The House has temporarily postponed a bill aiming to assist young homeless people and foster youth to find stable housing, raising questions about its future.

Hialeah Republican Rep. Alex Rizo and Pembroke Pines Democratic Rep. Marie Woodson sponsored the bipartisan legislation (HB 879).

Under the bill, Florida College System institutions and state universities would be required to develop plans to prioritize housing placements for students who are currently, or were formally, within the foster care system or are currently experiencing homelessness.

This would include university-operated housing, year-round housing and work-study opportunities. The bill would further restrict institutions and universities from requiring cosigners or guarantors for these students.

The Department of Children and Families, community-based care lead agencies and housing authorities would be mandated to administer housing programs like the Foster Youth to Independence Initiative.

During the bill’s last committee stop with the House Education and Employment Committee, where it passed with unanimous support, Woodson said the measure was important to ensure these students have the help they need to make something of themselves.

“We filed this bill to address the critical challenges faced by young adults who are homeless or have been previously in the child welfare system,” Woodson said. “These individuals often encounter significant barriers when accessing higher education. Unstable housing, as we know there’s a housing crisis that can hinder the ability to achieve independence and build successful futures.”

Woodson noted that the legislation is a commitment to protecting and empowering young, vulnerable adults, and helping to transition from foster care and homelessness to becoming independent, self-sufficient and productive members of society.

The measure does not state what the fiscal impact, if any, it would have on the state budget.

On Wednesday, the Senate unanimously passed a similar bill (SB 584), sponsored by Miami Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia.

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Lee County voters could decide next year whether to elect County Commissioners to single-member districts after the House approved a local bill (HB 4001) on a 94-11 vote.

Rep. Mike Giallombardo, a Cape Coral Republican, has fought for years to push the issue to the ballot. His local bill won approval from the Lee County legislative delegation through a 6-1 vote.

The bill calls for a measure to appear on Lee County ballots in the 2026 General Election. If a majority supports the referendum, single-member districts will go into effect beginning in 2028.

That would be a change from the current system where all five Lee County Commissioners must live in their respective districts but are elected through countywide elections. The county of nearly 835,000 residents is the largest in Florida that currently elects all County Commissioners through at-large votes.

The proposed change has not been without dissenters. A majority of sitting Lee County Commissioners opposes the measure, as do a number of business and political groups in Lee County.

Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, a Fort Myers Republican who is married to Lee County Commissioner David Mulicka, spoke out against the legislation.

“It’s a local bill without local support,” she said on the floor.

“Our local community doesn’t want this. They don’t want to lose their ability to vote for all five County Commissioners. They don’t want to lose their ability to hold all five County Commissioners accountable at the ballot box. And you may hear that this bill is about giving people a choice to vote on this issue. But members, Lee County has already voted on this issue more than once, and they’ve adopted a government governing document that gives them the ability to petition for a change.”

But Lee County Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell, a former Representative, has supported the measure, and said voters should be allowed the right to decide on the issue at the ballot box.

“We just went through two other referendums, one for making the School Board single-member in ‘14, one to bring back the Superintendent in ’22,” Caldwell said. “If the voters were smart enough to choose how to structure their School Board, why aren’t they smart enough to choose how to structure their County Commission?”

Now, the matter heads to the Senate. There, three Senators hail from the Lee County delegation, including Senate President Ben Albritton. But Albritton did not attend the delegation meeting where the local bill was first approved.

Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Fort Myers Republican and the only Senator living in Lee County, supported the bill at the delegation level, and said he supports the language passed by the House.

Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, a Naples Republican, also attended and supported the bill, but said at the time she would follow the bill through the legislative process. She voiced concerns about prior versions of the bill creating additional Commission seats or establishing population triggers that would result in new districts being drawn.

But the version passed in the House leaves the Commission at five seats and does not set any type of population threshold to add members to the board.

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Republicans are celebrating a newly passed House bill that they say will take pornographic books off school shelves. Democrats, meanwhile, fear the bill will intensify book removals in Florida.

The legislation (HB 1539) advanced with a vote of 81-29. It would revise a law on challenging books, allowing tomes that are “harmful to minors” to be removed regardless of whether they hold literary value.

“The school district may not consider potential literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as a basis for retaining the material if it contains material harmful to minors,” the bill says.

The bill could challenge the application of the Miller Test, a free speech standard rooted in a 1973 Supreme Court ruling. The landmark decision allowed for censorship of obscene materials that violate community standards, but includes in any evaluation whether a work as a whole contains “literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

But Republican Rep. Doug Bankson, the bill’s sponsor, argued schools are still displaying inappropriate books. “These are things that if I took a picture of one of these pages and sent it to a minor, I would go to federal prison,” Bankson said.

Democrats’ amendments to weaken the bill or limit the public’s ability to challenge books failed in the Republican-supermajority House.

Florida’s book bans have made national headlines in recent years following a 2023 law to give parents more rights and make it easier for the public to contest books they found offensive. Democrats feared the Apopka Republican’s bill would make it easier to toss books.

“’The Diary of Anne Frank,’ ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ ‘The Kite Runner,’ ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘Harry Potter.’ These are some of the books that have been challenged and taken off of the shelves,” said Rep. Rita Harris, an Orlando Democrat. 

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. And you can call this whatever you want to call it, but it’s book banning. We are banning books, and when … 5% of the parents in this state can decide what 95% of the parents will be able to allow their children to have access to in schools, we are ruling by a very small minority.”

Bankson, who has previously sponsored controversial bills relating to the LGBTQ+ community, denied Democrats’ attacks that his bill deprives young people of an education or could ban important literature.

“This more clearly narrows the description to things that are clearly pornographic in nature — not removing classics, not removing Shakespeare, not removing these things that we need to have a rounded education,” Bankson said.

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