redistricting plan

Working to Meet the Florida Budget Deadline

Dan Florida, Legislative

Florida budgetThe Florida legislative session is in its final week, and the Senate president and House speaker stepped in Sunday afternoon to take over budget negotiations as lawmakers have been working to meet a Tuesday deadline to finish work on a nearly $83 billion spending plan.

According to a story from the News Service of Florida, while agreements on spending levels for various issues, including $40 million in water projects had already been met, other areas of the budget were at least partially unresolved. Included in that was essentially the entire environmental budget, outside of the water projects.

And as we’ve heard throughout the session, spending on the environment has been a top priority of Senate President Joe Negron.

The state Constitution requires a 72-hour “cooling off” period before lawmakers can vote on the budget, which will take effect July 1. So a final deal on the budget has to be struck by Tuesday for the legislative session to end Friday, as scheduled.

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