The Florida Senate and House have released their budget proposals.<\/p>\n
And there are some big differences as the negotiations between the chambers begin.<\/p>\n
A significant divide involves the governor\u2019s emergency fund.<\/p>\n
The House wants to put guardrails on the fund. Lawmakers created the Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund in 2022 and have put<\/a> nearly $5 billion in it.<\/p>\n Gov. Ron DeSantis has drawn from it to deal with natural disasters like hurricanes but also to pay for immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n That spending, like for the so-called Alligator Alcatraz<\/a> detention center in the Everglades, has generated widespread debate.<\/p>\n A Florida House committee approved limits, PCB TED 26-02<\/a>, on Monday to restrict the use of the money only to natural disasters and to create more legislative oversight.<\/p>\n “We’re just putting some guardrails on the fund to assure some accountability and transparency,\u201d said Rep. Philip \u201cGriff\u201d Griffitts, R-Panama City Beach, who presented the bill. \u201cThat’s what we ask our people to do at the local level, we ought to do it here at the state level.”<\/p>\n The House wants to put $100 million more dollars into the fund. The Senate is offering $250 million with no guardrails<\/a>.<\/p>\n DeSantis wants $500 million.<\/p>\n Griffitts still emphasizes his view that \u201cwe have a governor who has performed amazingly well during natural disasters and man-made disasters, and we’re here to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n While House Republicans and Democrats may be aligned on their belief in guardrails, they certainly dispute the praise.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we’ve seen is exactly what Democrats predicted,\u201d said Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been wasteful spending over half a billion dollars on immigration enforcement that the federal government should have paid for,\u201d Driskell continued. \u201cThese were oftentimes stunts like Alligator Alcatraz. So much of this was done to further Ron DeSantis’ political ambitions.\u201d<\/p>\n The chambers and their budgets<\/p>\n The chambers also have a distance to overcome with their overall budgets.<\/p>\n The Senate\u2019s proposal is around $115 billion, and the House\u2019s is close to a billion and a half dollars less.<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s suggested budget <\/a>is larger than both, coming in at around $117 billion.<\/p>\n Other key differences include how the Senate wants to continue funding the DeSantis-created Florida State Guard defense force. The Tampa Bay Times<\/a> has uncovered several scandals about the guard. The House does not want to continue funding it.<\/p>\n Like DeSantis, the House is proposing to transfer <\/a>the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus to New College of Florida, the university where DeSantis launched a conservative takeover. The Senate\u2019s plan doesn\u2019t mention it.<\/p>\n The chambers are also offering differing amounts on how much to pay to help Floridians pay for an AIDS drug assistance program<\/a>.<\/p>\n