Lawmakers look to bring budget in for landing

House Appropriations Chairman Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City, and Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, reached agreement on several areas of the budget, including cybersecurity, transportation, health care, and civil and criminal justice. As of Tuesday morning, they still needed to work out deals involving public schools, higher education and agriculture and natural resources.

State law requires a 72-hour “cooling off” period before the House and Senate can vote on the budget, which means lawmakers must have a spending plan completed Tuesday to end the session as scheduled Friday.

"We are obviously trying, our staff is working like crazy to get things done," Trumbull said after a 9 a.m. meeting. "I do believe that it could be a later day on Friday night, but our goal was to be done on time."

The budget likely will top $100 billion and will take effect July 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year.

Among agreements announced Tuesday were a 7 percent Medicaid rate increase for nursing homes. That came after the Senate accepted a compromise offer from the House to spend $212.78 million in state and federal money on the issue. The Senate had earlier proposed spending about $304 million, according to budget documents.

The nursing home increase is tied to the passage of a separate bill (HB 539), which is sponsored by Trumbull and deals with nursing-home financial reporting. Also, it is tied to Medicaid providers paying a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

The agreement came a day after lawmakers passed an industry-backed bill that would change staffing standards in nursing homes, as many facilities face a shortage of workers.

"It's been a great session," Emmett Reed, CEO of the Florida Health Care Association, the largest industry group, said Tuesday.

In the agreements announced Tuesday, the House also backed away from a plan to cut about $189 in hospital funding and use the money to address the state's nursing shortage.

The deal on the jets is tied to a budget-related bill (SB 2512) that includes a $31.3 million plan to add planes that would transport state leaders other than Gov. Ron DeSantis, who already has access to a $15.5 million Cessna Citation Latitude.

The Legislature in 2019 approved buying that plane after DeSantis’ wealthy predecessor, former Gov. Rick Scott, sold the state’s fleet and used his own jet.

One of the new planes would be available to the lieutenant governor, Cabinet officers and members of the Florida Supreme Court. The other new plane could be used by the House speaker, Senate president and chairs of legislative standing committees, along with secretaries and executive directors of executive branch departments and chairs of the Florida Gaming Control Commission, the Public Service Commission and the Florida Commission on Offender Review.

For affordable housing, the State Housing Initiative Partnership program is slated to get $209.5 million, a little more than in the current fiscal year. The affordable housing dollars include $100 million to establish a “hometown heroes” program, which would help police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses as Florida’s housing prices continue soaring.

As part of the justice appropriations portion of the budget, $78 million is expected to go to pay raises for correctional officers, $645 million will be used to build a 4,500-bed correctional institution, and $195 million will be used for a 250-bed hospital tied to the prison system.

Among cybersecurity efforts, $37 million is expected to go to the Florida Center for Cybersecurity at the University of South Florida to conduct a risk assessment of state infrastructure and to provide cybersecurity training to state and local government workers.