Politics
Bill aiming to reduce cost of child care will move to House floor
A measure is advancing to the House floor that seeks to reduce the cost of child care and make affordability a priority
The Health and Human Services Committee unanimously passed the bill (HB 47), which was presented by Sarasota Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland. She said it aims to improve access to affordable child care for working families by reducing red tape without compromising safety or education quality.
“Child care, day care and preschool are words that all mean the same thing. It’s what you do with your child between ages 0 and 5, and for those of you that haven’t had a 0- to 5-year-old in your life lately, you have to pay for it as a parent,” McFarland said.
“We’ve decided as a state that we’re constitutionally required to provide free education for children in K-12, but we don’t talk about what happens before that child turns 5.”
The legislation aims to make several reforms including exempting preschools from special tax assessments, moves teacher training and testing online for free, allows streamlined inspections for top-rated providers, grants license-exempt status to employer-provided child care, and closes a loophole that affects family child care homes.
The bill would further reduce the time the Department of Children and Families (DCF) has to conduct a background screening for needed teachers. McFarland noted her own struggle to find sufficient day care in her own district having five children, four of whom are under the age of 5 years old.
“It does various measures to reduce the cost of child care and hopefully incentivize more demand to enter into the system,” McFarland said. “It streamlines inspections of facilities by encouraging abbreviated Inspections for providers in good standing. To help providers find teachers, it reduces the amount of time DCF has to spend on the background screen down to three days.”
McFarland explained that the bill removes various outdated sections of law, while updating a definition for family child care homes, and adding a provision for Department of Defense military child care facilities to be license exempt.
“My favorite part is it creates a license exempt category for child care that’s offered by their employers,” McFarland said.
“Last year you all voted on a bill that created a tax credit for employers that want to build or provide their own child care. And this is part two of that, which is say if an employer is going to make their own child care that’s just for their workforce, for their employees children or grandchildren to go, then they can be license exempt which is a status that we have for faith-based … child care providers.”
Weston Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman asked about the licensure requirements for child care facilities able to get an exemption, and how they would operate.
In response, McFarland said the teachers working at license exempt child care facilities would still have to go through background screening, would be required to have appropriately qualified staff, and would still need to be accredited and in compliance with all health and safety requirements.
McFarland said she hopes more employers “see that this is a measure of the state wanting to partner with them, to help us solve the child care affordability and access crisis that we have in this state and this country.”
Fort Pierce Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy supported the bill and thanked McFarland for her past legislation that implemented tax credits.
“Thank you for this bill and for all the work that you do in early learning,” Trabulsy said. “Every year you just move the needle a little bit further, and it’s so appreciated, and I would be truly remiss if I just didn’t thank you publicly for the bill that you passed last year with the tax credits.”
Trabulsy said her own daughter and her husband were able to take advantage of the tax credits and now save money on child care every year.
“My daughter has two children and the company that my son-in-law works for has taken advantage of the tax credits and although the company that he works for couldn’t afford give him a raise this year, what they could do was offer this benefit so it’s like putting $7,200 back in their pocket every year, and that’s a big amount when you’re raising a family,” Trabulsy said.
Stuart Republican Rep. Toby Overdorf also supported the legislation and commended McFarland for identifying barriers and looking for solutions.
“What I appreciate about this bill is that you identify barriers and then you look for ways to access,” Overdorf said. “What you’ve done here is, you’ve done a really true balancing act, between those things. You’re balancing the safety of a child that a parent is leaving, with that parental choice, of the place that you want that child to go to.”
McFarland said in closing that she hopes the bill helps lower costs for parents and encourage more employers to get involved.
“Parents everywhere are really hurting on how expensive child care is. I hope that this helps, even just a little bit,” McFarland said. “Hopefully with legislation like this we can encourage more bosses to be great about employees with babies.”
Legislation to better safeguard kids online while giving parents and police more tools to fight and catch pedophiles just cleared its last committee stop in the House after undergoing some notable changes.
The House Commerce Committee voted unanimously for HB 743, the Legislature’s latest proposal aimed at tamping down on web-based predation of Florida youths.
Escambia County Republican Rep. Michelle Salzman, one of the measure’s sponsors, said the “responsible, narrowly crafted” changes it proposes will help curb “one of the most heinous crimes imaginable.”
“We owe it to these children and to the families shattered by the crimes,” she said. “Let’s give law enforcement and prosecutors every possible chance to hold traffickers accountable.”
