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 this 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 just over 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 0.75%.
And all of that comes just a day after Gov. 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 kneecap our ability to provide you property tax relief, just so we can give a little bit of a benefit to Canadian tourists; that is not going to happen. So you can take that to the bank,” DeSantis 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 Sen. 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 Tuesday, but just to extend session to the end of June, the deadline under Florida’s constitution that the Legislature is 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 toward 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 1 to pass the budget. Aside from the tax proposal, the House and Senate are also about $4 billion apart in their budget asks.
