It’s been a whirlwind couple of months but today is the official last day of the 2020 Legislative Session. Unfortunately, leaders in the House and Senate were unable to agree on a final budget and session has been extended until next week. While we are pleased to know that Florida Forever will receive substantial funding this year, we are eager to see the final numbers when they are released so we can run a full analysis on all environmental spending. Thank you for your advocacy, you really made a difference for land conservation this year.
Sadly, our efforts were not as successful as it relates to stopping the bad anti-citizen initiative bills. Two of the four bad bills (SB 1794/HB 7037) passed their respective chambers and will now head to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law.
FCV’s Aliki Moncrief said, “The Florida Constitution expressly guarantees the citizen initiative process as a right of the people. Unfortunately, with today’s final passage of SB 1794, leaders in the Florida Legislature have taken this fundamental right away from citizens and grassroots organizations and put it squarely in the hands of billionaires and special interests. Along with our allies, members, and Florida voters, FCV will continue to fight to defend our democracy. We are now calling on Governor DeSantis to veto this bad legislation and uphold the Florida Constitution he swore to protect.”
The good news is that it seems that we, along with our allies, were able to block SB 7062/HB 7093. This legislation would have brought a question to voters to amend the state constitution to further restrict the citizens initiative process. Thank you to our allies in the Florida Legislature (elected officials and staff) for their hard work to defeat this bad resolution.
Please stay tuned in the coming days for our complete legislative report, which we will finalize after the final budget is presented to the public.
Lastly, FCV would like to extend a sincere THANK YOU to all of our organizational partners and allies in the legislative process. Together, we are building a better Florida.