A Senate committee voted to ban taxpayer money being spent to endorse or fight constitutional amendments as it advanced legislation making it tougher for those ballot initiatives to get on the ballot in the first place.

Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly spent millions of dollars to help defeat last year’s abortion rights and marijuana legalization initiatives as he traveled around the state for press conferences, funded commercials and weaponized a state agency website to condemn abortion.

“This amendment makes sure that taxpayers don’t get the bill for political issue campaigns,” said Sen. Jennifer Bradley, the amendment’s sponsor.

Bradley argued that the state has a role in informing the public but said she worries a line is getting crossed.

“When they cross over into attempting to influence the outcome of a ballot measure, I think we’re then treading in territory that makes me very uncomfortable as a conservative who is very concerned about what our role of government is in a Democratic society,” Bradley said during Monday’s Senate Ethics and Elections Committee meeting.

The committee voted 6-3 to advance a larger bill (SPB 7016), which adds stiffer penalties for ballot sponsors caught breaking the law and would add hurdles for grassroots petition drives. 

The proposed changes include requiring a group to post a $1 million bond when it submits a proposal to the Secretary of the State. The ballot initiative sponsor could ask for the $1 million bond waived for a financial burden — but only if the sponsor isn’t paying petition circulators to collect signatures. In that case, the $1 million bond would be immediately owed.

The petitions would need to contain the ballot summary but also the financial impact statement — which in the case for Amendment 4, became politically loaded and the subject of a lawsuit. 

To fill out a petition to get an issue on the ballot, people would now be required to also write their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Grassroots efforts where neighbors and friends collect petitions would also be banned since anyone collecting more than two signatures beyond their immediate family would need to register as an official petition circulator with the state and undergo training under one of the bill’s provisions. Anyone in violation would face a third-degree felony under the bill.

The bill also raised the sponsors’ fines for violations. 

“These are reasonable regulations to protect the integrity of the ballot and to prevent fraud,” said Sen. Erin Grall, the Fort Pierce Republican who steered the bill through the committee Monday.

The Amendment 4 political action committee paid a $164,000 settlement with the state over allegations that paid petition circulators submitted fraudulent petitions.

Democrats and advocates feared the proposed changes are designed to squash any future citizen-led ballot initiatives. Past initiatives, such as implementing a $15 minimum wage and free VPK, were all progressive proposals that voters supported in a state where Republicans have a stronghold in Tallahassee.

“We are really making it impossible for the citizens, any grassroots organizations to utilize this process,” said Sen. Tina Polsky, a Boca Raton Democrat. “It is called the citizen initiative process. Why? Because our Legislature doesn’t want to do the things that the citizens want.”

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The Senate Committee on Commerce and Tourism unanimously advanced a bill aiming to enhance transparency related to digital content, especially in regard to political candidates and political campaigns.

Zephyrhills Republican Sen. Danny Burgess filed the bill (SB 702). During the committee stop, Burgess introduced an amendment that would narrow the scope of the bill, allowing social media platforms to design a way to identify pictures, videos and audio that have been modified either in part or wholly by artificial intelligence and provide that information to the public.

The amendment also changed enforcement aspects of the bill, stipulating that this could only happen through the Attorney General’s Office.

Burgess explained that the bill would define “provenance data,” also referred to as content credentials, to help people better understand if what they’re saying or hearing is real, or if it was created or modified using generative AI tools.

“Content credentials that display underlying provenance (data) work a lot like a nutrition label for digital content,” Burgess said. “This bill has certainly been a challenge for me in terms of wrapping my arms around the ideas that AI bring to the table. There’s a lot of great benefits for it, no doubt about it. However, there are some things that we just need to make sure that we’re providing information to the public that way they can make their own determinations.”

Sarasota Republican Sen. Joe Gruters asked what exactly the bill is aiming to fix.

In response, Burgess said that the bill would simply give the public information about what they see on social media, and whether it has been modified, giving them an opportunity to make up their own minds about content they see.

“We see a lot of, especially lately, on social media that deal with candidates or political campaigns, and they illustrate the need for providing information on whether or not something was edited,” Burgess said. “We see videos of President (Donald) Trump getting into a physical altercation with somebody else, that didn’t happen. And I use that as an example because it’s something that we see all the time.”

Separate from the requirements for political campaigns and candidates, the bill would create a pilot program that would see if more accurate information could be provided and if provenance data could be fully implemented — the pilot program would sunset in 2027 and would need to provide a report to the Legislature and the Governor on whether this would be possible.

Burgess added that he has met with stakeholders to ensure that there is as little overreach as possible and that no unintended consequences emerge due to the bill’s implementation.

“I’m very confident that we’re moving in the right direction, and I’m also very confident that the policy is needed, the way we do it, we wanna make sure that we’re not creating unintended consequences, second- and third-order effects,” Burgess said. “We’ve been working with stakeholders in social media companies … broadband providers, Microsoft, other entities like that … to ensure … we’re not overreaching.”

During the bill’s debate, Orlando Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith said he was going to support the bill’s advancement but aired concerns over the infrastructure not yet existing to implement provenance data without issues.

“I’m going to support your bill today. I think it’s a good idea, we need to move in this direction because there’s so much fake stuff that’s out there on social media, there needs to be some regulation here,” Smith said.

“I do think the bill is moving really fast … it’s very ambitious. It wants to do all these things, but I hear the concerns that maybe we’re not ready for all of those things. … We need to be able to get there. I also have questions about how easily it could be circumvented if it’s not done properly.”

Despite concerns, the committee passed the measure unanimously and it will now go to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development.

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