With DeSantis back from Iowa, Florida passes $117B budget on final day of 2024 session

TALAHASSEE, Fla. — Lawmakers often save the most important issue for the last day of their annual session. This year, in Florida, that meant raising the age for strippers to 21.

Oh, and they also passed a $117 billion state budget.

But unlike the previous two years, when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was preparing to run for president, he didn’t ask as much of the Legislature. This year, there were fewer divisive bills on issues like abortion, guns, racism and LGBTQ+ rights – and they were more focused on the priorities of House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo .

Still, DeSantis declared victory alongside Republican leaders after the annual 60-day session ended early Friday afternoon.

“We achieved everything we set out to do. One hundred percent of the promises have been fulfilled. All our big ticket items,” DeSantis said, citing teacher pay increases and commuting toll relief as two such issues. “We got everything we asked for and then some.”

But in reflecting on the successes, the governor mainly discussed the past few years rather than the 2024 session. After two whirlwind years of polarizing bills that gave DeSantis enough conservative red meat to take on the presidential campaign trail, the session was relatively calm and the governor noticeably calmer.

“A big difference between this term and the last two is that we didn’t have Governor DeSantis’ thumbs on the scale as much. I think he was trying to figure out how to bounce back from his failed presidential campaign,” said Democratic House Leader Fentrice Driskell.

In a show of bipartisanship, the $117 billion budget passed unanimously in the Senate and by a vote of 105 to 3 in the House of Representatives, where one Republican and two Democrats opposed the spending plan that gives all state workers a 3% raise.

DeSantis spent half the session out of state, campaigning for president in places like Iowa and New Hampshire. By the time DeSantis withdrew from the race, the Republican-dominated Legislature was well on its way to an early exit, thanks in part to little interference from the governor.

Renner’s top priority was a bill limiting minors’ access to social media, and he finally advanced it in the last week. The legislation will ban social media accounts for children and teenagers under the age of 14 and require parental consent for 15 and 16 year olds. .

DeSantis vetoed the first social media ban on minors, but then worked with Renner on language they could agree on.

Passidomo has successfully delivered on its top priority: a package of bills that streamlines regulations and provides incentives to improve access to healthcare.

Lawmakers have also passed bills that range from allowing schools to create volunteer chaplain programs and defining anti-Semitism in law, to allowing Floridians to kill bears that pose a threat to residents’ homes or property.

“The really, really hardcore controversial bills, I can’t think of anything other than the social media bill, but that was vetoed — and of course we passed a lighter version of it,” the Democrats said. Senator Bobby Powell noted that a proposal to protect Confederate monuments was among the divisive bills that died.

Meanwhile, strippers will have to wait until they’re 21 to look for work, along with other workers at strip clubs and adult entertainment venues, such as dishwashers.

There were fewer developments in education this year, although lawmakers have relaxed child labor laws to allow homeschooled children to work longer and later.

“How crazy is that?” Democratic Senator Bobby Powell said of the new labor laws.