www.thecentersquare.com – By Steve Wilson | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-06-04 14:14:00
Florida lawmakers held budget conference committee hearings to resolve differences in budget proposals by exchanging offers highlighted in yellow, which turn gray upon agreement. The Senate proposed $20.88 billion for K-12 appropriations, slightly above the House’s $20.83 billion. The House offered $75.2 million for K-12 general fund projects, exceeding the Senate’s $50.2 million. For agriculture, environment, and general government, the House proposed $3.01 billion versus the Senate’s $2.93 billion. A constitutional amendment may raise the rainy day fund cap from 10% to 25%, requiring $750 million annual contributions until approved by voters in 2026. Budget completion is targeted by June 13, with a vote on June 16.
(The Center Square) – The goal of Wednesday’s budget conference committee hearings between the two chambers of the Florida Legislature was simple: Turn yellow into gray.
The two sides are working on the details of a budget deal that was reached in principle last week.
The way it works is the House conferees issue an offer on a spreadsheet and the Senate counters. Any yellow highlighted cells on the spreadsheet show where the two chambers are in disagreement. Once agreement is reached, either by one side agreeing to the specific appropriation or by the proposing side pulling it back, the yellow cell becomes gray, signaling concurrence.
For total K-12 appropriations, the Senate’s first offer of $20.88 billion in all funds is only $55 million more than the House’s counter-proposal of $20.83 billion.
On K-12 general fund appropriation projects, the House’s first offer is more than $25 million than the Senate’s first offer ($50.2 million) at $75.2 million and is $32 million more than the House’s budget bill, HB5001.
For agriculture, environment and general government, the Senate’s offer is $2.93 billion, eclipsed by the House’s offer of $3.01 billion.
The two chambers will continue to work on a compromise as they face a July 1 deadline for a new budget. The Senate and House will hold a full sessions on Thursday.
One bill that might be considered is a change to the state’s rainy day fund, which is known as the Budget Stabilization fund, via a constitutional amendment. The present cap on general fund revenues that can be committed to the fund is 10%, but if the resolution is passed and 60% of Florida voters approve of the measure in November 2026, the cap will increase to 25%.
Lawmakers must allocate $750 million annually to the rainy day fund until the new percentage is reached and they’ll move that outlay into reserve until voters decide on the amendment. The current balance is $4.44 billion (9.2% according to Florida TaxWatch), but the cap would increase to $13 billion by 2026-2027.
According to legislative leaders, work on the budget is planned to be completed by June 13 and a vote, after the constitutionally mandated 72-hour cooling off period, scheduled for June 16.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article primarily presents a straightforward report on the budget conference committee hearings in the Florida Legislature. It focuses on detailing the negotiation process between the House and Senate, providing specific figures and timelines without using charged or persuasive language. The content refrains from endorsing any particular fiscal policy position or political viewpoint, instead offering a factual summary of ongoing budget discussions. This neutral tone and presentation indicate an adherence to balanced reporting, merely describing the actions and proposals of political entities without contributing an ideological stance of its own.
SUMMARY: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, known for playing Theo Huxtable on the groundbreaking 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” tragically died from accidental drowning in Costa Rica. The show, which aired from 1984 to 1992, was celebrated for positively portraying a Black family, resonating deeply with Generation X and Black audiences by reflecting their experiences and challenging racial stereotypes. Fans and community members expressed profound grief, describing Warner as a relatable figure and role model who shaped their childhoods and cultural memory. His death was unexpected, heightening the sense of loss felt by those who admired both his acting and activism.
Florida’s extreme heat, rising sea levels, and worsening storms are the focus of this satirical yet urgent commentary on climate change. The author critiques Governor Ron DeSantis’ denial of climate science, including his removal of “climate change” from state law and support for conspiracy-tinged policies like banning “chemtrails.” While offering humorous tips for surviving the heat, from freezing clothes to fleeing to Greenland, the piece underscores the serious consequences of ignoring environmental science. Rising global temperatures, melting ice sheets, and fossil fuel dependence are accelerating the crisis, with Florida especially vulnerable due to its geography and political inaction.
