Recap and analysis of the week in state government and politics
By Ryan Dailey
The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — Curbing students’ cell phone use, targeting illegal immigration and preventing COVID-19 mandates — Gov. Ron DeSantis this week signed dozens of bills, including one that will keep his travels under wraps.
The bills passed during the recently completed legislative session, which DeSantis touted as the most “productive” in state history and Democrats lambasted as being filled with “missed opportunities” and “culture war” issues.
Among other things, DeSantis signed a measure (HB 379) that will bar students from using cell phones during class time and curtail use of the social-media platform TikTok on school grounds.
The law is set to take effect in July and will prevent use of cell phones during “instructional time,” unless expressly directed by teachers. Educators also will have to designate areas for the devices during class.
The bill also takes aim at one of the governor’s technological targets, the popular social-media app TikTok. It will prevent the use of TikTok on devices owned by school districts and through internet access provided by districts.
DeSantis described the social-media restrictions as “reining in the use” of the technology in schools.
“Being normal kids, like kids were prior to social media, is important. The social media (causes) more problems than it solves, and I think it causes more harm than good. So, let’s have our education system be as much about traditional education as we can,” DeSantis said.
The governor this week also signed a measure (SB 1616) that will prevent the release of past and future travel records of DeSantis and other state leaders.
The measure provides a public-records exemption for travel records of DeSantis, the governor’s immediate family, the lieutenant governor, Cabinet members, the House speaker, the Senate president and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
Democrats sharply criticized the bill during the legislative session, contending the exemption would go beyond travel itineraries and also prevent the release of information about where the governor went — and who attended meetings and events.
Anders Croy, communications director of a DeSantis opposition group, DeSantis Watch, said in a Twitter post Thursday that the bill was signed a day before DeSantis begins “political trips to Illinois (and) Iowa, (and) amid reports of upcoming donor dinners at the Governor’s Mansion.” DeSantis has been traveling across the country as he prepares for a potential 2024 presidential campaign.
During a media appearance last week, DeSantis said he didn’t “come up” with the travel-records proposal.
“With the security situation, how you do patterns of movements, if you’re somebody that is targeted, which unfortunately I am, and I get a lot of threats, that could be something that could be helpful for people that may not want to do good things,” the governor said.
DeSantis signed the travel-related measure along with 36 other bills, including legislation (HB 1259) that will provide charter schools a new avenue of “capital outlay” funding for such things as purchasing land and facilities. Starting July 1, school districts will be required to share portions of tax revenues using a formula factoring in charter-school enrollment against overall district enrollment.
Also this week, DeSantis signed bills on two of his priority issues — cracking down on illegal immigration and blocking COVID-19 mandates.
The immigration bill (SB 1718) includes stepping up requirements on businesses to check the immigration status of workers. It will require all businesses with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers. Since 2021, such businesses have been required to use E-Verify or what are known as I-9 forms.
DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president in 2024, criticized federal border policies as he signed the bill Wednesday.
“We are supposed to be the world’s leading superpower, and yet we can’t even maintain control of our own southern border,” DeSantis said during an event in Jacksonville.
The measure also cracks down on people who bring undocumented immigrants into Florida and includes a requirement to collect data about whether hospital patients are in the country legally.
Hope CommUnity Center, an Apopka organization that provides services to immigrants, issued a statement Wednesday calling DeSantis “willfully ignorant” of the immigration system and expressing concerns about the hospital requirement and other parts of the bill.
“Undocumented immigrants want nothing more than to come out of the shadows. But the system is a dysfunctional maze that Washington refuses to fix. The Florida Legislature is punishing the wrong people for that and, in the process, dehumanizing their existence,” Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, the center’s executive director, said in the statement.
The governor, who has made opposition to COVID-19 mandates a key part of his political brand, also signed a measure (SB 252) Thursday that includes issues such as barring businesses and government agencies from requiring people to take COVID-19 tests or wear masks to enter their facilities.
The new law also includes a prohibition on businesses, government agencies and schools requiring people to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 as a condition of employment.
DeSantis signed the bill in Destin on the same day that a federal public-health emergency for COVID-19 was set to end. But DeSantis pointed to a need to address the potential of future government mandates.
One of the 37 bills that DeSantis signed Thursday will lead to the state inspecting Walt Disney World’s monorail system.
The bill (HB 1305) came amid a feud between DeSantis and Disney that started last year when the company opposed a law that restricts instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
Under the bill, the state Department of Transportation, starting July 1, will be required to complete compliance reports for the monorail every three years and conduct annual onsite evaluations.
STORY OF THE WEEK: After a legislative session heralded by Gov. Ron DeSantis as historically productive and decried by critics as eaten up by culture-war issues, the governor is tearing through bill-signings, with more than 40 under his belt this week.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Being a close vote doesn’t mean contentiousness. I think that this candidate was vetted very well. I think there were a lot of great candidates, and I think that’s why it ended up being more of a close vote than some of the other votes you might have been watching.” — Darlene Jordan, a member of the state university system’s Board of Governors, on Florida Gulf Coast University trustees’ selection of Aysegul Timur to be the school’s next president. The comment came as Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. suggested Timur receive a “shorter contract” because she was narrowly approved by the trustees.
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