2019 Session: With a few days left - a possible Special Session?

Florida's Legislative Session started this year on March 5 and now there is talk about a Special Session to resolve the budget issues. In addition, our 160 citizen legislators are debating guns in classrooms, the medical use of marijuana, dollars for the Panhandle survivors of Hurricane Michael, texting while driving and prescription drugs from other countries.

FADA’s goals were threefold: passage of a bill to regulate factory incentive programs that are menacing our dealer’s operations and confusing Florida consumers; a bill to create revenue for FADA from the Hope Scholarship Program to be used for pro-dealer advertising and promotion; and a request for $500,000 in the budget to help FADA improve the potential for dealers to find, hire and train more Auto Technicians.

To date the incentives bill is DOA. Factories and JM Family opposed FADA from the start and our bill was not prioritized by leadership. We will have to strategize and develop a more precise ground game to overcome the huge investments made this year by our opponents that led to our demise. Lesson learned! 

We are continuing to work on our budget issues related to Hope and Auto Techs. In a few days we will know where these issues land in what is going to be a brutal budget conferencing process at the end of Session.

189 bills have passed the House and Senate and only 8 have been approved by the Governor.