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- [Voiceover] Coming up next, the state legislature ends its session passing a ban on transgender athletes.

It puts up a roadblock to groups trying to put amendments on the ballot, and financial trouble for Hillsborough County public schools.

Our guests are Attorney John Morgan, Lawrence Mower from the Times Herald Capital Bureau, columnist Diane Roberts and Hillsborough school board member Jessica Vaughn.

All this and more next on Florida This Week.

(rhythmic music) - Welcome back.

The state legislature finished its annual two month session on Friday after passing some momentous legislation.

In Tallahassee, House and Senate members have approved a series of bills near and dear to the Republican leadership.

Last week, they voted to increase existing penalties for people who take part in protests that turned violent.

This week, they approved a ban on transgender female athletes taking part in high school or college sports.

The bill was once thought to be dead, but was revived at the last minute and added to a different bill one having to do with charter schools.

Lawmakers also agreed to make it harder for groups to gather signatures on petitions to add proposed amendments to the ballot.

There now will be a $3,000 limit on how much money can be donated to groups gathering signatures for ballot issues.

This will make it nearly impossible for groups to amend the state constitution.

And as a result of last year's census, Florida will soon get one more seat in the US House of Representatives.

The process of drawing new districts begin soon and the most likely place for the new congressional seat is somewhere along the I-4 corridor.

Well, the state legislature passed a record $101.5 billion budget.

Lawrence Mower is the Tallahassee correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times.

He's been in the thick of the last minute deal making up there this week.

Lawrence, welcome back to Florida This Week.

Great to see you.

- Thanks for having me Rob.

- So I wanna read you a list of some of the things that were passed and this is a partial list, but they changed the election law here in Florida.

They put more limits on mail-in ballots.

Tallahassee preempted more power from local governments.

They put a ban on transgender girls in sports.

They pass the Anti-riot bill that was signed by the governor.

They passed a police reform bill.

They passed the right to farm legislation, protecting agriculture from health lawsuits for people affected by chemicals in agriculture and they pass the internet sales tax.

Now that's just a partial list.

The legislature got a lot done this time around.

Of those things that I mentioned, what do you think was most important or did I leave something off the list that viewers should know?

- It's hard to say where to begin.

Like you said, they got a lot of stuff done that they've wanted to get done for years.

One of those things is pretty new though, voting.

That was a momentous bill.

It has got a lot of national attention.

And what it does basically is makes it as election supervisors said that today makes it harder for Floridians to request a vote by mail ballot and turn one in.

And there's a slew of other things they did.

They also passed a bill that would basically require every motorist in the state to get a new insurance policy which is, it's hard to imagine something more, having more of a direct impact on people in that.

- They pass the transgender bill too.

The Democrats fought hard against that but weren't able to stop it.

- That's right.

We thought that bill was dead.

This week, a lot of people did and it came back in the final days of the session and passed.

This is something that Governor Ron DeSantis wanted.

He said last night on Fox News that he was doing this to protect girls.

And so it's a pretty momentous session.

- How important were cultural issues this session in Tallahassee versus the meat and potato issues like for instance, auto insurance?

How important were cultural issues this time around?

- Cultural issues and the culture war issues really dominated this session.

And it was a surprise.

It wasn't just a auto-insurance that took a back seat so to speak, unemployment, a lot of people thought that that would dominate the session.

The unemployment crisis a year ago was the number one topic on lawmaker's minds because they were feeling so many calls from frustrated Floridians who couldn't get their benefits and they did not pass any meaningful reforms on that this year.

- Wilton Simpson, the Senate president, that was one of his ideas to raise the weekly unemployment benefits.

He thought they were too low.

He's the Senate president, one of the most powerful people in Tallahassee.

I wonder how- - Yeah.

Yeah, he absolutely is.

And that's the question, how much did he advocate for that?

Both chambers have to pass the same bill to pass.

The Senate passed it late, very late in session.

They didn't even take it up until halfway through the session, the Senate didn't.

And so how speaker Chris Brown did chose not to hear it?

- So Lawrence, a lot of States this time around, 28 States I believe are passing some transgender ban bill.

A lot of States are passing rollbacks on mail and voting.

I'm just wondering, are these ideas being promulgated by the American Legislative Exchange Council?

Or how do Republicans share these ideas from state to state?

Do you have any insight about how this happens?

- I'm not sure if ALEC was behind these things.

The American Legislative Exchange Council but clearly there's some coordination going on.

And it's notable that after Georgia passed its voting bill there was a huge backlash from major league baseball and corporations.

