SUNDAY SHOWCASE -- That's a wrap!

The 2024 session came to a close on time, with lawmakers approving a $117.46 billion spending plan to finalize a session that the Senate president touted as targeting “kitchen-table issues” and the House speaker said “addressed the real needs of Floridians.”

During the last week of the 60-day session, lawmakers also passed measures that would allow volunteer chaplains in schools, outlaw euphoria-inducing hemp products and ban lab-grown meat.

Some of the measures that made it through the finish line in the waning days of session drew impassioned debates.

For example, the bill authorizing school districts to craft policies about chaplains (HB 931) set off a discussion that dealt in part with the separation of church and state.

“It seems like every year we keep chipping away at the separation of church and state. And I have to tell you, many of you are quite religious,” Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, argued Thursday. "And you use that to guide your voting and your principles and your bill proposals — and that’s fine. But the minute that you try to put your religion upon other people, that’s when it becomes a problem.”

Sen. Danny Burgess, a Zephyrhills Republican, contended that volunteer chaplains could help students in situations where issues could not be addressed by school counselors.

“I believe that sometimes the issue is with the soul, and not of the mind. And that’s why I believe that this is a good option for our students in this day and age,” Burgess said.

The Senate approved the bill in a 28-12 vote along party lines.

A discussion about a prohibition against cultivated meat, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has called "fake" meat, took on a more cosmic tone.

Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, said Wednesday it's fine to develop “Moon meat” for astronauts, but cattlemen like himself won’t advocate for it.

But Rep. Christine Hunchofsky, D-Parkland, argued that the measure would ultimately be bad for business.

“I think it will deter future manufacturers from coming to Florida because they don't know what day of the week that the Legislature will be OK with them being in the state of Florida,” Hunschofsky said.

Debate about banning certain hemp products has focused in part on a multibillion-dollar industry that could be jeopardized by the proposed restriction. The House and Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to the measure (SB 1698), which targets cannabinoids in hemp products that can create euphoric effects.

Rep. Hillary Cassel, D-Dania Beach, noted that the products targeted by the bill would still be allowed to be sold by the state’s licensed medical-marijuana operators.

“Let’s be very clear. This drug will still be available, and it will still be sold in Florida,” Cassel argued Wednesday. “If this product is so bad you wanna ban it, then ban it. But that’s not what we’re doing. We’re choosing which doors you buy from.”

House bill sponsor Tommy Gregory, R-Lakewood Ranch, acknowledged that his proposal is designed to eliminate intoxicating hemp products offered at retail stores.

“Today is a day of reckoning” for the manufacturers and retailers the products, he said before the House passed the measure. “They can’t use a loophole to manufacture a recreational drug.”

CHA-CHING

Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to the one responsibility they must follow through on each year — passing an annual state spending plan.

The $117.46 billion state budget, down from the current year’s $119.1 billion budget, will go to DeSantis for approval. DeSantis in December proposed a $114.4 billion budget, and legislative leaders in January discussed a need to tighten spending.

The budget approved Friday includes a 3 percent pay raise for state employees, with additional increases at the Agency for Health Care Administration and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and for agents who protect DeSantis and his family.

The budget also included a $1.8 billion increase in the Florida Education Finance Program, the key funding source for public schools, and an 8 percent increase in Medicaid funding for nursing homes. No tuition increases for state college and university students were included in the spending plan.

Overall state spending will be higher than the $117.46 billion in the budget because of separate legislation.

Renner and Passidomo boasted of the Legislature’s accomplishments as they prepared to end two-year terms leading the House and Senate.

“Again and again, we have looked at the real needs of real Floridians and delivered time and time again because of the men and women behind me who chose collaboration over competition,” Renner said after the session formally ended.

Passidomo in a statement touted the state’s budgets for the last two years.

“Instead of spending all of (what) we have, we are paying down debt, setting aside historic reserves, and providing for meaningful tax relief, so Floridians can keep more of their hard-earned money,” the Senate president said.

But House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, described this year’s session as being about “missed opportunities.”

“It really seems to me like the Republicans are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to Floridians who are in crisis right now,” Driskell said.

RESTRICTIONS REJECTED

In a rare instance of a federal appeals court in Florida siding against DeSantis, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected restrictions that Republican lawmakers placed on addressing race-related issues in workplace training.

The restrictions were part of a controversial 2022 law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act.” The law also included similar restrictions on classroom instruction.

The workplace-training part of the law listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”

The appeals court ruled that the restrictions violated First Amendment rights.

“This is not the first era in which Americans have held widely divergent views on important areas of morality, ethics, law and public policy,” the 22-page opinion said. “And it is not the first time that these disagreements have seemed so important, and their airing so dangerous, that something had to be done. But now, as before, the First Amendment keeps the government from putting its thumb on the scale.”