By Nancy Lawther, Ph.D., DEC Legislative Liaison Chair

COUNTY AND MUNICIPAL:

“Alligator Alcatraz”: Citing an executive order signed in 2023, the administration of Governor DeSantis abruptly seized control of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport and hastily transformed it into a migrant detention center for up to 3000 detainees. The facility is being used to showcase the Governor’s support for the Trump Administration’s plans to deport massive numbers of immigrants. It was built over the immediate and vociferous objections of Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Native American community leaders, and numerous environmental and human rights organizations concerned about damage to environmentally sensitive Everglades lands and mistreatment of detainees.

Protests, objections, and calls for accountability are ongoing, and legal action is pending on multiple fronts. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity initially filed suit in federal court to stop the project, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida has recently joined the case. On a second legal front, the ACLU and Americans for Immigrant Justice have filed a federal class action lawsuit seeking relief for violations of detainees’ First Amendment and due process rights. In yet a third case, Democratic state legislators brought legal action at the state level after having been refused entry to the facility.

Cooperation with ICE: As of this writing, 6 Miami-Dade municipalities have voted to sign the 287(g) agreement, indicating their willingness to cooperate with ICE in the apprehension and detention of undocumented immigrants and those whose previous legal status has been revoked: Coral Gables, Doral, Hialeah, Homestead, Miami, and West Miami. The FIU campus police likewise agreed to cooperate.

On June 26, the Board of County Commissioners deferred action on a resolution to approve and retroactively authorize Miami-Dade County's cooperation with ICE. Commission approval was moot, it was argued, since any agreement could be administratively approved. To the stunned disbelief of many in attendance at the June 26 meeting, at least two members of the public who tried to speak on the item–one to ask a simple procedural question–were forcibly removed from Commission Chambers and arrested.

In this matter, the city of South Miami has taken a different approach, opting to ask the courts to confirm or reject the State of Florida’s position that the city’s signature on the 287(g) agreement is mandatory. South Miami hopes to have a ruling shortly.

To our south, the city of Key West initially voted 6-1 on June 30 to void a 287(g) agreement its police department had signed in March. One week later, the Commissioners, under heavy public pressure from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, backtracked and voted to approve the agreement. To our north, Mayor Demings of Orlando has just agreed, under threat of removal from office, to allow city employees to transport ICE detainees to “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Budget Season: From municipal chambers to School Board members’ offices to the halls of the Stephen P. Clarke Government Center, elected officials are pondering their options in the face of rising costs and potentially declining federal and state revenues. On July 15, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava released her 2025-26 proposed budget, which the Board of County Commissioners will consider in public hearings on September 4 and September 18. To close Miami-Dade’s greatest budget shortfall since the 2008 financial crisis, with a projected $400 million gap in the general fund that covers everyday expenditures from police to parks, the Mayor has proposed departmental consolidation, steep budget and personnel cuts, and reductions in grants and services to the public. The tax rate would remain unchanged.

Newly-appointed Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia has initiated an audit of County expenditures under the Florida D.O.G.E. initiative.

Budgetary pressures exist at every level of government, making public input regarding local budget priorities all the more important.

Olympia Theater Giveaway: City of Miami Commissioners voted on July 24 to authorize the City Manager to pursue negotiations regarding the transfer of the historic but run-down property to the SLAM charter school. In a deal lambasted both for its lack of precise details and for having been negotiated out of public view, SLAM and its operating partner, Academica, would refurbish the building and turn it into a new charter school.

STATE OF FLORIDA:

Link to all 2025 Florida Legislative policy bills, memorials, and resolutions

After weeks of Republican infighting that extended the 2025 Legislative Session well beyond its originally scheduled end date, the Florida House and Senate finally adjourned on June 16. Legislators agreed on a $115.1 billion budget. The budget, which Governor De Santis signed on June 30, includes workforce reductions, but 2% raises for state employees who remain; it increases K-12 dollars, but provides insufficient funding to match inflation; it cuts funding to the scandal-ridden Hope Florida program; and it offers no state financial support at all for numerous arts non-profit organizations. The Governor issued nearly $600 million in vetoes, including specific appropriations requests supporting infrastructure, public safety, educational institutions, and cultural icons from Homestead to the Broward County line.  

Of the 1959 individual bills filed this year, only a fraction passed both chambers. Most bills sponsored by Democrats were never even scheduled to be heard. Here are some of the most important new policies that will affect families and communities in Miami-Dade County.

Property Insurance: Insurance affordability crisis? What crisis? Several proposals were filed, but no significant legislation was passed.

Taxation: The House and Senate, after wrangling over dueling proposals to cut either property taxes or sales taxes, settled on a $1.3 billion package that permanently eliminates sales taxes on business rents and provides for recurring back-to-school and hurricane preparedness tax holidays. Legislators dropped more extensive proposals to eliminate property taxes or slash the sales tax rate, but will undoubtedly bring them up again next year. One of the budget line items the Governor vetoed would have funded a study to assess the consequences of slashing property taxes.