And since then, Florida did.

Florida lawmakers did scale back their own version of that bill.

And while there are still some provisions that election supervisors are not a fan of and a lot of voting rights advocates are not a fan of, it was much milder than what they were proposing initially.

- Yeah, because as I was watching the debate about the voting law bill, some of the Republicans pointed out that even in Democratic run States, you have rules like the ones that they were suggesting be passed here in Florida.

- Yeah, that's a very fair criticism, frankly.

And Florida that there is a little bit of an irony here, right?

And that Republicans said they were going after ballot harvesting so they made it illegal to collect more than two ballots.

You can't possess more than two ballots.

Well, that was a law that was on the books 20 years ago and Republicans were the ones who did away with it because it was part of Republicans strategy.

Jeb Bush was really advocated for voting by mail.

This was a big thing they advocated for so then they opened it up and a lot of the protections they're talking about.

I mean frankly in Miami-Dade County it's also illegal to possess more than two ballots.

So it's unclear how big an impact that will have on elections cause a lot of these things are behind the scenes, changes to how supervisors of election count ballots, how ballots can be challenged, those kinds of things.

- Yeah.

Well Lawrence, thanks a lot.

I look forward to reading your reporting in the Tampa Bay Times.

- Thanks Rob.

(rhythmic music) - Attorney John Morgan is the founder of the law firm, Morgan and Morgan.

He's also a leader in the fight to legalize marijuana in Florida and the US.

He also worked to pass Amendment 2 last November which raised the minimum wage here in Florida.

He joins us now, John Morgan, welcome to Florida This Week.

Great to have you here.

- It's great to be with you.

- Let me ask you about, you have been behind some petition drives recently.

Now that the legislature has made this change and put a cap on how much people can donate to petition drives, how does that affect measures that were instrumental in getting on the ballot?

- Well, if those measures were enforce and effect to when I was doing my ballot initiatives, I wouldn't have been able to do either one of them.

Either medical marijuana, or the $15 an hour living wage.

So it basically takes everybody.

It takes the whole game and says there will be no game anymore.

- So legislature says, "Look, it's rich people that are putting these issues on the ballot.

And therefore it's right to put a contribution cap on the signature gathering."

- It's very interesting that they... First of all, it's unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court case Citizens United basically stood for the proposition that money was the same as speech and a violation of free speech.

So the first thing is it's unconstitutional.

The second thing is it's funny that they limited to $3,000 something I could put in but for themselves, they have unlimited amounts of money that they can take.

Hundred thousand dollars donations are easily done every day in Tallahassee.

And so what really happened here is they don't like the purest form of democracy which is an initiative effort.

It took power away from them and gave it to the people.

It took power away from special interest and gave it to the people.

And that's how these politicians get money it's by doing things for special interests so they're trying to subvert the purest form of democracy that we have which is an initiative for the people.

- So in recent years, so land conservation, medical marijuana, the minimum wage have all been passed.

The restoration of voting rights have all been passed through this method.

Would any of those pass now under what the legislature has just approved?

- You wouldn't be able to get them on the ballot because it would be impossible to get that much money from small donors and so none of it would happen.

More importantly is all of those things that happened, the restoration of felons rights, fair districts, medical marijuana, living wage that the people in Tallahassee never even took any of those measures up.

But the funny part about it is that's what the people wanted.

Cause remember to pass it has to pass with 60% of the vote not 50%, 60% of the vote, which as you know in politics is a landslide.

- Really.

Yeah.

All right, but the sponsor of this legislation says, "Look, leave it up to the legislature to do this."

So you can't draw, write up an amendment that's gonna adequately cover all the aspects of a law just leave it up to the legislature.

They'll take care of it.

That's what the sponsor of the bill said.

- Well, nobody ever brought up a living wage.

Nobody ever brought up medical marijuana.

Nobody ever brought up restoring felons rights.

They're not gonna bring it up.

And look, Jose Oliva who was the speaker of the house, he was really fighting me about the minimum wage.

And I said, "Jose, take it up, have hearings.

The best thing would have been to be done by statute."

But Jose and his brethren basically called my bluff but I don't bluff.

And I don't blink.

And therefore the people of Florida said, we are compassionate.

It's not a living wage.

People cannot take care of their families on $8 an hour.

And they did what the legislature would not even have hearings about.

- So John, you said it's unconstitutional at the start of this interview.

Will you be challenging this law when the governor signs it?

- I don't know if I will.

I'll help them if they want.

I would imagine that the ACLU and all sorts of groups are gonna come in to challenge this amendment.

