Legislative session predictions and state budget outlook
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Thank you. Appreciate that. Good afternoon, Ralph Flair. Uh I'm the Intergovernmental Affairs Officer and we have our contract lobbyist with us today, Sean Foster from Sunrise Consulting Group. I always appreciate uh the work that his team does for us. So I thought we would start off and we would talk about what we predict. Nothing has been said yet. There have been a couple of uh discussions uh with the media with uh the top leadership. the president of the Senate and the uh Speaker of the House on issues that
they may want to tackle this uh this year. But other than that that's really been about it. But you know, there's just some things that we know ultimately come down from Tallahassee every every year. So I'll let you start off there.
Absolutely. Actually, you know, Ralph and I were already having conversations about it and the first one I'm going to mention, no one's gonna be surprised, is the word inflation. That's gonna you know, somebody said really is that gonna be the top issue? Yes. Inflation is Directing right now a whole change of course uh how we have paid for schools, colleges, roads, and everything else, those costs have gone up uh increasingly uh numbers. I have a revenue estimating uh Report that I'll give you here in just a few moments too. Hurricane recovery. Are we are we out of the hurricane recovery? We're not. We're just
in the beginning stages. Just pray right now we don't get hit by another hurricane of of any uh such um magnitude of what has hit us in the past couple years. Um but I'll say one of the biggest issues that I have heard and I have been in uh legislative meetings in the past two weeks in Tampa and down in Miami uh with lead. leadership and healthcare is going to be a huge issue. Um in what manner. Healthcare all over. Healthcare takes up such a huge amount of our budget, it is unbelievable. And that takes from how how do
we control Medicaid and and the different costs coming through there, because we know of other needs that we're having. Older the older people are getting the more need of of our our health care.
I was going to stop you on that one. Um I don't know if they'll go right into Medicaid. That's always a tough uh tough issue to tackle. But I do know um they're talking about reciprocity. I know that's always been an issue that we've discussed in the past, uh, where we bring in healthcare uh providers, uh doctors, nurses from other states and make it a little easier for them with their licensure when they come in here, which I I mean that's what the rest of the state is doing and it's good to see that Florida's, you know, jumping on that bandwagon. Any
way to curb the cost and and uh Uh help the citizens of Florida.
Ab absolutely. Um on top of that also uh car insurance. And people are have said it's crazy you don't say homeowners insurance. Well,
can I can I back up on the medical thing? Sure. Isn't isn't part of the problem with the medical is the insurance that the medical people have to carry due to
Correct. Correct. I mean that that could be one of them. I mean there's there's but uh that's not a direct cost to the state. They're looking at several yes, what are businesses being implicated by the insurance that they have to have, but also how can they rein in some of the costs that are uh impacting the state of Florida when it concerns with health care. And I hate to go back to inflation, but it it also is based somewhat inflation. You know, the costs of procedures The same cost to put you know tiles, uh roof tiles on your house have increased costs in health care and hospitals also. So um, Commissioner,
you are correct. Those are some of the provisions I would expect them to look at. As you know, they went really after those type of fees uh uh for attorneys when it came to roofs, you know, last year and other items. Um we can talk about a little bit of that issue as I'm expected I wanted to talk to Commissioner Mariano at At the end, but a little bit of the issues when it came to homeowners insurance. I do want to give you uh a quote from Senator Pasodomo. She said, Let some of the policy that we pl pass actually have time to have an impact because if not, there will be hell to pay. That was literally
what her message was to insurance companies. Um but the the thing that they need to they're gonna be tackling next, if you haven't seen seen your car insurance bill recently, wait for Your next car insurance bill to come up.
I think Mike experienced that.
Mike, did you see a thirty percent?
I don't know. I just buy a new car every year.
