Six weeks after the state budget was expected to be completed, legislative leaders Friday finished negotiating details of a spending plan for the 2025-2026 fiscal year and set the stage for the House and Senate to vote on Monday.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Ed Hooper, R-Trinity, and House Budget Chairman Lawrence McClure, R-Dover, resolved remaining issues. A bottom-line total for the budget was not immediately available, though it is expected to be smaller than a $115.6 billion spending plan proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Because of a required 72-hour “cooling off” period, lawmakers will not be able to vote on the budget before Monday. It remained unclear what time they could vote Monday because the budget had not been printed as of late Friday afternoon.
House and Senate leaders also were working Friday to finish a tax-cut package and what are known as budget “conforming” bills — though those measures are not bound by the 72-hour requirement.
DeSantis would have about two weeks to sign the budget and issue vetoes before the July 1 start of the fiscal year. DeSantis will be in France early next week on a trade mission.
The annual legislative session was scheduled to end May 2, but the House and Senate could not reach agreement on a budget and tax cuts. That led to weeks of uncertainty before lawmakers restarted formal negotiations last week.
“A lot of people have spoken to us about, you know, ‘You took a month away from here and nothing happened,’” Hooper said Friday. “Well, there was stuff happening, and we knew that we had to come here, to get to where we are today. Because come July 1, nobody wanted a government shutdown. Nobody wanted employees to be without a paycheck.”
This year’s budget process came after the state stopped receiving a torrent of federal money linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, lawmakers worked on the budget amid the prospect that future federal money is expected to slow under President Donald Trump.
McClure also said special legislative sessions early this year on immigration issues were taxing on lawmakers and staff members.
“I'm not excusing that we're delayed in getting this budget done, but there were contributing factors that largely were out of the control of either chamber,” McClure said. “I'm glad we did the work on immigration. It was important, but I am thankful that we were as thorough as we were.”
Budget talks resumed after House and Senate leaders on May 30 jointly released a framework involving tax cuts and other big-ticket issues.
The framework included a $900 million tax cut through eliminating a tax on commercial leases, a longtime priority of business lobbyists. The framework also included what leaders described in memos as $350 million in “permanent sales tax exemptions targeted towards Florida families,” $250 million in debt reduction and $750 million in payments into a state rainy-day fund.
Among issues approved Friday were money for about 280 projects and programs across the state, including such things as parks, schools, emergency management programs, roads, museums and cultural groups. Those projects and proposals totaled about $560 million.
Spending on such projects and programs had grown from $174 million in 2019 to $1.3 billion in 2024.
Hooper and McClure also settled on $460.7 million for water-related projects. The Senate initially sought $505 million for water projects. The House started at $193.2 million.
The spending approvals on Friday also included $200 million for conservation easements, which allow agricultural activities to continue on land while limiting development.
McClure said conservation easements don’t require the state to spend money on land management, like purchasing property would.
“Easements are a wonderful tool that … meet the intended goal of preserving Florida's heartland and critical pieces of property,” McClure said. “But it also has the benefit of not needing to be managed by government. So, whether for recreational use or agricultural use or just good environmental stewardship, easements check a lot of boxes where fee-simple purchases cost a lot of money over the long haul.”
