>\n The state is projecting 33,000 fewer students enrolled in public schools in the next fiscal year, but an increase of 56,000 students receiving state-funded vouchersto pay for private schooling.<\/p>\n The House and Senate project the cost of the voucher program to rise to $4.5 billion, about $500 million more than the current year.<\/p>\n That amount does not include vouchers paid for by tax credit scholarships, which are outside the state budget.<\/p>\n Last month, the Senate passed legislation<\/a> calling for more controls over voucher spending, such as assigning a state ID number to all students, but the House has yet to take it up.<\/p>\n Overall, the House K-12 budget comes in at $30.3 billion, while the Senate sits at $29.9 billion.<\/p>\n The pot of money DeSantis has used since 2022 to respond to emergencies \u2014 including $573 million on immigration enforcement \u2014 is set to expire Monday.<\/p>\n Amid increasing scrutiny around the governor\u2019s spending, the House defied DeSantis\u2019 request to renew it.<\/p>\n But their proposed budget would still allocate $100 million for the next fiscal year, albeit with some limits. The fund would exist through 2030, but its use would be restricted to natural emergencies and require more oversight<\/a> by lawmakers.<\/p>\n The Senate, which passed a bill<\/a> this week renewing the fund, would assign $250 million.<\/p>\n Both chambers are aligned on DeSantis\u2019 new State Board of Immigration Enforcement, giving it five employees and $693,000.<\/p>\n DeSantis wants to expand the scope and size of New College of Florida by giving it the land, buildings and debt belonging to the University of South Florida\u2019s Sarasota-Manatee campus.<\/p>\n But so far, only the House is on board with the idea. The House proposal would also give New College $23 million initially allocated to the USF campus.<\/p>\n The Florida State Guard, the WWII-era unit revived by DeSantis in 2022, has been beset<\/a> by<\/a> scandals<\/a> since its first training class<\/a>. This year, State Guard members accused its director of budget overruns and using state planes to practice for his private pilot\u2019s license<\/a>. Another said he was fired after reporting safety concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n DeSantis wants to give the State Guard a $62 million budget and 47 employees next year. The Senate would keep its funding about the same as the current year: $34 million and 32 employees.<\/p>\n The House would eliminate all funding and positions.<\/p>\n Amid scrutiny<\/a> over DeSantis\u2019 spending last year, House lawmakers proposed creating a new Florida Accountability Office<\/a> reporting to the Legislature.<\/p>\n The office would have included the state\u2019s auditor general and in-house research arm<\/a>, among other units.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s House budget revives the idea of the the office and assigns it $53 million. The Senate, which did not pass the bill last year, doesn\u2019t include it.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, neither chamber is renewing DeSantis\u2019 Department of Government Efficiency task force<\/a>, which is set to expire July 1. And a proposal<\/a> by Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia to enshrine his \u201cFlorida Agency for Fiscal Oversight\u201d into law hasn\u2019t received a hearing in either chamber.<\/p>\n Times staff writer Lucy Marques and Times\/Herald staff writers Garrett Shanley and Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 Florida lawmakers are divided on whether to putmoney towarda Tampa Bay Rays stadium, how much to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,4215,9104,57785,6322,412,74629,74628,3815,14560],"class_list":{"0":"post-154994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-florida-senate","12":"tag-florida-state-capitol","13":"tag-house-and-senate","14":"tag-legislative-session","15":"tag-ron-desantis","16":"tag-senators","17":"tag-state-guard","18":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","19":"tag-the-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}