You know, and and I'll say for everybody in the audience, you know, it is going to be impacting every single person that that drives a car. Uh and the car insurance is something that I have been told that they're gonna to take up. Um, you know, s kind of s funny, but that you know, you ask me what's gonna impact session, you and I were talking earlier, Ralph, I would say the presidential election's gonna continue to impact it, meaning is our immigration issues gonna be s continue to be an issues and how they tackle that. Uh considering that it's an election year, we'll see probably good healthy tax breaks as we did this year. Um for you all, I've
already heard about a bill that's gonna be um filed concerning FRS and re implementing the one and a half percent COLA that was taken out several years ago. Uh and that would have a uh you know, talking about actual actual studies, I hate saying that word. Uh and how that impacts you all in the future. And and and lastly Um, you know, all all jokes aside, uh the Live Local Act, and I'd like to uh after I do all this, maybe sp spend some time talking about the Live Local Act. And I also challenge everybody here, uh Google L uh Live
Local Act, Florida, Google affordable uh home house housing, Florida. And it was the issue Blew me away. This is not a Tampa issue. This is a Miami issue. This was an Orlando issue. I saw articles for probably 15 to 20 just in the past three days that popped up when it hit news on Google. I gonna promise you, um, the legislators are hearing about the Live Local Act, they're hearing uh about affordable housing and um Some are afraid to
touch it. Uh I asked a a panel last week in Tampa that consisted of one state senator and two state reps. One of them was from our county. Have you heard from folks in your area? One of them was Brad Yeager on that panel. And uh I said, you know, I wasn't gonna throw them with softball, but have you heard from constituents and your elected officials about the Live Local Act and how it's impacting it? And both the the the House members sat back and uh the Senator that was s there said I'm not gonna answer that question with a tongue in cheek because he knew that was his Senate presidents. But all jokes
aside with that, I can assure you, uh I I mean I really want you to Google it, you'll see it.
Um If we could stand there for a minute. Uh
go for
it.
You know, we we have like public hearing about zoning changes, land use changes and sometimes going for multifamily and the number one topic that we we discuss is the lo the local act. Uh the legislation proposals that we put in there from Jeff and David, uh to kind of protect us from that, getting people to sign up before they make it before we make a change that they're not going to take commercial industrial land and switch it to affordable housing. It happens every single conversation. Right. And we still have other people outside applying
in. So it is a big deal that a county that's I'll say past twenty years or so We are focused on creating jobs in this county
and
we're gonna take the very land that we wanna create jobs with where people can work local. And take it away where they could put affordable housing in there. It's crazy. And the other provisions in there where they don't have to pay taxes for thirty years. I mean we struggle to make our budgets now. Our citizens say they want new growth to pay in, and we've got the highest impact fee in the country. But the good thing about that is our people that are here, it softens the burden for new growth coming in. It works directly against what we're doing, and I can't imagine we're the only ones.
And and I would like to start with something that Ron Ralph even said to me earlier on the phone, they said we really need to change the tone. It's not really affordable housing, Ralph. Like you said, it's it's workforce housing. This is not affordable housing, this is workforce housing. And so what I when I say when we propose something, Commissioners, we need to look at it and I'm using the KISS simple. Keep it simple, stupid. When we have some proposed changes in it, not not throwing the whole baby out with the bathwater, because there are some good things in there. But you know, let's talk about industrial land. I mean if you just focus on industrial people, you can probably do
other things with commercial, but again, I didn't want to get into the affordable, but there there are some provisions. I'll stop before we I think we can have a whole discussion about it. either do it now or we can we actually have a presentation and I should read a share button.
Commissioner Starkey.
Well I I'm gonna ask for the format here is this the time we want to talk about that or do you want to wait.
I think there's a full presentation and see
proposal.
Right proposal
I'll keep my comments then so that we don't go go off filter like I can hold back. I can send us off filter
so before we get into that I just want to remind To have leadership real quick. And so uh, and this happens a lot because we'll be talking about the budget a little bit. You know, the current House Speaker is from Palm Coast. Palm Coast is up in the northeast over there by Jacksonville. The current Senate president is Kathleen Pasadomo down by Naples. But you also just got to start looking at those coming in. They're they're in their final year, they're writing in in some of the most powerful time coming in. So you have uh Representative Danny Perez, who will be the Speaker of the House. Next year from South Florida, and you have Senator Ben Albright, who I
know a lot of you are shaking your head. We we know we've met with before. He is from uh Bartow, so more central Florida. By the way, both those areas were hit by hurricanes. I just want to reiterate that. Um the ones coming up afterwards are already been planned and they're already been voted for, and that's Sam Garrison in the House. He is another uh representative, he is up front by the northeast in Orange Park. This is unofficial, but understood to be official. Jim Boyd from Manatee County will be uh the Senate president during that same turn. It is not official. They
have not taken the vote, so I want to be very, very firm with that.
