The legislature needs to pass a budget by July 1 to avoid a state government shutdown.<\/p>\n
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2014 Nearly two months after Florida lawmakers were supposed to finish the state budget, the House and Senate are back in Tallahassee for a special session aimed at getting it done before the July 1 deadline to avoid a state government shutdown.<\/p>\n
The three-week special session began Tuesday, with both chambers approving their respective bills to officially begin conference negotiations.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers left the regular session in March with a roughly $1.4 billion gap between the House and Senate spending plans. The House had proposed a $113.6 billion budget, while the Senate backed a $115 billion plan.<\/p>\n
One major hurdle has already been cleared: leaders agreed on a top-line spending number of $52 billion in general revenue. Now, negotiators must decide how that money will be divided across major priorities like education, health care, environmental programs and state employee pay raises.<\/p>\n
Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized the delay Tuesday, saying there was \u201cno reason\u201d lawmakers could not have finished the budget during the regular session.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think it\u2019d be a mistake to drag it out anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The chambers\u2019 initial proposals both fell short of his $117.4 billion proposal from back in December, especially in areas like education, the Florida State Guard and a controversial emergency fund going towards immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
Florida House Democrats are also criticizing the majority party for the need for a special session.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have completed this during the 60-day regular session,\u201d said House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame that the people of Florida are the victims of this frankly overreach and dysfunction and fighting within the majority party. But now it\u2019s time to roll up our sleeves and get the work done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The overtime negotiations are also costing taxpayers money.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s extended budget talks cost the state an additional $259,000 in overtime expenses for lodging, travel and daily expenses for lawmakers and staff, according to the Office of Legislative Services.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s costs are expected to climb even higher. The current budget talks mark Florida\u2019s second special session of the year after lawmakers recently returned for redistricting discussions. Another special session focused on property taxes is also expected later this year.<\/p>\n
Legislative leaders say lawmakers will spend the next few days in Tallahassee before continuing negotiations remotely and returning May 29 for final votes on the budget package.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legislature needs to pass a budget by July 1 to avoid a state government shutdown. TALLAHASSEE, Fla.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-268660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268660","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=268660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}