If you wake up every morning worrying you’ve landed in hell, you pretty much have.
It’s hotter than Satan’s house cat.
Venture outside and it feels like you’re walking through a sauna wearing a suit made of polar bear fur while carrying a five-gallon pot of live coals.
Like so much in Florida, summer gets worse every year.
The heat is immoral; unconscionable; unendurable.
It should be illegal.
Surely Florida’s governor could figure out how to outlaw this heat.
He solved that pesky climate change business by simply erasing any mention of it in state statutes.
Maybe he could proclaim 100 degrees is really only 80, 80 is 50, and 50 is below freezing.
Kind of like what they call “vanity sizing:” A size 14 dress is now labeled a 10.
Or maybe we could use Celsius: 37 degrees sounds a lot better than 100.
See? You feel cooler already, don’t you?
Or not.
Those of us living in the reality-based culture know you cannot beat the Florida heat.
The best you can hope for is to reach some kind of accommodation with it, appease it the way the ancients would sacrifice a goat or a chicken to butter up a surly god given to smiting people for fun, or figure out ways to avoid the worst of it.
To Do List
I’m a native Floridian; I have suggestions:
Find a swimming pool. Lie in the water. Do not get out unless you are joined by an alligator — which happens quite often — and then extricate yourself slowly. No sudden movements. (Gators do not follow homeowners’ association rules.)
If reptiles run you out of the pool, try a bathtub. Yes, your skin will become quite wrinkly, but it’s better than heat rash.
Go shopping. You’re risking heatstroke getting from the parking lot to the door, but once you get inside your favorite big box store, the air-conditioning will be delightfully frosty.
You can spend hours and hours in Walmart, looking at “school clothes” even if you don’t go to school. Florida’s Back to School sales tax holiday runs throughout August. Unfortunately, the guns and ammo sales tax holiday doesn’t begin until Sept. 8. But it’ll still be hot enough to scald a scorpion and still be hurricane season.
You can get yourself a bargain firearm suitable for firing into the storm!
Bribe a grocery store or restaurant to let you sit in their walk-in freezer. Make sure you’ve got a cell signal in there: We don’t want any tragedies.
Speaking of ice, here’s something you can do using your home freezer. Stick a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in there, wait three hours, then put them on.
They’ll be stiff for 20 minutes or so, but you’ll enjoy the personal air-conditioning.
Leave. Go to Greenland.
Forget Canada (they’re certainly trying to forget us). Greenland will be the 51st state. The only reason it hasn’t happened already is that Donald Trump has been too busy blowing up the National Weather Service, NASA, and NOAA.
But you don’t want to wait till half of Florida flees our polluted aquifers, flooded suburbs, hurricane-ravaged condos and malarial sinks.
Get ahead of the crowd and scope out Nuuk’s best spots for Musk Ox steak and Eric the Red beer.
You’ll never run out of ice in Greenland.
Not for five or six years, at least.
Rising tide
This dang Chinese hoax is warming up everything from the Antarctic to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific to the north Atlantic.
Greenland’s ice sheet is melting, faster and faster every year. So are the glaciers and the icebergs.
How do I know this? Because some of NASA’s global climate change research websites are still up (see link above), but who knows for how long.
Now where do you think that all that water from the ice sheets will go?
If you answered “everywhere,” you’re correct.
Sea-level rise is evident in this photo of a flooded palm tree taken on the Florida Panhandle’s St. Vincent Island. (Photo by Susan Cerulean)
If you said, “Especially Florida,” you get bonus points.
One of the annoying little quirks of vast quantities of melting ice is rising sea levels.
We live in the southernmost state, the most watery state, the one that floods if you stare at it hard.
A lot of us live just a few feet above sea level.
Since 1970, the sea level has risen seven inches, which might not sound too bad, except even a Category 1 hurricane — Debby in 2024, say — can produce a storm surge of 2-5 feet.
With a whopper like Helene, it’s more like 15 feet.
You see the problem.
Seas aren’t only rising, they’re getting hotter. Hotter seas breed bigger storms.
Over the past few weeks, the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico (no, I’m not calling it by that fake Trump name) has ranged from 80 to 92 degrees.
