The Florida legislature’s standoff over the budget and proposed tax reductions has gone further off the rails.
Lawmakers were expected to return to Tallahassee for more negotiations next week, But leaders in the House announced Friday they won’t be moving forward after Senate leaders expressed reservation about passing the House’s tax proposal.
It's been about a week since Florida’s regular legislative session was supposed to conclude. But now House Speaker Daniel Perez says an end is nowhere in sight. That comes after he said Senate President Ben Albritton announced his chamber would not consider Perez’s proposal to reduce sales tax by .75%.
And all of that comes just a day after Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to veto Perez’s proposal if it came to his desk.
“I can tell you any Florida last tax package is going to be dead on arrival. We are not going to knee cap our ability to provide you property tax relief, just so we can give a little bit of a benefit to Canadian tourist, that is not going to happen. So you can take that to the bank,” he said during a press conference Thursday.
The shutdown in negotiations could threaten one of Albritton’s priorities—his Rural Renaissance package. The House had attached pieces of the measure aimed to bolster growth in rural communities onto a number of other bills, but the measure’s sponsor, Tallahassee Republican Senator Cory Simon decried the move on the Senate floor, saying the Senate wants its bill passed in full.
“Mr. President, I move the Senate refused to concur in the house amendment bar code, 605877, and request the house to recede from the amendment,” he said.
Perez said lawmakers will meet next Tuesday, but just to extend session to the end of June, or right until the deadline under Florida’s constitution that the legislature is legally required to pass a budget every year.
Barry University political science professor Sean Foreman said he has never seen Florida’s legislature operate in this level of disarray.
“There are always hard negotiations as they work towards the final lines in the budget, but this seems to be more contentious than ever before,” he said. “I don't recall a Florida Legislature being this divided this late in the session, and again, it's all run by the same party, so that's remarkable.”
The standoff largely centers on disagreements over tax relief. DeSantis wants to abolish property taxes. Perez wants to reduce sales tax with a plan to explore property tax reductions next session. And Albritton says he has long term fiscal concerns about reducing taxes permanently as COVID-19 era federal dollars to the state are ending and questions remain about future federal funding.
Foreman said in this debate, local governments could be hit the hardest if taxes are reduced.
“Whatever tax cut happens means that there's probably going to be paying for local governments, and they're already struggling to provide the services that they need, with other constraints placed on them in recent years,” he said.
Lawmakers have until July 1st to pass the budget. Aside from the tax proposal, the house and the senate are also about $4 billion apart in their budget asks.
