Cam Fentriss, FRSA LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL
We are getting close to the 2019 Florida regular legislative session that starts on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. We have no way of knowing yet whether this will be a good, or bad, or exciting, or dull session, but it’s safe to say it should be different – if only because we have a new governor and cabinet and a number of new legislators.
Our new governor, Ron DeSantis, is just getting started and staying busy appointing people to various posts and developing his plans for his first legislative session and year in office.
Also setting up and getting started are the other newly elected cabinet members:
■ Jeannette Nunez, Lieutenant Governor
■ Ashley Moody, Attorney General
■ Jimmy Patronis, Chief Financial Officer (was appointed before running)
■ Nikki Fried, Agriculture Commissioner
Florida’s legislative branch has new leaders: Senate President Bill Galvano and House Speaker Jose Oliva. We can expect these leaders to be quite different from their predecessors, and we hope that will be helpful for construction issues.
Of the 160 Florida legislators, approximately 50 are entirely new to the world of Tallahassee politics. Most of those “newbies” are among the 120 members of the Florida House of Representatives. This is a large number of new people who, along with our majority of entirely new Cabinet members, may bring some new ideas and a fresh outlook.
Is it unusual to have so many new people in the Legislative and Executive branches in Florida? Not in the Legislative branch, but it is unusual in the Executive branch. Since Florida adopted term limits, the number of first-time legislators has been high as would be expected. In today’s term limits world, many of the members of the Florida House of Representatives will serve their maximum eight years, then run for the Florida Senate. That’s good, but with as many as 120 House members ultimately competing for 40 Senate seats, it makes for some tough races where there are a lot of losers. It also means that most of those serving in the Senate will arrive with two to eight years of experience from serving in the Florida House.
As for the number of new people in the Executive branch, typically people who are interested in moving up through the political ranks will learn about Florida’s government and gain experience by first serving in the Florida House then, maybe, the Florida Senate, and then competing for an even higher office such as Governor or a Cabinet post. This usually results in electing very experienced people to serve at the highest posts in our state government. Not so this time and that may be great or it may be a disaster – time will tell.
The early signs look good for this new group in Tallahassee. Governor DeSantis is making very thoughtful and balanced agency head appointments, and this may be a vast improvement for us. I am hopeful. We have had some experience with CFO Patronis (he is in charge of one of our most important topics: insurance) since he was appointed to this post about two years before he was elected, and we have had good experiences so far.
As for expectations from Florida’s Legislature, we just spent two years with leadership that avoided so many of our issues (such as litigation reform and our workforce needs) that it seems things can only get better. We do think there is reason to expect better things from our new legislative leaders. We will know for sure by the end of the legislative session in early May.