Daniel Perez is entering his less friendly to Ron DeSantis era

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 11/19/24-Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, speaks during reorganizational session, Tuesday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

As the Florida House gaveled in for a Legislative Session Gov. Ron DeSantis called for — and subsequently used his bully pulpit to further push for — it became immediately clear that the days of legislative deference to DeSantis’ executive office will no longer stand. 

To be clear, DeSantis still has plenty of allies in the legislative branch. And as a Republican, he’ll continue to enjoy the fruits of a GOP super majority to further work that typically aligns with DeSantis’ — and most Republicans’ — conservative ideology. 

But in his remarks Monday morning, House Speaker Daniel Perez made it clear that the body he leads will not be bullied into action. Perez was unwavering in his conviction, blasting DeSantis — while still being civil and respectful of the office of the Governor — over a veto process that should serve as a check on the Legislature’s shortcomings, but has lacked a check on itself that should come from the Legislature. 

In doing so, he called out DeSantis for vetoing 30% of the Legislature’s operating budget, a $57 million slash that caused legislative staffers to dip into cash reserves to avoid layoffs and keep the lights on at the Capitol. Meanwhile, Perez wasn’t shy in pointing out that the Governor’s final budgets have grown the Executive Office of the Governor’s budget by 70% over the last six years. 

His remarks were pointed, yet cordial. They put DeSantis on notice, while managing to not cross him too much (though we doubt DeSantis will see it that way.) They are so good, in fact, I believe everyone would benefit from reading them in their entirety. 

Here are Perez’s Special Session 2025-B floor remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Welcome to Special Session 2025-B. I want to talk about our process going forward. We will be canceling the previously scheduled committee meetings for this week to focus exclusively on Special Session. I will now ask staff to distribute notebooks to all of you. In your notebook, you will find (1) the call for Special Session B, (2) the bill that Representative McClure will be filing this morning, and (3) the bill analysis. The bill analysis will be available online once the bill is filed and will be in our new interactive format.

Another thing I dislike about Special Session is that it excludes too many Members from the conversation. The typical practice is to refer a bill to one committee and then bring it to the Floor. We will not be following that tradition. Instead, HB 1B will be heard in three committees this afternoon. However, rather than sending it to standing committees, where most of you would never see the bill and a few of you might see it more than once depending on your committee assignments, I will be creating three Select Committees on Illegal Immigration and will assign as many members to each committee as we can reasonably accommodate in our largest committee room, Webster Hall in 212 Knott.

The Select Committee on Illegal Immigration A will be chaired by Representative Robinson and will meet at 1:00 p.m.

The Select Committee on Illegal Immigration B will be chaired by Representative Tomkow and will meet at 3:00 p.m.

The Select Committee on Illegal Immigration C will be chaired by Representative Duggan and will meet at 5:00 p.m.

You will find your Select Committee assignment in your notebook as well.

The Rules & Ethics Committee will meet this evening at 7:00 p.m. in 404 HOB. As we speak, all committee meetings are being noticed.

We will convene on the Floor tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., and I anticipate that we will complete our work in one day. As I said, all other committee meetings this week are canceled, so you may adjust your schedules accordingly.

Also, members, please remember that we extended the bill submission deadline from last Friday to this Wednesday, so if you have good ideas that you haven’t gotten into drafting yet, please do so by Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.

Before we adjourn to begin our committee process, we have one more piece of legislative business.

One of the promises that I made to you as a Speaker was to have a more robust, engaging legislative process. Part of that mission is to more fully utilize the powers of this legislative body. We have a legislative blindspot – we tend to be so fixated on the next thing that we don’t always pay attention to the last thing. We are attempting to correct that this term by putting a much greater emphasis in our committee process on the implementation of laws. But that’s also true in the appropriations process.

Every year we spend hundreds of hours evaluating hundreds of billions of dollars in asks to construct a proposed budget that we navigate through a bicameral legislative process to produce a final General Appropriations Act. The Governor then has an opportunity to review our work and veto items. That’s a healthy process because as hard we try to do a good job, we do make mistakes. Sometimes we have less than perfect information when we are making a budget decision.

The veto creates a check on that process. However, the Governor’s staff also makes mistakes. They sometimes act on less than perfect information and make decisions using faulty criteria. The constitution corrects for potential flaws in that system of checks by providing a system of balances. The Legislature has the power to reinstate an appropriation. That process should be a part of our regular legislative work.

I will be utilizing our new House Rule authorizing the creation of combined workgroups so that a workgroup from the budget subcommittees and their corresponding policy subcommittees can systematically review vetoed appropriations to see if anything might be an appropriate candidate to bring before the body for reinstatement. It will be my intention that such reinstatements should be a part of every Floor Session until we bring our 2025-2026 House Budget to the Floor.

To start us off in that process and familiarize all of you with the procedural mechanics of budget reinstatements, we will be bringing before the body the vetoes of the legislative budget.

Last Summer, the Governor vetoed 30% of the Legislature’s operating budget, totaling $57 million. This is the pot of money we use to pay for back-end operations including legal, accounting and human resources, as well as the funds that support the work of OPPAGA, EDR, JAPC, JLAC, and the Historic Capitol.

We avoided having to fire employees or shut down operations by using our cash reserves. The appropriation in question was recurring and had not been increased in years. In contrast, the Legislature has generously increased the budget for the Executive Office of the Governor by 70% over the last 6 years.

This veto was at best a misunderstanding of the importance of the appropriation or at worst an attempt to threaten the independence of our separate branch of government. Whatever the rationale, this Special Session represents the first opportunity to correct this veto, which we will be bringing before you for reinstatement.