The warmer the water, the faster it evaporates, the faster it evaporates, the heavier the rainfall.
Add to that temperatures in the high 90s and you get a heat-plus-humidity situation which almost certainly violates the Geneva Conventions on torture.
Compared to the poor souls along the Guadalupe River in Texas, we’ve been lucky.
Our luck is unlikely to hold. Every part of Florida is susceptible to flash floods.
Deflection, denial
This is, of course, a global problem.
China is now the worst greenhouse gas offender, but the U.S. is right behind and, given how the regime hates being Number Two, I’m sure we will soon regain the title of Biggest Threat to Human Life on Earth.
New research by the nonprofit Climate and Community Institute shows the 17% increase in the Pentagon’s budget translates into an enormous increase in carbon emissions: 178 tons in 2026.
That’s half of what the entire United Kingdom emits.
We’re not stopping there, either. Trump is enabling extractive industries to pillage the land from sea to shining sea, making swingeing cuts to wind and solar energy programs, and ordering an ancient, costly, and dirty Michigan coal plant to stay open.
What, you ask, is Florida doing about this?
(Can you hear me laughing bitterly?)
To be fair, the governor did sign a ban on drilling along the Apalachicola River.
But when it comes to the climate crisis, he deflects and denies.
In addition to trying to deep-six the whole issue by refusing to name it and calling attempts to address the causes of the precipitous rise in temperatures “left-wing stuff,” he wants you to believe monster storms have always happened in Florida and always will.
And despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia U.S. representative and weekend scientist, says, weather is not controlled by the government.
But just to be sure, she says she’ll sponsor legislation prohibiting “the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity.”
Photo courtesy of Florida Skywatchers Facebook page.
Ahead of the curve
Florida, always ahead of the crazy curve, has already passed such a bill, and the governor has signed it.
He cites dark fears of “chemtrails” deployed by shadowy green activists trying to fight climate change by “injecting different things in the atmosphere, blocking the sun and doing all this stuff.”
He added, “We’re the Sunshine State. We want to have the nice sunshine.”
First of all, “chemtrails” are not a thing. Those white lines swooshing behind aircraft are condensation trails, i.e. little bitty ice crystals formed when the exhaust from the plane hits the cold high-altitude air.
Second, while there’s some preliminary research on using geoengineering to reflect sunshine back into space, we don’t know how this might affect rainfall or food production and many scientists don’t think it’s feasible or desirable.
Moreover, why spend billions fooling with the sun when we could develop sustainable power, stop burning fossil fuels, encourage clean energy, and hold polluters accountable for destroying the environment.
Despite most Floridians figuring they can ride this thing out in their air-conditioned caves, the reckoning will soon come.
The hotter it gets, the more air-conditioning we’ll use; the more we crank up the AC, the hotter it gets.
No matter what nonsense the MAGA brain trust comes up with, data are still data.
Storms are stronger. The seas are invading. The heat is becoming increasingly deadly: Florida leads the nation in heat-related illnesses.
Science doesn’t care what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis believe.
As I said, you can’t beat the heat. But the heat can — and will — beat you.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
SUPPORT
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning
This content exhibits a left-leaning political bias due to its strong critique of conservative figures such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, particularly on their approaches to climate change and environmental policies. The article emphasizes the urgency of climate change, supports scientific consensus, and criticizes legislative actions that downplay or deny environmental issues, often associated with right-wing politics. It uses sarcastic and critical language toward conservative climate denial and policies that hinder environmental progress, aligning with a progressive or left-leaning perspective on climate and governance.
SUMMARY: The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) accused Israel of using tanks, snipers, and gunfire against Palestinians seeking food aid in northern Gaza, resulting in at least 80 deaths—one of the deadliest aid-related incidents in over 21 months of conflict. The Gaza Health Ministry, citing over 58,800 Palestinian deaths since the war began October 2023, blamed Israel for the violence, while Israel denied the death toll and claimed it fired warning shots at an immediate threat. Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas continue without progress. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes also targeted Yemen’s Hodeidah port, accusing Iran-backed Houthis of supporting Palestinian militants.