Salzman amended her bill Tuesday to change its scope. Rather than require social media platforms to give law enforcement blanket access to a minor’s account after receiving a warrant or parental consent, the companies would have to disclose “any technically feasible and reasonably available data” to a police officer if given a court order, subpoena or search warrant.
The amended bill also removed a requirement that social media platforms allow parents and legal guardians to view their 14- and 15-year-olds’ online messages. Instead, under the strike-all language, platforms would need only to allow parents and legal guardians to view a list of the account names with which their child exchanged messages.
Social media platforms would also have to delete all personal information for any account, regardless of the account holder’s age, within 45 days of its termination by the user unless there are legal requirements to maintain the data.
One provision that carried over unchanged from the bill’s prior iteration would prohibit social media companies from allowing users under 14 to access messages designed to disappear or self-destruct after a certain time period, like those on Snapchat and Instagram.
HB 743 differs from its upper-chamber companion (SB 868) by Spring Hill Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, which targets end-to-end encryption that many platforms use to protect their systems and users from privacy breaches. Both bills pend floor votes after clearing their respective committee assignments.
ACLU Florida and TechNet, a technology advocacy group, signaled opposition to HB 743. Florida Family Voice and Florida Prosecuting Attorneys signaled support.
State Attorney Jack Campbell of the 2nd Judicial Circuit said the bill is a necessary step toward protecting kids where predators hunt them today.
“People who are looking for children don’t go to playgrounds anymore; they go to chatrooms,” he said. “Unfortunately, while the internet has been an extraordinarily powerful tool, that tool like many tools can be used for great evil, and due to greater levels of encryption, greater sophistication in social media, that is where pedophiles are meeting their victims. And this is where the evidence is.”
Merritt Island Republican Rep. Tyler Sirois, HB 743’s other sponsor, noted that despite the bill’s intended effects, no one representing a social media company attended the meeting to speak for or against it.
“They could have filled out a speaker card and offered some constructive feedback in terms of what they’re going to do proactively in order to protect our kids online,” he said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everything I’ve seen from them (shows) they don’t give a damn about our kids. We all need to be paying more attention to that.”
HB 743 adds to legislation (HB 3) state lawmakers passed in 2024 limiting minors’ access to social media platforms, including prohibiting kids 13 and younger from opening and maintaining accounts and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to do so.
That restriction is now being challenged in court.
The federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which has been in effect since April 2000, requires social media companies to get verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information about their children, though few believe it’s been effectively enforced.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 1 in 5 children per year receive unwanted sexual solicitation online. One in 33 are targets of aggressive sexual solicitation, which involves pushes by the culprit to make offline contact. And at any given time, some 50,000 predators are on the internet actively seeking out children.
Cars could soon rocket down highways as fast as 75 miles per hour.
The House is roaring ahead with a possible increase for speed limits on Florida highways.
The House Commerce Committee advanced a transportation package (HB 567) that covers an array of issues involving transportation.
One aspect that could immediately impact Florida drivers would be the boost of the maximum allowable vehicle speed on limited access highways to 75 miles per hour, up from 70 mph now. It would also raise speed limits on other highways outside urban areas from 65 mph to 70 mph, and would allow the Florida Department of Transportation to set speed limits on all other roadways as high as 65 mph.
Rep. Fiona McFarland, a Sarasota Republican, said the idea was discussed among Representatives during the Legislative Session.
“Floridians just want to get where we’re going faster,” she said.
In committee, McFarland also presented changes to the package to allow drivers to contest citations issued through cameras at school bus stops. The bill would also prohibit public airports from charging landing fees for colleges during test flights.
The legislative package sped through committee with little debate and no votes against it. That’s the third stop for the bill, which hasn’t been slowed by a single “no” vote.
That means the bill is now ready to swerve onto the House floor for a vote there.
The Senate also included speed limit boosts in its own transportation package, which already blew through its last committee stop. That bill (SB 462) was just scheduled for the Senate Special Order Calendar for Wednesday.
Of note, both chambers opted to include the speed hike in transportation omnibus bills.
That’s a different approach than one taken more than a decade ago when the Legislature also felt a need for speed. In 2014, after passing a bill dealing exclusively with speed limits, former Gov. Rick Scott slammed the brakes on the effort with his veto pen.
Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t publicly commented on the speed limit proposal this year. But if he were to object, he would have to nix whatever full package the Legislature chooses to pass this Session.
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