When we talk about leadership, the House goes a little faster than the Senate. They they take their time, which
is good. And they've always done it. The House has already, as he said, made their vote in last session. It was Jennifer Jennifer. for Kennedy, if her last name sounds f familiar, her husband is uh on the um Supreme Court, Florida Supreme Court, and she is also, I believe, from Lakeland. And the last one is Jay Trumbull. Uh he is from the Panhandle up there near P Panama City. So I just kind of give you guys an understanding of where some of the the future leaders are from. This is the part where I kind of I nerd out. I want to kind of give you guys a full
understanding of the revenue estimating conference and what they just reported. The new state and national economic forecasts they take everything in by a revenue estimating conference and they meet several times a year. The first forecast that they talked about in February still had an assumed mild recession in the first and second quarter of 2023 that has not manifested I'm gonna when I'm saying this in the in in the economist way, I know there's others. Um so that disruption is is still evident and it's coming. And some of those are varied impacts on household
savings are are less now, credit card usage is more, um you're seeing more normalization of spending and in and people uh going out um as you know, coming out of uh COVID times, and there's strong inflationary. Pressures on households. You're feeling the pressure, it's harder now. Buying consumables, how many times have you heard what the price of eggs have gone up and everything else? So, explained in part by the recession's failure to materialize, we've had a very good 2022, 2023, and
we even had more money coming in 2023 and in 2024. They had 2.7 billion dollars more projected. From the one that they just did in July beyond what the projection did in February. So I'm giving you, so they did February's, they did July's. Over two years, we almost have three billion dollars. They almost have one billion dollars more coming in for this fiscal year. And I always get asked, so what happens if sale, if that is coming in, what do they do? That stays in reserves. It doesn't get spent, it cannot get spent without legislative
authorization that stays in the reserves and put over until next year. So 1.1 billion now. The sales tax gains, I want to kind of give you some implications, are up on every single count. When I say sales tax, sales tax for cars, sales tax for all the other goods, every single bit is up. For my realtors, they'll also appreciate this. There was a Little slowdown for a few months um but not below what they had expected, but it's actually gone up and over. So part of those projections are also projecting the housing
market continued in the way that it is, uh and that we'll continue to have the funding come back from um the the uh docs document docs sales doc sales yeah um the conference also noted risk though to sales tax projections including consumers returning pretty soon to a typical purchasing mix of goods with inflation when it hits in when inflation hits in uh I mean and I mean a recession hits in you're gonna see that pull back and that's what they're projecting after twenty twenty four. Um the conference also increased um the
forecast by 256 million for uh sales tax uh moving forward and even higher for the housing market. So me meaning they didn't expect those two areas to slow down in twenty twenty three-2024. I think if you're gonna talk about that we'll see later on. So I I I like to tell you that because in other words we've added more money to this one, more money to next year. Um that tells you a very good sign going into the the last time. I've been in the legislature when the s recession has hit, so has Ralph. It is a very lean time. It is difficult.
Items get cut. I don't expect that, but I do expect as I told you in the beginning comments to see a lot of that money uh given back to taxpayers that they have done in tax cuts. Right. So go ahead, sir.
I was just gonna say the other thing that we can agree upon, unfortunately legislation that we can guarantee that will probably happen is preemption. Right. Uh what it will be, we don't know. Uh but it's it's just almost a given that we will happen. Uh the good thing is is that um this session It's gonna move quickly. Uh they'll start their committee meetings or really in October. There's only one chamber meeting in September. Uh and then they start in January. And they're gonna be wanna be out in sixty days. They uh
it's election year for all the House members and half of the Senate members. So they will be out and we don't anticipate any special session. Um other issues that will not come up. I think this past session we spent a lot of time with the governor's uh platform. I don't think he's gonna have as much as he had last time. So it'll it'll make it the session go by quicker. So with that, that's the um the outlook that we predict for the twenty twenty four legislative session and we can go ahead and start with our