The House Health and Human Services Committee unanimously passed a measure Tuesday that seeks to decrease a parent or caregiver’s exposure to child welfare oversight and criminal prosecution.

Palm Bay Republican Rep. Monique Miller presented the bill (HB 1191) and explained that the measure would decriminalize parents or guardians who allow a child to engage in certain independent, unsupervised activities, and further codifies current Department of Children and Families (DCF) policy into law.

“This bill decriminalizes parents allowing their children to travel to and from school, play outdoors, and remain at home for reasonable amounts of time,” Miller said. “It simply codifies current DCF policy into law. Child and teen suicide rates have been dramatically increasing in recent years, and research shows this is partially due to the fact that outdoor play is discouraged both in culture and in law.”

Miller said similar legislation has already been passed in Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Montana, and Virginia, and is supported by research conducted by Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”

Kristin Nelson, a Florida mother in support of the bill, spoke before the committee and said she had lost custody of her child after allowing her 12-year-old son with low-functioning autism, to continue swimming at a public pool while she ran an errand.

“The pool incident has been used against me over and over in family court,” Nelson said. “It has caused unnecessary emotional distress. I have had to endure supervised visits with my son all these years, causing extreme hardships.”

In the bill’s analysis, it states that under current child welfare law, child neglect is when a parent or caregiver fails to provide a child in their care adequate food, clothing, shelter, or health care if they have the resources to do so. Child neglect also includes any harm that befalls a child left without supervision appropriate for the child’s age, mental, or physical condition.

While the measure would offer protection for parents and caregivers allowing their child to engage in independent, unsupervised activities without child welfare oversight, it expressly excludes a parent or guardian’s failure to provide adequate supervision if the failure is considered “reckless.”

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Flags throughout Miami-Dade will be flown at half-staff to honor and mark the recent death of Miami City Commissioner Manolo Reyes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered the flags of the United States and Florida to be lowered at all local and state buildings, installations and grounds Wednesday from sunrise to sunset.

“Commissioner Reyes was a devoted public servant who spent his career committed to bettering the lives of the people in his community,” DeSantis said in a memo to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Miami-Dade County Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez and Brian Fienemann, Florida’s Director of Real Estate Development and Management.

“He was a teacher at Westland Hialeah Senior High School, the Principal Budget Analyst for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and he served as Miami City Commissioner for District Four since 2017. Commissioner Reyes is survived by his wife of fifty-six years, his two children, and three grandchildren.”

Reyes, 80, died last week after being hospitalized. His family confirmed his death in a Friday statement that said, in part, that serving as a Miami Commissioner was his “great, lifelong dream fulfilled.”

He was born in Cuba and fled to the U.S. in 1959 after Fidel Castro took power, later earning a graduate degree in economics from the University of Florida.

He’d run for the City Commission six times between 1985 and 2017, when he finally won his District 4 seat. He secured a third term in November 2023 with an 86% share of the vote. In the final months of the race, he confirmed he had leukemia but announced less than six months later that it was in remission.

Last May, he announced plans to run for Mayor.

A memorial service celebrating Reyes’ life and legacy will be held Wednesday, beginning at City Hall and concluding with a funeral mass at St. Michael Church.

The City Commission’s remaining members are scheduled to meet Thursday to decide whether to appoint someone to serve out the remainder of Reyes’ four-year term or hold a Special Election to determine his successor.

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Bills to further shore up Florida’s condo safety laws are again advancing after undergoing changes in their most recent committee stops.

The House bill (HB 913) by Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez will next go to a floor vote. Its Senate analog (SB 1742) by Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley has one more panel to clear.

Bradley and Lopez introduced strike-all amendments to alter their respective proposals Tuesday. Both included provisions allowing condo associations to use lines of credit to comply with structural integrity reserve requirements and safeguards against self-dealing by condo board members and contractors.

Other changes to SB 1742 largely clarified requirements already outlined in the measure and adjusted some of its timelines. Amendments to HB 913 did similarly and also excised a contentious section unique to the House bill that would have blocked Citizens Property Insurance — Florida’s state-run insurer of last resort — from issuing or renewing policies for condo owners and associations that don’t comply with building inspection requirements.

That’s big. As of last month, most of the more than 11,000 condo buildings with three or more levels that must comply with relatively new rules set in recent Sessions hadn’t done so by the Dec. 31 deadline.

So far, both measures have received uniform support. But there are still notable differences between them that must be reconciled before the Legislature chooses and passes one.

For instance, SB 1742 would allow condo associations to pause or reduce their reserve funding for up to two years after a milestone inspection while they undertake repairs to make their building structurally safe.

That change is needed, Bradley explained, to address widespread complaints that the financial and regulatory strictures Florida established after the Surfside condo collapse are so exorbitant they’re forcing unit owners out of their homes.

“This is a very new process, the inspection process as well as the new reserve requirements (and) now it’s almost a double-dip because they’re having to repair and at the same time, simultaneously, they’re having to build up their reserves,” she said.

“What this bill does is bifurcate that. It says let’s do your milestone inspections so the state knows those buildings are safe … and then we’re going to hit a 24-month pause, at the end of (which) we can better assess going forward what reserves are needed.”

HB 913 would require associations to provide more timely reports and disclosures on studies and inspections to unit owners. It would also allow association boards to levy special assessments to obtain loans for mandated maintenance without prior membership approval and give the Department of Business and Professional Regulation even more oversight and enforcement authority on condo safety and association matters than it received through last year’s “Condo 3.0” law.

SB 1742, meanwhile, would set different standards for data collection and dissemination and require the University of Florida to study and report yearly on statewide milestone inspections. It would also require that if a condo board proposes an annual budget exceeding 115% of the prior year’s spending, it must also propose and consider a substitute budget without such discretionary expenditures.

Lopez said the lines of credit portions of this year’s legislation address the concerns she’s heard from residents, particularly young families and seniors on fixed incomes, who couldn’t afford higher condo fees.

“This bill finally gives them an option,” she said. “They can get a line of credit, which will certainly help … for the future improvements they need to make. So, I think this is going to be a landmark piece of legislation to address all of the financial issues that we have heard about from our constituents.”

It remains to be seen if the amendments Lopez made to her bill Tuesday are enough to satisfy Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed every previous condo bill she sponsored but is now accusing her and House leaders of trying to “sabotage” his work on the issue.

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