Let’s Talk Politics with Dane Eagle

3 Things Floridians Need to Know After the 2019 Legislative Session

While everyone gets really into politics during the presidential election, as Americans, it’s also important for us to be aware of what’s going on in our local government. That’s why I invited Dane Eagle, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing the 77th District, to my podcast “The HartBeat Show” to recap the 2019 Florida legislative session.

You may remember Dane from his episode, “Rates and Reels” a few years ago. Dane is a “homegrown guy,” as he puts it. Born and raised here in Florida, Dane was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives in 2012, and he has been the majority leader of the Florida House since 2018. While on the show, we discussed three of the biggest topics that came up during the last legislative session.

Sanctuary Cities “The media tends to jump on this, and it gets a little convoluted,” Dane began when I asked him about the bill Gov. DeSantis signed that bans so-called “sanctuary cities” in the state of Florida. “The basic principle is we've got laws in our country and those laws should be followed … Our immigration system is broken, and there's no question the federal government needs to fix it so that it's more efficient. Right now, people are waiting in lines, and that incentivizes them to just jump the border. But that’s a federal problem. At the state level, we have no say over that, but we do have a say over how our state follows the laws.

“This bill basically says that we’ve got to follow the rule of the law. In the state of Florida, if anyone in our local governments is breaking this law, they’re going to be held accountable … We’ve passed a law that says there will be consequences if the law is broken, and that’s going to put the enforcement level up a little higher. Any elected official who does not follow the rule of the law has grounds for removal from the government.”

Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program Of everything covered in the 2019 legislative session, this is one of the hottest button topics. The program is named after Coach Aaron Feis, one of the 17 people killed in the Parkland shooting in 2018. This program is often framed as “giving teachers guns,” buts as Dane explained, the situation is far more nuanced.

“We need to do everything we can to prevent something like that,” Dane said, referring to the Parkland shooting. “A 2018 bill put together the Marjory Stoneman Douglas task force made up of surviving family members of some of these students that were massacred, education folks, law enforcement officers, and the sheriff. They put together recommendations for the legislature. They told us that one major thing you can do is to allow teachers who are in these classrooms the ability to protect and defend themselves with the Second Amendment.

“This program says that any teacher who's in a school who wants the ability to carry a weapon has to go through a training system with their local sheriff's office. It's 143 hours of training, which is far more than anyone that just wants to get a concealed weapons permit. They've got to learn how to handle a firearm and how that would be used in an active shooting scenario … We’ve had a lot of people go through [the program] and did not pass. This shows there is some accountability and some stringent requirements before we're going to allow any teacher to walk into a classroom with a weapon.”

Medical Marijuana In 2016, Florida voted to pass a constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana.

“I want to emphasize that this is for medical marijuana, not recreational,” Dane said when I brought up the topic. “This isn’t for free marijuana on the streets. It’s for medicinal purposes. Our job during the 2017 legislative session was to implement a bill that honored the will of the voters. However, the ballot initiative was not written to the best of the ability that it could have been, so it was up to lawmakers to try and define for what purposes medical marijuana could be used, how it is distributed, who can grow it, who can sell it, and so many other unanswered questions.”

After passing the bill, the legislation has been tied up in lawsuits over various details in the bill they wrote.

“One thing that was pushed back on was being able to smoke marijuana,” Dane continued. “Our position initially in the House was that you don't smoke any medicine. In the medical community, that’s not an appropriate way to intake medicine. However, John Morgan sued us for that. When Gov. DeSantis took office, he said to drop the lawsuit and make sure that smokable medicine is accessible to the people. The first bill we passed this year at Gov. DeSantis’ request was to allow smokable medical marijuana to be legal in the state of Florida.”

It was great to chat with Dane and really dive into these important issues. In addition to covering these topics, Dane also shared a little about the future of septic tank testing — something I discussed with Captain Planet on a previous episode of “The HartBeat Show” — and the possibility of recreational marijuana being legalized in Florida. I also tried to get Dane to tell me whether or not he’ll be running for governor in 2026, but you’ll have to listen to the full episode to hear his response!

Check out my full conversation with Dane Eagle on “The HartBeat Show” podcast or on my Facebook page “Tim Hart – Loan Officer.”