Jesse Scheckner
Republican Hialeah Gardens Sen. Bryan Ávila was named Chair last month of the Senate Finance and Tax Committee, a pivotal panel that will consider many possibly boring but certainly important proposals in the coming Legislative Session.
Now, the rest of the committee’s members have been announced, and more than half of them hail from South Florida.
Aside from Ávila, who in 2023 carried legislation to rework Florida’s homestead exemption formula for seniors, the committee also includes Democratic Sens. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens and Mack Bernard of Palm Beach.
Jones is the immediate past Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. Bernard, a former House member, returned to the Legislature this year after eight years on the Palm Beach County Commission.
Other members — all Republican — include Sarasota Sen. Joe Gruters as Vice Chair and two former Senate Presidents, Don Gaetz and Kathleen Passidomo, the latter of whom preceded current President Ben Albritton in wielding the chamber’s gavel.
And that’s it. For the 2024-26 term, the Senate Finance and Tax Committee has just six members — five fewer than in the preceding two years. It’s the smallest number of members the panel has had since the 2008-10 term.
Notably, Jones is the only returning member.
He is also returning to the related Fiscal Policy Committee to which Albritton named every other member of the Finance and Tax Committee, with Gruters as Chair.
The Finance and Tax Committee’s membership includes both obvious choices and outside-the-box picks. That’s entirely intentional, Albritton said in an email to Senate members Friday.
“Many Senators have a subject matter expertise gained by either professional excellence or prior legislative service. This experience is a tremendous benefit to the Senate,” said.
“I also believe one of the benefits of a citizen legislature is the new approaches and differing points of view offered by individuals who have limited or no prior experience with a particular subject matter. I worked to balance these ideas in finalizing committee assignments.”
Ávila, for instance, is a captain in the Florida Army National Guard and an academic dean, with a master’s degree in public administration. Gruters is a certified public accountant.
Gaetz is a retired health care executive, former Florida Ethics Commissioner and Chair of the Okaloosa County School Board, for which he also worked as Superintendent.
Jones is a former educator who now works as the Director of Development for COOP Careers, a Google-backed program that helps first-generation college grads launch careers in marketing.
Bernard and Passidomo are lawyers.
The 2025 Legislative Session commences March 4 and runs through May 2.
