Two weeks have already passed by in Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session, leaving a mere six weeks left to determine learn how to spend Florida’s $93 billion in state income. Lobbyists are annoyed with pandemic restrictions stopping them from trying lawmakers within the eye to get a greater learn on the place they stand points which can be essential to their purchasers.
Lawmakers, in the meantime, miss the much less festive environment, however have extra freedom to function with out the crush of advocates clamoring for consideration.
The upshot is that quite a lot of payments, some good, some dangerous, and some downright ugly, are actually poised to go within the coming week or two. We check out a handful of them.
THE GOOD
COVID-19 Lawsuit Liability Protection – Making good progress in each the House and the Senate, COVID-19 legal responsibility protections for small companies, well being care suppliers and elder care services might quickly be on their strategy to to the Governor’s desk for signature, however quite a lot of wrinkles nonetheless have to be ironed out.
Right now, trial attorneys are licking their chops, salivating over the prospect of launching salvo after salvo of COVID-19 associated lawsuits. Lawmakers wish to cut back the variety of frivolous lawsuits whereas leaving the door open in order that dangerous actors – these companies that new the hazards and took no precautions to guard folks they work together with – could be held accountable.
That’s the appropriate method, one which will get Florida’s financial system again on its toes whereas permitting justice to prevail when it’s completely referred to as for.
Pole Attachment invoice(s) – SB 1944/HB 1567 – The best strategy to perceive why the pole attachment invoice is nice for Floridians is to image an ageing, picket phone pole snapped in half from a hurricane. Attached to the highest of the pole could possibly be something from high-voltage energy traces, to phone wires, to the newest 5G mobile gear. An complete neighborhood now sits with out energy, telephone service or mobile connectivity.
Why? Because the Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates utility poles owned by power utilities, has no authority to manage phone poles owned by telephone corporations, or to make sure these poles can stand up to hurricane energy winds. Under Florida legislation, that accountability falls to the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C.
Legislation is now making its means by the Florida House and Senate to clear up this jurisdictional mess and put all utility pole regulation underneath Florida’s Public Service Commission. Because of the fixed risk of storms and hurricanes, Florida’s utility corporations have invested billions of {dollars} to improve energy poles to higher stand up to hurricanes and maintain electrical energy flowing to storm-stricken communities.
Florida communities shall be higher off with storm-hardened poles and a streamlined regulatory setting governing them.
THE BAD
Corporate Combined Income Tax Bill (HR 999) – In idea, House Bill 999 would enhance the variety of firms required to file a Florida revenue tax return. Some lawmakers, largely Democrats, consider that may, in flip, enhance the state’s company tax income. The invoice primarily requires firms based mostly in Florida to file a single tax return relatively than separate out revenue from subsidiary corporations that do enterprise solely in different states.
The drawback is instantly apparent: payments like this arbitrarily assign revenue to a state (on this case, Florida) even when no enterprise exercise happened in that state. As two attorneys for Dean Mead Law put it:
The invoice’s assumption that every one firms in an affiliated unitary group have the identical stage of profitability is neither in step with financial idea nor real-world enterprise expertise.
The final conclusion is that the web outcome shall be fewer jobs. Want proof? Look no additional than 1983, when Florida tried this identical failed experiment and promptly misplaced a $50 million company growth in Boca Raton by IBM Corporation.
THE UGLY
Data Privacy Bill (HB 969) – While Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and conservative allies within the House and Senate are proper to be involved about Big Tech censorship, the present invoice making its means by the legislature will do extra hurt to Florida companies than it can to the so referred to as “Titans of Tech” in Silicon Valley.
That’s as a result of the invoice will impose vital prices on small companies who depend on focused digital promoting to make their ends meet. The invoice, in its present kind, would require strict adherence to knowledge retention insurance policies that border on the downright Draconian.
Here’s only one instance of how this proposal has not been thought by: the invoice as at the moment envisioned would require eating places and different small companies to delete all buyer info with whom they haven’t interacted for over one yr. Few eating places and small companies have the workers available to consistently keep on high of such pervasive database administration necessities in regular instances. But now, a full yr after the pandemic, not solely do eating places and small companies struggling simply to keep up their present operations, however now they need to purge their databases of consumers they haven’t seen for the reason that starting of the pandemic?
Why would this be crucial? It’s merely not.
The invoice has many different ill-conceived provisions with far-reaching implications.
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