I mean it's not a lot of work.

You just have to go to the Citizens United and track and trace the language from the Supreme Court And that's your roadmap, Citizens United.

- Well, John Morgan it's great to see you.

Thank you for coming on the program.

- It's good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

- I hope you come back.

(rhythmic music) - Diane Roberts is an eighth generation Floridian.

She was born and raised in Tallahassee.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times the Times of London, the Washington Post, the St. Petersburg Times and now she writes for the Florida Phoenix.

She also teaches at Florida State University.

And Diane Roberts, welcome back.

- Thank you.

- Let's start with the changes in voting laws of Florida along with a lot of other States are changing the way that mail and ballots are gonna be handled and drop-off ballots are gonna be taken in.

What do you think of what the legislature is doing and has done regarding voting this year?

- Well, it's completely perverse.

The system wasn't broken so they decided to fix it.

Now it is gonna be broken because what they've done is suppressed the vote for a lot of people who depended on vote by mail as an easy process, Dropbox is that kind of thing.

But this is all part of the Republican national freakout because they lost the presidency and States that ran terrific elections, even States that ran terrific elections and then audited themselves six ways to Sunday like Georgia, like Arizona, they're going to change the way people are allowed or not allowed to vote because they can allow all of these Democrats to vote again in such numbers as they did in 2020.

- Diane, in Florida, in statewide elections in the last few years, going back to 2000, the statewide elections here in Florida have been razor thin.

It's just a game of inches and most of the time the Republicans have won, but only one narrowly.

So now if you shave off just a few voters from the democratic side, I mean is that the game we're in?

Is that all Republicans are trying to do is shave a little bit off the democratic support?

- That's sure what it looks like.

If you think about the 2018, given a tutorial race, Ron DeSantis won that by a whisker, an absolute whisker.

Rick Scott won by a whisker over Bill Nelson.

And that was scary enough to them.

Of course, on the other side, you might well point out that Democrats had a turnout problem.

Democrats have an organization problem.

I mean, it is quite astonishing to me just how ham-fisted the Florida democratic party can be.

So while I have every faith in the Florida democratic party, its ability to screw up an election and screw up campaign, they're getting a lot of help now from the Republicans.

And all they need to do is shave off a few points as you say.

That's all it'll take for another decade or so of Republican hegemony.

- Another issue the legislature has passed a ban on transgender girls taking part in high school and college athletics.

So what do you think of that decision?

And the governor says he's gonna sign it.

- It's pure spite.

It's spite.

Yes, he's gonna protect our girls.

He says, protect our girls from what?

Other girls?

It is clear to me that a lot of Florida Republicans have no idea what transgender means.

It doesn't mean someone say a young man who decides, he doesn't decide he's a girl.

He's a girl.

This is how it works.

Eventually people take hormones, people take all kinds of things and they're no, they're not in disguise as another gender.

They are that gender.

So the nonsense about as spouted by various idiotic Republicans about boys claiming to be girls so they can get in the girl's locker room and leer at the girls.

If anybody knows anything about being a transgender kid, that's not anything you pick.

That's not a life you want to have.

Nobody would go through that misery of coming out as trans.

That's not a fun thing to do.

It's a necessary thing to do for a kid's identity.

This is just spiteful.

And this is a signal to the hyper Christian base that they're not gonna put up with any of this nonsense about people choosing their own gender even though...

The world is moving on, the world and the NCAA, if we do this we'll never have another championship game in this state.

- Diane, we only have a 30 seconds but if you were to list the major problems that Florida actually does have currently, would you list the transgender girls participating in sports or problems with mail-in ballots?

Would you list those as the top two?

- No.

We've got dirty water.

We've got a sea level rise.

We've got all kinds of problems in the state but we don't have a problem with voting and we don't have a problem with transgender children.

- Diane Roberts, thanks a lot.

Thanks for coming back on the program.

- Thank you.

(rhythmic music) - The Hillsborough School District has an $80 million budget shortfall prompting the recent layoffs of more than a thousand positions.

Superintendent Addison Davis is under a microscope and State Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran is ordering a detailed recovery plan by May 12th.

Jessica Vaughn holds the District 3 seat on the Hillsborough school board and joins us with more on what the school board is doing to move forward.

Jessica, welcome back to the program.

- Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's always a pleasure to be here.

- Why is the Hillsborough School District having these financial problems?

- Well, that's a complicated question.

It's not an easy answer and I've always tried to refer to it as the perfect storm of things.

Hillsborough is very unique.

