Florida lawmakers have started a special session focused on next year\u2019s state budget.<\/p>\n
This is the second year in a row lawmakers needed to take extra time after the regular session to complete a spending plan.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday, lawmakers were optimistic negotiations weren\u2019t going to get entirely derailed by the infighting that\u2019s plagued the Capitol.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandidly, I think the problems with respect to the budget have not been about serious and impossible-to-bridge differences between the House and the Senate,\u201d said Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville. \u201cI think up until now, it\u2019s been personality, it\u2019s been old grudges, that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not any more, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think now there is a view that we\u2019re going to all lay our swords down,\u201d Gaetz added. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get a budget done, get the people\u2019s business done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawmakers are in Tallahassee this week for committee meetings focused on various areas of next year\u2019s spending. They\u2019re planning on coming back after Memorial Day for a final vote.<\/p>\n
House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa doesn\u2019t think the schedule will change. But she\u2019s frustrated it\u2019s come to this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have completed this in the 60-day regular session,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame that the people of Florida are the victims of this, frankly, overreach and infighting and dysfunction within the majority party. But now it\u2019s time to roll up our sleeves and get the work done, and Dems are here to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n
If lawmakers don\u2019t get the budget done by the end of June, the government would enter into a partial shutdown.<\/p>\n
Doug Soule is the Tallahassee reporter for WUSF, the Tampa Bay area\u2019s NPR affiliate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida lawmakers have started a special session focused on next year\u2019s state budget. This is the second year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-269597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269597","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=269597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}