Florida Legislature agrees on $101.5 billion budget
Proposal includes $1,000 bonuses to teachers, first responders
Brendan Farrington
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida Legislature agreed on a $101.5 billion state budget Tuesday, a figure that was unfathomable a year ago as the economy collapsed during the coronavirus pandemic.
The budget proposal includes $6.7 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money that Republican legislative leaders previously said they wouldn t rely on. Gov. Ron DeSantis originally proposed a $96.6 billion budget. The Senate s first proposal was about $95 billion and the House was seeking about $97 billion.
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But revenue estimates have exceeded expectations, largely because the state has eliminated restrictions on businesses during the pandemic and tourism has rebounded. And Republican leaders finally decided to include money approved to help states since Democratic President Joe Biden took office, after
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Two years ago, a group of residents from the rural Glades region of western Palm Beach County took powerful sugar companies to court, alleging that the farmers’ harvesting practices were poisoning poor communities in Florida’s heartland.
For sugar companies, the most efficient way to cull crops is to burn away the plant’s leafy outer stalk, which sends plumes of smoke and ash into mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods on the northern edge of the Everglades. Some residents say the smoke is making them and their children sick. The industry disputes that claim and has sought to dismiss the lawsuit.
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But last week, even as the case works its way through the court system, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that could hinder residents’ legal options and undo the most significant challenge to sugar cane burning, and the industry, in years.
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