Chris Dawson, Attorney, GrayRobinson
Happy New Year, FRSA! I hope you enjoyed a fantastic holiday season with family and friends. May the coming year bring much joy and prosperity across our great FRSA family and across our beautiful state. Now that all of the champagne bottles have been popped… what comes next?
The Florida Legislature Gets to Work
Well, that didn’t take long! The Florida Legislature was back in the business of legislating on January 3, kicking off the 2023 Regular Session with its first committee week. A December 2022 committee week was ultimately revised to a Special Session on property insurance. Don’t expect that issue to go far, as additional reforms are expected. For now, legislators will spend the balance of January and February catching up by receiving committee reports, filing legislation and – for all those freshman members elected in November – finding the bathrooms.
They will have to figure it out quickly, however, as the Legislature is set to convene in Regular Session on March 7. We know that legislators will have a healthy policy to-do list this year with major issues such as housing affordability, tort reform, local government regulation and hurricane recovery on the docket. Further, they’ll have to figure out how to spend $100 billion- plus over the sixty-day session in order to craft the state’s Fiscal Year 2023- 2024 budget. As always, the Florida Constitution requires legislators to pass a balanced budget. Read more.