Voting and Elections: HB 1205 creates procedural barriers that make it nearly impossible for citizens’ groups to gain enough valid petition signatures to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Unless a pending legal challenge is successful, farewell, perhaps, to future Class Size Amendments, Minimum Wage Amendments, Restoration of Rights Amendments, and Reproductive Rights Amendments.

Healthcare: A smorgasbord of bills mandate cardiovascular screening for student athletes, require school-based diabetes and anaphylaxis treatment, provide for newborn screenings for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and direct hospitals to test patients for fentanyl. The Governor vetoed HB 6017, which would have allowed survivors of adult children and their parents to collect non-economic damages in medical negligence cases. The bill would have effectively repealed what has been dubbed as Florida’s “Free Kill Law.” 

Housing: HB 913, sponsored by Miami-Dade’s Rep. Vicki Lopez (R–HD 113), regulates–some claim, it overregulates–condominium governance and provides greater flexibility in performing safety inspections and funding reserves while limiting certain compliance measures to those buildings with three or more stories of habitable space. SB 1730, sponsored by Miami-Dade’s Sen. Alexis Calatayud (R–SD 38) amends the Live Local Act by requiring only administrative (not quasi judicial) approval of qualifying workforce housing projects, expanding the zoning classifications where such projects may be developed, overriding local prohibitions on demolition, reducing certain parking requirements, capping heights in proximity to existing single-family neighborhoods, and providing for prevailing party attorney fee reimbursement in legally-challenged developments.

Education: Say goodbye to cell phones in elementary and middle schools. Say hello to the new or expanded charter or private school down the block, now exempt from meeting local master plan, mitigation, or conditional use permit requirements. Don’t be surprised to see a School of Hope charter move into part of your child’s underutilized school facility. And families with teen students may need to keep setting those early morning alarms since the implementation of later high school start times will now be at the discretion of local school districts.

Public Safety: SB 168, filed by Sen. Bradley and co-sponsored by 37 of her colleagues, provides for alternate ways to prosecute defendants with mental illnesses, an intellectual disability, or autism. In other actions, the Legislature increased penalties for fleeing or attempting to flee a law enforcement officer and for boating while intoxicated, criminalized abandonment of an animal during a natural disaster, cracked down on individuals making false reports or tampering with an electronic monitoring device, and provided for expedited DNA testing to address the current backlog. Locally, Miami-Dade’s Representative Kevin Chambliss (D-HD 117) shepherded across the House finish line the companion to a successful Senate bill allowing incarcerated individuals to pursue professional licensure in specified trades.

State legislators will begin to file policy-affecting bills for the 2026 Legislative Session in the weeks to come. OF NOTE: House Speaker Daniel Perez has authorized the formation of a new Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting.

Stay tuned for monthly updates.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

U.S. Congress: (List of all bills signed into law in 2025) Between January 3, 2025, when the 119th Congress convened, and July 2, it passed a paltry 20 bills that were signed into law, most reversing rules enacted during the Biden Administration  Then came July 3, when a subservient Republican House majority–minus only Representatives Massie and Fitzpatrick–passed Donald Trump’s grotesquely-named “Big Beautiful Bill” that balloons the federal deficit, provides massive tax cuts for billionaires, and slashes services to needy families. A thoroughly disgusted public has borne witness to the concoction of a witches’ brew of backroom deals seasoned with honey, vinegar, carrots, sticks, threats of primary opposition, and promises of member-tailored executive orders.

More than a quarter of Miami-Dade residents receive benefits through Medicaid, and more than half a million receive food assistance through SNAP. Eligibility for both programs will now be tightened, and cumbersome paperwork requirements will be added. Children, the elderly, and the estimated 39% of County households one missed paycheck away from financial ruin will suffer.

President: Since January 20, President Trump has signed nearly 200 Executive Orders, and, for all intents and purposes, is governing the nation by fiat, occasionally subject to temporary–and now precarious–judicial restraint. In so doing, he has pointedly ignored the role of Congress in crafting policy, allocating funds, and committing U.S. troops to military action, and aggressively embraced the theory of the “unitary executive” to override civil service protections, federal agency authority, and time-honored anti-corruption protocols.\

The consequences of his executive orders pertaining to immigration in particular will have devastating and long-lasting consequences to the very fabric of our lives in Miami-Dade County, impacting families, communities, schools, and businesses alike. Similarly, any reduction in trade through the Port of Miami due to tariff disputes will ripple through the local economy.

U.S. Supreme Court: This term, in cases most fundamental to the rule of law, the preservation of democracy, and the authority of the judicial branch of government itself, the court has rolled back precedent and paid uncommon deference to the power of the executive branch. While some major cases have been decided by a 9-0 margin, other decisions–a ruling barring lower courts from issuing nationwide injunctions against executive orders, transition care for trans youths, and parental authority to opt children out of classroom discussions they find morally objectionable–have reflected the triumph of partisan ideology.

Of note: cases challenging the Voting Rights Act and limits on spending by political parties are on the docket for next year.

Sign up for email updates, and join us at county and local club meetings to learn how to get more involved.