Equal Ground, a statewide group aimed at empowering Blacks, is launching a tour this summer to call out what they call as the "failed" Republican-majority Florida Legislature, which has yet to approve a budget before a July 1 deadline.
“Florida lawmakers have once again failed to address the pressing needs of Floridians, instead allowing in-fighting to derail the 2025 Legislative Session and using their power to silence Florida voters by attacking the citizen-led ballot initiative process,” said Equal Ground Executive Director Genesis Robinson. “We are ensuring that all Floridians understand what happened this year as lawmakers not only attacked our rights, but also failed to meet their most basic constitutional obligation — passing a budget — on time.”
Equal Ground reported that the Legislature passed 217 bills of nearly 2,000 introduced, "making this one of the least productive and most chaotic sessions in recent memory."
"Instead of addressing rising housing costs, economic uncertainty, and critical public needs, lawmakers prioritized culture wars and partisan games," said Equal Ground in a statement earlier this month.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law earlier this month that created new hurdles for citizen-driven initiatives, changes critics say would make it prohibitively expensive and effectively impossible for grassroots campaigners to get them onto the ballot.
Before the new law, Florida voters could use the citizens’ initiative process to bypass the Republican-dominated Legislature and advance progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage, legalizing medical marijuana and restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions.
The Equal Ground tour will begin Saturday, June 7, in Tampa and end Saturday, August 16, in the Panhandle. They plan to make more than a dozen stops to educate Floridians about "the wide-reaching attacks on communities of color by the state legislature during the recent session — most notably the legislation directly silencing the majority of Floridians by restricting the ballot initiative process.”
They are scheduled to make two stops in South Florida: Tuesday, June 17 (Palm Beach County) and Saturday, August 19 (Miami-Dade County)
READ MORE: Florida House votes to extend session till end of June amid budget standoff
The Legislature adjourned the legislative session in early May without a budget prepared to be signed by DeSantis. The governor would need to sign it before July 1, when the fiscal year begins.
The Republican leaders in both chambers have said budget talks won’t resume until after the Memorial Day holiday weekend. They extended the regular legislative session, which was supposed to end May 2, through June 6.
House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, and Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, had announced that they had reached a “framework” for the budget that would include $2.8 billion in tax cuts, including reducing the sales-tax rate.
But behind-the-scenes talks recently blew up, with Perez accusing Albritton of backing out of the agreement on the budget framework, leading to a standoff over a tax package and a budget.
The House is seeking a smaller $113 billion budget as opposed to the Senate's $117.4 billion spending plan. One main provision in the House is a 0.75% cut to sales tax, which DeSantis has lambasted. He is instead pushing to roll back the state's property taxes. The Senate plan doesn't include the sales tax cut.
Throughout April, DeSantis repeatedly criticized the House for disagreements on the budget, whether related to Everglades restoration, law enforcement funding or tax cuts.
“They are the least-productive Florida House of Representatives that we have had in the modern history of the Florida Republican Party,” DeSantis said in an April 16 press conference in Fort Myers.
The News Service of Florida and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
