This Tuesday, May 31, the release of Sundial:
Florida politics
New efforts to reduce property insurance costs are now law. As well as new rules designed to make apartment buildings safer.
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During a special session last week, Florida lawmakers quickly passed bills to address roof maintenance for homeowners, skyrocketing insurance premiums, and adding mandatory apartment inspections in response to last year’s Surfside tragedy.
Mary Ellen Klas, Capitol bureau chief at the Miami Herald, joined Sundial to highlight the implications of the new laws and discuss the policies that have been brewing ahead of the midterms.
“I think the whole point of the extraordinary session on property insurance was for lawmakers to do what they couldn’t do in the regular session,” she said. “They realized it was too big a problem, or the problem was too complex to make any immediate changes. So they put together enough of a package that they think will have some sort of long-term effect. things in the apartment were really distracting.”
She explained that most of the new apartment safety laws were developed during the regular session at the beginning of the year, so this time a special session was only needed to finalize the details. And when an elementary school shooting took place in Uvalde, Texas last week, lawmakers were still gathering together in Tallahassee. Klas detailed how the legislators’ reaction to this tragedy is tied to a divisive policy at the state level:
“The Florida legislature did something quite remarkable in 2018 when the Parkland massacre took place. And it was the first time in a generation that they had handed over control of the gun. They have limited the age of those who can buy guns from 18 to 21. They enacted disturbing new laws. But when this tragedy happened in Texas, they decided that it was not important to go back to it and tighten the laws of Florida. I think they think everything is working fine,” Klas said. “No more talk, no more talk of strengthening Florida laws, no more talk of banning assault rifles, banning high-capacity ammunition. It’s just not on the table. And I don’t expect it to come back.”
Mental health after injury
Chances are you’ve seen the pictures and heard the stories of last week’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
These images and stories can be triggers – and they should be. A lone gunman killed 21 people, 19 of the dead were children.
It’s a tragedy that’s all too familiar here in South Florida. Just four years ago, the Parkland School…