Florida’s 2026 Legislative Session has gotten off to a great start for District-1 Sen. Don Gaetz of Niceville.
The former Senate President has introduced 24 bills this session and is co-sponsoring seven others.
On just the second day, his centerpiece legislation (SB 318), which would overhaul school voucher funding, passed a unanimous vote of the State Senate.
With no opposition, Sen. Gaetz expressed pride in the bi-partisan support for his legislation.
“This is not a Republican bill or a Democratic bill,” he stated. “It’s not a Majority or a Minority bill. It is a bill that apparently has support across the chamber.”
With Florida becoming the first state to offer Universal School Choice a few years ago and thousands of students moving back and forth between public school and voucher-funded private school and homeschool, Gaetz said it’s become increasingly difficult to ensure funding is keeping up with where those students are.
“Stop mixing up the money, the Auditor General said. Quit paying and chasing and separately account for every dollar,” the senator declared, referencing a recent, comprehensive Auditor General’s report that calls on lawmakers to clean up the finding system.
The measure, SB 318, requires separate funding streams for the $4 billion being paid to private schools and home-schooling families. It cuts the administrative fee for Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFO) from 3% to 2%, stops the practice of SFOs holding large sums of taxpayer money in their own accounts and requires them to return funds to the state.
There are also measures in place to address accountability and fraud by requiring assignment of student ID numbers and withholding funding until enrollment is confirmed.
“We can’t let this get worse. It’s bad for kids, bad for public schools, bad for parents,” said Gaetz, suggesting that lawmakers in the House and Senate have to address the matter.
Gaetz sits on nine committees, including Ethics and Elections, which he chairs.
In a mid-week check-in, Gaetz discussed his SB-92, which he introduced and presented to the panel on Tuesday that aims to protect whistleblowers.
“It says that retaliation against someone who files an ethics complaint is illegal and that somebody that does file an ethics complaint is protected against losing their job or their pay or a promotion,” he said.
The bill also allows for administrative remedy or the filing of a civil action.
“We want them to be able to file an ethics complaint and have that complaint fully vetted and dealt with and have violators punished.”
Another bill (SB 1758) introduced by Sen. Gaetz this week addresses Medicaid eligibility in Florida by establishing a mandatory work requirement.
“If you’re able-bodied, if you’re not taking care of small children at home, you need to go to work. The state needs to help you find a job through CareerSource Florida. The state needs to help you obtain training and education, if you need that to get career credentials,” Gaetz said. “But, if you can go to work, you need to go to work.”
Looking at the big picture, Gaetz acknowledged that more than a thousand bills have already been filed in the Senate, including those focusing on issues such as property tax reduction and utility rates. Additionally, he cautioned that the budget is very tight this year.
“We will be spending less than we spent last year and we spent, last year, less money than we spent the year before,” he advised. “So many worthwhile projects and programs that people would like to see funded won’t be because the dollars aren’t there. But that just requires us to be better stewards and make better decisions and that’s why we’re here.”
And, when it’s time for the session to close, Gaetz is anticipating a better outcome than in 2025, when the session ended late amid political jostling between the state’s Republican leaders.
“Let’s not let petty politics get in the way,” he said. “My hope is the governor will finish strong, that the House and the Senate can support him, but that we will end the session on time, and we can pass a budget we can be proud of.”
