Politics
UCF opens new nursing building to help fix Florida’s nursing shortage
The University of Central Florida’s new nursing building is officially open in Lake Nona as elected leaders gathered to celebrate the $72 million expansion to help the school graduate 150 more licensed nurses every year.
UCF’s Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion is a 90,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility that will help the state grapple with a nursing shortage, school officials said. The space includes classrooms, study areas and high-tech simulation labs.
“The Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion is a powerful example of what is possible when vision, community, and partnership come together. Built with the generous support of state leaders, donors, and health care champions, this facility will help strengthen Florida’s nursing talent pipeline in ways that make communities across our state healthier,” UCF President Alexander Cartwright said in a statement.
The project was funded from $43 million in state dollars and more than $29 million in private fundraising, the school said.
Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who was Senate President when UCF was awarded the state funding, spoke at Monday’s ceremony
“We worked very hard to secure the funding,” Simpson said. “When you think about state-of-the-art nursing, when you think about doubling the capacity of nursing, this couldn’t come at a better time. Florida is growing 400,000 people a year still. We’re going to continue to grow.”
The new building is located in a growing part of Orlando that is already home to UCF’s College of Medicine, Nemours Children’s Hospital and Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The area is dubbed Lake Nona’s Medical City.
For UCF, the location means nurses and doctors-in-training can work together and collaborate with the opening of the new nursing facility.
“Today we are witnessing the power of partnerships,” says Professor Emerita Mary Lou Sole, the former nursing college dean who was involved in the fundraising efforts.
“The Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion is the result of the collective efforts of UCF and this community to come together to solve one of our greatest health care challenges. We are incredibly grateful for the support, which will have an immeasurable impact for generations to come.”
UCF originally broke ground on the project in January 2024.
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The policy expansion is retroactive through November 2024.
The House is expanding its paid parental leave policy when employees have a baby or adopt a child, House Speaker Daniel Perez announced.
The policy takes effect immediately and applies retroactively for parents who took leave from Nov. 19, 2024, onward.
Going forward, full-time salaried employees will get up to seven consecutive weeks of paid parental leave for maternity leave after childbirth.
The House will also offer mothers and fathers paid care and bonding leave for up to two weeks within one year after a child’s birth or adoption. The care and bonding leave “may be granted on an intermittent basis” and can’t be taken during the 60-day Legislative Session. It requires supervisor approval as well, Perez’s memo said.
It’s an expansion from the current policy, which Perez explained in the memo.
“As has been the policy of the House, an employee who is the father or mother of a natural born or adopted child will continue to be granted parental leave for a period not to exceed three months total,” Perez’s memo said.
“The employee may include in the request for parental leave one or all of the following types of leave: (new) paid parental leave when allowable; up to 240 hours of accrued sick leave; annual leave; compensatory leave; personal holiday; and leave without pay.”
To help retroactively, the House Office of Administration and Professional Development will be contacting employees to talk about their situations.
The majority of Americans don’t get paid time off for childbirth, according to a 2019 Kaiser Foundation study.
A few major employers in Florida are offering the benefit to new parents.
Publix, for instance, began offering full- and part-time employees paid parental leave in 2022.
“We frequently review our benefits to continually offer a comprehensive package to our associates,” Publix spokesperson Maria Brous told Florida Politics at the time the policy was unveiled.
Politics
Ben Albritton on the future of property tax proposals in the Senate: ‘We’re still measuring’
With eight proposals on eliminating or cutting property taxes moving through the House and Gov. Ron DeSantis maintaining that none go far enough, many are looking more and more to the Senate for signs of what, if any, change could be coming.
As he’s done in months past, Senate President Ben Albritton is advocating for a cautious, unhurried approach.
“Honest to goodness, we’re still measuring,” Albritton told reporters Monday. “We’ve looked at the House proposals, and every one of those has a certain amount of cost to it and a certain amount of impact to Floridians.”
Albritton said that while the Senate is committed to delivering financial relief to Floridians in the form of property tax cuts or rollbacks, he and others in the chamber are cognizant that many core services at the local level stand to be adversely affected if it’s done carelessly.
“Every Floridian … depends on the fact that if they call 911, somebody comes to their place, somebody comes to help them,” he said. “We’ve got to be thoughtful about that.”
Asked whether the Governor has unilateral authority to redistribute funds derived from well-to-do counties like Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Orange to 29 fiscally constrained, mostly rural counties — as DeSantis has proposed doing — Albritton’s answer was more definitive: “No.”
“The Florida Legislature (is) given the power to appropriate. The Governor is certainly the chief executive. He has the ability to veto or be supportive. He has, I would say, the ability and the opportunity to be able to share perspective in his budget request and when he lays out the budget,” he said.
“The opportunity to backfill lies in the Legislature.”
On the idea of cash-strapped counties asking the state for funding annually that they’d otherwise generate locally, Albritton said it’s “certainly a concern.”
“Do I love the idea? Of course not,” he said. “But I (believe) affordability is a challenge, and providing some relief in the property tax space is a great way to do that, and especially for (homesteaded) Floridians … that’s great.”
Albritton pushed back on the idea that eliminating property taxes would lead to a “gold rush” of wealthy transplants to the Sunshine State, stressing that he is “optimistic” about the prospect despite its potentially negative effects.
“But it’s not that simple,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that I’m finding in that here again: Don’t take down a fence until you know why it was put up.”
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