VIDEO: FSBA Session Wrap-up

Tallahassee, FL – After a three day extension, Florida’s Legislative Session has come to an end. Watch this FSBA Legislative Weekly Update for highlights, and be sure visit the FSBA Session Spotlight Blog and 2017 Legislative Session page for in-depth summaries, resources, and analyses. Also, be on the lookout for FSBA’s online and face-to-face Legislative Summary events.

Lawmakers will return to Capitol for ‘Legislator University’

A motivational speaker who worked in the White House. A mandatory seminar on sexual harassment. Breakout sessions on the death penalty, workers comp, Medicaid, the courts and the Florida retirement system.  It’s all part of two days of member training next week in the Florida House of Representatives, with code numbers assigned to each seminar,…

With contrasting styles and priorities, Negron, Corcoran take over leadership of Florida Legislature

The Florida Legislature entered a strange new world Tuesday as the incoming House speaker condemned the power of lobbyists and demanded changes in spending that will face resistance from the Senate and Gov. Rick Scott.  In his inaugural speech as speaker, Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, railed against a Capitol dominated by lobbyists and politically wired…

Incoming Florida House speaker bans ‘texting while legislating’

When Florida’s 120 newly elected members of the state House of Representatives go to Tallahassee later this month, they will be asked to put down their cell phones. The incoming House speaker wants to an impose a ban on texting while legislating.  Rep. Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, says the new rule banning lobbyists from texting…

Two senate bills addressing public corruption are moving closer to floor votes. The House has already acted.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, is nearing the final push in a two-year effort to crack down on public corruption. Gaetz’s Florida Anti-Corruption Act of 2016 Tuesday cleared the Senate Community Affairs Committee with a unanimous vote and is one stop away from a Senate floor vote. Among other things, SB 686 prohibits legislators from accepting…

Gaetz resurrected a seemingly dead corruption bill into a far more expansive set of ethics reforms

Sen. Don Gaetz doesn’t like the sound of no. On Monday the Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Committee voted down his anti-corruption bill. So on Tuesday, the Niceville Republican inserted all of the bill’s provisions into another bill. Then he persuaded the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee to approve the proposal on a 7 -3 vote.…