Christine Jordan Sexton
Bills are dying.
Substantive House committees held their final rounds of meetings this week and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said Thursday he doesn’t plan to allow them to meet in the second half of the session.
The exception, Crisafulli said, could be the House Civil Justice Subcommittee, which he will consider allowing to meet to address settled local claims bills.
That means that bills that haven’t cleared those subcommittees are in deep trouble. Or worse.
“That would be very fair to say,” Crisafulli said when asked whether the bills are dead for the session.
Some of the bills that haven’t cleared their first committee of reference include measures that :
- Restrict or repeal nuclear cost recovery (HB 67, HB 473)
- Champion pay equality (HB 25)
- Limit insurers and health plans ability to limit access to medications (HB 863)
- Require eighth and 11th grade students to watch the film America: Imagine the World Without Her, a film that according to the hardback knocks down “every important accusation made by Progressives” against America (HB 77)
- Establish $50,000 as the minimum salary for public school teachers in Florida (HB 261)
- Regulate or ban oil and gas hydraulic fracturing (HB 1205, HB 169)
- Allow local governments to establish pilot programs regulating the use of plastic shopping bags (HB 661)
- Require approval by the Legislature of any plan submitted by the state to the federal government to control carbon emissions (HB 849)
- Ban most abortions (HB 247)
Reporter Bruce Ritchie contributed to this story.
