Jennifer Bradley is striking a blow for citizens — against special interests

Sen. Jennifer Bradley has a number of major issues on tap for the 2025 Legislative Session.

And the overwhelming theme is serving the people over the powerful.

“I’ve had some long years in Tallahassee, and I think that it’s really important that we spend a Session on what people really need in this state, which is the ability to afford a home, have insurance, support our teachers, support our correctional officers,” she said.

“You know, those are the folks that expect us to go up and represent them. They don’t have powerful special interest lobbies. They expect us to be their lobbyists, and it’s time we started doing it.”

None of the issues on tap are more significant, arguably, than condominiums — something that the Clay County Republican can affect as Chair of the Regulated Industries Committee.

“It’s an issue that I’ve worked on for the last three years in the wake of Surfside to make sure that our buildings are safe and can remain safe, making sure that they have enough money available to be able to repair what’s needed when it’s needed, so you’ll see that effort to continue this Session in that committee. I think our first couple committee weeks will be devoted to that issue,” Bradley said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis had said he wanted a Special Session for condo regulations, which would include low-interest loans so that property owners could deal with assessments.

Though that’s not happening, this clearly has a path in the Senate. Bradley notes that she and Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo will host on Dec. 3 at Florida Atlantic University an “all day condo summit” with “attorneys, CPAs, engineers and building officials.”

“It’ll be nine hours and we’re going to go through all the issues and vet them and out of that, I think you will see the framework of what the state needs to do to address the issue,” Bradley predicted.

Bradley is also the Vice Chair of the Appropriations Committee on Higher Education, and she looks to see what can be done to increase state colleges’ capacity for workforce development, including in high-need fields like nursing.

“We need to make sure that our state colleges have enough resources to be able to train and deploy enough qualified people into the workforce and right now they’re doing a good job but they just don’t have the resources to do enough and we need to make sure that our budget reflects that priority,” she said.

Bradley added that businesses tell her that “finding skilled workers who have the technical expertise to do the jobs they need is a challenge.” 

Bradley is also bringing back a “hugely important” insurance bill that “didn’t get over the finish line” last year, which would stipulate that people with wind policies couldn’t get dropped for floods.

“The insurance company lobbied against it. They killed it. It was the right thing to do, and I’m going to bring that back. We should not leave people uninsured just because their house flooded instead of being affected by wind,” she said, noting that decision leaves people “out of compliance with their mortgages.”

”I frankly think we’ve given insurance companies a whole lot in that building and to ask them to stay on the policy of flooded homes for one year shouldn’t have been such a fight,” Bradley said.

Additionally, the Senator is going to file legislation to “preserve our state parks to make sure that they remain our pristine natural resources that are so important to our state and make sure that they don’t get filled with things like golf courses and hotels,” Bradley said.

The legislation would put a check on proposals like the one earlier this year that offered a path to commercial development.