Legislation awaiting its first hearing in the House and Senate would make it easier for local governments to equip code enforcement officers with body cameras.

Unlike the lukewarm embrace among law enforcement in Florida and elsewhere, the bills put forward by Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and Rep. Bill Partington (HB 281, SB 1104) aren’t likely to stir any controversy — they, and the linked public records bills (HB 1475, SB 1106), are fully supported by the Florida Association of Code Enforcement.

There is no state law prohibiting code enforcement officers from wearing body cameras today, but neither is there law expressly allowing them. FACE, a trade organization representing 2,200 code enforcement personnel statewide, says that’s an important distinction.

Local governments seem to agree. Last year, Volusia officials floated the policy, but County Council shut it down during the exploratory phase citing the ambiguity — code enforcement officers aren’t law enforcement and thus are not afforded the same right to record others without consent.

Volusia Councilman Troy Kent offered a blunt bookend to the 2024 discussion: “This is problematic.”

The quest for clarity is in part due to a rise in dangerous, and in some cases potentially deadly, encounters between code enforcement and the general population. There is no readily available data on crimes perpetrated against code enforcement, but local media has spotlighted incidents in every pocket of Florida.

A sampling: A Biscayne Park man was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot an officer over a $25 fine in early February; two weeks later in Citrus County, code enforcement officers had handgun pulled on them while going investigate a complaint about excessive junk in someone’s front yard; and last week a Cape Coral code enforcement officer was berated with racial slurs on the job.

The incidents put some weight behind FACE’s argument, which it is making with help from lobby firm Sunrise Consulting Group, that this is a safety issue with no clear solution short of legislative intervention. Meanwhile, body cameras could boost code officer accountability, which may sway lawmakers who are usually reticent to upvote bills establishing new public records exemptions.

As of Tuesday, neither bill pairing has made a committee agenda, but there is more than enough time left on the clock for the legislation to start moving.

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A bill that would prevent public employees and state contractors from being forced to comply with an individual’s requested pronoun usage moved through its first committee amid plenty of backlash from critics.

The Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Committee advanced the “Freedom of Conscience in the Workplace Act” (SB 440) on a 5-2 vote with Senators breaking along party lines. The often contentious meeting included several citizens calling lawmakers “bigots” and saying the bill would allow job discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. Republican Sen. Randy Fine at one point also derided a citizen’s Arabic keffiyeh as a “terrorist rag.”

“I’m the chairman,” said Fine, a Palm Bay Republican. “I can say what I want. If you don’t like it you can leave.”

Sen. Stan McClain, an Ocala Republican and the bill’s sponsors, said the legislation would not hurt the job prospects of any Floridians to obtain gainful employment. Instead, it would protect the conscience of individuals who do not want to use preferred pronouns for those claiming something beside their gender assigned at birth.

The bill would also require any government forms to identify employees as male or female. The bill applies to public employees and state contractors, not private employers, McClain stressed.

“The policy of the state is that there are only two genders,” McClain said.

But numerous transgender activists, many asking lawmakers to use “they/them” pronouns, said the bill was an intrusion and a waste of time.

Equality Florida has derided the legislation as the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work” bill, and lobbied against the policy.

Sanford City Commissioner Claudia Thomas, the first openly gay member of her City Commission, said the bill not only insults LGBTQ Floridians but will waste government resources.

“I would love to get back to trying to solve my city’s problems about water, clean water, housing, etc.” Thomas said. “And if I have to start wasting my time talking about pronouns and people not respecting my friends, it would make me sad.”

Several social conservative groups said the bill was important to pass, and said too many local governments were forcing “woke” policies mandating recognition of gender theory many oppose on a moral level.

“It ends coercive pronoun mandates. It doesn’t take anyone’s rights away,” said John Labriola, a lobbyist for the Christian Family Coalition. “A number of local counties, including here in Leon County, have woke trainings that actually force employees to learn certain pronouns. Ze is one of them. Ze, if you don’t want to be he or she.”

But nonbinary speakers said the bill effectively discriminated against a growing population of Floridians whose gender identity differs from their birth certifications.

“I’m nonbinary. I exist,” said Ash Bradley. “The debate over personal beliefs versus the rights of marginalized groups shouldn’t even be happening, especially when taxpayers are required to miss work and drive hours just to fight a bill built to make bullying acceptable in the workplace.”

Last week, activists in the Capitol hoped the bill was dead after the Senate committee declined to take it up after receiving hundreds of comment cards opposing the legislation.

But the committee did take up the bill on Tuesday and approved it. The legislation now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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David Jolly once won a bitter fight to represent a Florida swing seat in Congress as a Republican. Now, he’s exploring a run for Governor by meeting with Democratic clubs across the state.

Jolly, who spent much of his political energy in the last decade promoting political movements outside the two-party system, said he will run as a Democrat if he decides to seek the Governor’s Mansion next year.

“I’ve considered myself a proud member of the Democratic Coalition for years now,” Jolly told Florida Politics. “The coalition I would need is essentially the same. You need Democrats, independents and kind of mainstream Republicans to build a coalition. If you do it as an NPA (no party affiliation candidate) or as a Democrat, you are still asking if you can change the state.”

Jolly met with the Legislative Black Caucus, a heavily Democrat-leaning group of elected officials, in a Monday meeting first reported by POLITICO. But more important, Jolly said, have been meetings with local Democratic clubs all throughout the state over much of the past year. From speaking with party regulars, he feels his current political philosophy largely aligns with Florida Democrats.

But he has identified as nonpartisan since 2018, when he left the Republican Party halfway into President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. He also has been involved in third-party politics, whether as Executive Director of the Serve America Movement in 2020 or as one of the co-founders of the Forward Party in 2022.

But Jolly said he can’t deny that American democracy is built around the two-party system.

“I still like multiparty democracies,” he said. “Around the world, they have greater participation, better satisfaction, better outcomes. But we don’t have a multiparty system in the U.S.”

Despite a shift toward Republican politics in the last four years, Jolly sees a hunger in Florida for a break from reactionary government. “Republicans spent eight years fighting culture wars,” he said. “Voters want them to address the insurance crisis and have better schools.”

He said his platform will focus on topics like reforming the insurance market and making sure Florida vouchers for private schools are adjusted for inflation rather than being paid at a low amount that still won’t help families.

He also believes one-party rule has resulted in open corruption in state government, and believes the public would embrace campaign finance reforms to combat that.

With term limits prohibiting Gov. Ron DeSantis from running again, Jolly said he also sees a path to victory that’s more clear just because there is an open seat.

“This is a good cycle for Florida to choose its direction,” he said.

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