Health care portions of Rural Renaissance clear Legislature, but will other key provisions stall?

In this photo taken March 20, 2020, cattle rancher Joe Whitesell rides his horse in a field near Dufur, Oregon, as he helps a friend herd cattle. Tiny towns tucked into Oregon's windswept plains and cattle ranches miles from anywhere in South Dakota might not have had a single case of the new coronavirus yet, but their residents fear the spread of the disease to areas with scarce medical resources, the social isolation that comes when the only diner in town closes its doors and the economic free fall that's already hitting them hard. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

The Legislature has now passed all health care portions of the Rural Renaissance bill. But efforts to drive education and economic resources to smaller counties appear in trouble.

The Senate unanimously approved a health care bill (HB 1427) that includes key portions of the Rural Renaissance package.

Sen. Jason Brodeur, a Lake Mary Republican, had previously carried legislation (SB 1568) on allowing electronic prescriptions to passage in the Senate on April 21. But he acknowledged that the companion bill in the House had become a bit more cumbersome.

Among policies attached to the legislation were provisions of a Rural Renaissance package (SB 110) that the Senate unanimously passed in March.

“Most notably in that is for emergency room physicians who decide they want to go practice in a rural community,” Brodeur said. Those doctors will be eligible for the Florida Reimbursement Assistance for Medical Education (FRAME) program.

How that ended up on a bill about prescriptions has to do with the House strategy of breaking up the Rural Renaissance bill, a high priority of Senate President Ben Albritton, and attaching provisions to other pieces of contentious legislation.

While the health care bill passed in the Senate unanimously, other bills may not see another vote in the upper chamber.

Sen. Corey Simon, a Tallahassee Republican who sponsored the entire Rural Renaissance package in the House, refused to take up an economic development bill (HB 991) that passed in the lower chamber last week.

“This is our Rural Renaissance bill that we passed on the floor unanimously that has been bastardized,” Simon said on the House floor.

He called for the Senate to refuse to concur with the House version, drawing applause within the chamber before Senators by voice vote called for the House to recede from the changes.

Meanwhile, another bill with provisions of Rural Renaissance seems completely stalled. The House passed a higher education bill (HB 1267) that would establish a “Rural Incentive for Professional Educators” program. That was added to a bill related to the opening of more Schools of Hope.

But the Senate version of that legislation (SB 1708), which hasn’t included the rural incentives programs, appears stalled less than two days from the scheduled end of Session. While it cleared the Senate Education K-12 Committee and an appropriations subcommittee, it was never scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Rules Committee.

That committee doesn’t plan to meet again before the end of Session, though last-minute meetings have been called before.