It's big, it's diverse and essentially it comes down to the fact that number one, we're not being properly funded by Tallahassee.

So if you study our history, there've been a lot of... Back when we had the recession, the amount of money that we got per pupil was reduced, our millage was reduced and they gave us less money because of the recession.

Going forward, they've never accurately caught up to the amount of money that we should be getting per pupil to fund our students who go through a year of school.

And so the due to the underfunding, and also the fact that we're competing with a lot of charter schools now that lowers our enrollment and the money that we get, along with the fact that we are a County that doesn't have a lot of internal resources as far as funding ourselves.

So other counties have enacted a larger millage to pay for operational fees.

We did go out for a tax referendum in 2018 and that gives us extra money for capital outlay which is the physical improvements to our schools like air conditioning and roofs.

But what we're looking at now is our general budget and operation fees.

So we don't have a lot of internal tax revenue for that.

We don't have million dollar properties.

We don't have a lot of, they like to say that we're student rich, meaning we have a lot of students but we're property poor.

So we don't have a lot of local taxes that generate that.

On top of not getting the money, enough money from Tallahassee and then having to compete with charter schools that sets us up to a perfect storm of not being able to make our operational expenses.

Now I'm sure there are other mitigating factors along the way.

Some people are wondering if the Gates Grant affected that or not.

It would be hard to say six years later.

So there are other pieces I'm sure that contributed to it, but overall not getting enough funding, charter schools and not having an internal source of revenue is what we're facing right now and we'll continue to face.

- State Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran has threatened to take over the district unless you fix the financial problems or at least come up with a plan to fix them by May 12th.

Is that still in the works that you may face a takeover by the state?

- So, yes.

As of right now, as far as I know it is in the works.

I do know that our superintendent did drive to Tallahassee yesterday to meet with people in the Department of Education and talk about possible solutions.

And we haven't got a full update of what that looks like yet.

I know he's waiting to tie up some loose ends with that but he did come back saying that he felt hopeful.

So it does sound like they are trying to partner with us now and possibly work with some solutions.

Although I don't really know what that looks like.

I haven't gotten that information yet.

- Do you think as a school board member that school districts around the state are getting their fair share of the federal rescue money?

I mean is there a federal rescue money that was designed to help school districts that are temporarily in trouble?

And are you getting your fair share?

- Yes, there were three federal acts we got our first amount of money which we call ECERS, it's part of the CARES act.

But then there was an ECERS-2 two and an ECERS-3, which for whatever reason, the state has decided to hold onto even though there was language in ECERS-3 that gave them a more rapid timeline to pass that on to the school districts.

As far as I know, none of the other districts in Florida have received that money and that the state legislation, despite very specific language in both of those acts has decided to at least hang on to that until after session and then based on Commissioner Corcoran's letter, even possibly longer.

Now, whether or not that's gonna change now that legislation is wrapping up is still to be seen but there are some additional concerns about specific language in the ECERS act which encourages local districts if they are having challenges with staff salaries or if they are looking at potential layoffs to actually be able to use the money for that to mitigate those.

And the state is saying very strongly that they suggest we don't use it in that way and that they would strongly suggest that we don't use it for salary.

So there does seem to be a disconnect continually from how it was written.

- Well, Jessica Vaughn, thanks a lot.

And we'll continue to pay attention to the situation of Florida's public schools.

- Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Have me on anytime you wanna ask me questions.

(rhythmic music) - Well finally musicians, including Jermaine Dupri, Ne-Yo and the Detroit Youth Choir have teamed up in a new song and a video called Simply Change.

The song comes against the background of even more controversy over police killings of more black people across the nation.

Stay safe.

Take care of each other.

We'll see you next week.

♪ We gon' do it big ♪ ♪ We gon' make a scene ♪ ♪ We gon' take the doubters ♪ ♪ Make 'em all believe ♪ ♪ We gon' be the change ♪ ♪ That we wanna see ♪ ♪ We're not taking average ♪ ♪ Chasing legend status ♪ ♪ We can have the world ♪ ♪ We can have it all ♪ ♪ Nothing is too big ♪ ♪ Nothing is too small ♪ ♪ We can be the change ♪ ♪ That we wanna see ♪ ♪ We're not taking average ♪ ♪ Chasing legend status ♪ ♪ We gon' do it big ♪ ♪ Do it ♪ ♪ All we gotta do is ♪ ♪ Do it ♪ ♪ Nothing ♪ ♪ Nothing ♪ ♪ Nothing ♪ ♪ Can stop us now ♪ ♪ No ♪ - [Voiceover] Florida This Week is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.