A.G. Gancarski
In St. Augustine Wednesday for the St. Johns County Delegation meeting, Sen. Travis Hutson discussed a variety of topics with FloridaPolitics.com.
Hutson expects an interesting year.
Among the topics: The Process and his chairmanship of the Senate’s Regulated Industries committee.
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The ongoing Cold War between Senate and House leadership looms over the session at large.
Hutson isn’t as pessimistic as some media covering it, however.
“Who knows what’s going to happen? There’s no guarantees in Tallahassee,” Hutson said.
“The process has always been, the initial offer’s made from either side and we go through conferencing to kind of balance out those budgets through subcommittees,” Hutson added.
“All I see that the speaker’s really doing is to ask his House members to start that process a little sooner. The House will put up their bills. The Senate, when we go into conferencing, will put up our stuff. And we’ll negotiate the budget. That’s how I anticipate it [working],” Hutson observed.
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Hutson amplified a Tweet he made earlier this year about an expected active year in his Regulated Industries committee also.
“In Regulated Industries, it’s going to be a really fun year. Stuff’s going to move, and it will move quickly. Stuff that usually dies – if you look at the agenda, some of it’s up there already.”
Already in play: issues like casino gaming, an issue on which consensus has proven elusive in previous sessions.
“A perfect year for Regulated Industries would be those dogfights that usually happen, where bills go to die, it doesn’t turn into that anymore. If I put a bill on the agenda, I expect it to move and get out.
“I’m going to challenge that committee. I think we have a good committee, but I’m going to challenge them with some stuff they may like to vote for and they may not like to vote for. It’s going to be interesting, and hopefully those who are pro or con those bills work those members really hard,” Hutson said.
“I don’t even know what I’m going to put up yet on certain situations, depending on the scenario of what I deem good or bad policy,” Hutson adds.
