{"id":282064,"date":"2026-05-23T15:04:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T15:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282064\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T15:04:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T15:04:19","slug":"budget-conference-house-and-senate-strike-a-deal-to-fund-florida-state-guard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282064\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget conference: House and Senate strike a deal to fund Florida State Guard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida House has agreed to fund a trimmed down version of the Florida State Guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The House and Senate have gone back-and-forth on funding the force Gov. Ron DeSantis resurrected the unit in 2022.<\/p>\n

The House was against any funding up until the latest budget bump offer out Friday as the top budget negotiators are working last minute to strike a deal.<\/p>\n

Questions have persisted about whether the Florida State Guard is wasting taxpayer money, according to a recent Orlando Sentinel investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But that did not stop the House and Senate from agreeing to fund 32 positions to support operations for $3.8 million, plus another $3.6 million for the Florida State Guard\u2019s operating expenses and $601,378 for an increased Florida State Guard workload.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It appears to be a compromise after the Senate sought<\/a> $15.3 million for Florida State Guard\u2019s air mission expenses, $3.2 million for crisis response and special missions and $1.7 million for maritime expenses in addition to and $1.6 million for State Guard operating expenses. The Senate also previously wanted to fund 32 full-time positions at $4.6 million as well as $901,000 on a line item to increase workload for the Florida State Guard and $494,000 for information technology while the House pushed back and didn\u2019t want to give anything.<\/p>\n

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Ed Hooper<\/a> hinted the two sides would find common ground when he was asked about the issue last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it won\u2019t be $33.9 (million) and it won\u2019t be zero,\u201d\u00a0 Hooper said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the House lowered its previous $40 million offer to $10 million for maintaining\u00a0Camp Blanding Joint Training Center\u2019s<\/a> Level 2 status, according to the House\u2019s first bump offer while the Senate now nixes all funding.<\/p>\n

Leaders say they can still finish the budget before the end of May, but it could be close. A budget memo from House Speaker Daniel Perez has House Budget Chair Lawrence McClure and Hooper meeting at 8 a.m. Tuesday to hold talks \u201cuntil completion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If the budget hits desks that day, it starts the constitutionally required 72-hour cooling-off period, teeing up a House floor vote Friday, May 29, with the Senate to follow before Sine Die \u2014 with a month to spare before the July 1 start of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n

This is the second straight year of a drawn-out budget; last year\u2019s wasn\u2019t passed until June 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida House has agreed to fund a trimmed down version of the Florida State Guard. The House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[119999,58362,28,30,29,34825],"class_list":["post-282064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-2026-budget-conference","tag-ed-hooper","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-state-guard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282064","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=282064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}