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Discussion continues on the financial statement of the abortion amendment
Discussing issues including the costs of potential lawsuits and implications for the Medicaid program, a state panel continued to debate Monday the financial effects of a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights.
The panel has scheduled another meeting for July 15 as it tries to reach agreement on a financial impact statement, which will appear on the ballot with the proposed constitutional amendment.
Financial impact statements typically attract little attention, but an initial statement approved last year for the abortion amendment led to a still-unresolved legal dispute.
The four-member panel, known as the Financial Impact Estimation Conference, is trying to craft a revised statement but found itself at times deadlocked at 2-2 on Monday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ representative on the panel, Chris Spencer, pushed to consider issues such as the costs of lawsuits that could result if voters approve the amendment in November. Spencer argues that numerous issues would end up in litigation and that the amendment could trigger a legal battle over whether taxpayers should be allowed to fund abortions through Medicaid — something that is now prohibited.
“On the question of whether this is a constitutional right and whether Medicaid has to cover it, that’s a big part of the broader conversation about litigation, the outcome of which could be significant for the state,” said Spencer, who was DeSantis’s longtime budget chief before recently being named executive director of the State Board of Governors.
But panel member Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, raised concerns about directly tying the amendment to Medicaid. She said the Legislature or the courts would have to decide whether the Medicaid program would pay for abortions.
“I’m having a hard time coming up with a likely outcome of this conference … that Medicaid will have to include abortion, because it’s so many steps away from where we are, from where we started,” Baker said.
Monday’s meeting and a similar meeting last week reflected broader policy arguments around the proposed amendment, which, in part, says that no “law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion prior to viability or when necessary to protect the health of the patient, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”
DeSantis and other state Republican leaders are fighting the measure, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 4. Mirroring arguments made by Spencer, groups opposing the proposed amendment focused during the panel meetings on potential litigation costs and the possibility of Medicaid-funded abortions.
“The impact on the state budget could be huge,” said Sara Johnson of the anti-amendment group Vote No on 4.
But Michelle Morton, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida speaking on behalf of the amendment’s supporters, said the potential litigation costs were “too speculative” to consider. She also asked the panel to stand by an analysis from last year that said passing the amendment would lead to savings in things like education and criminal justice costs.
“We again urge you to follow the FIEC’s (the panel) original conclusion that Amendment 4 will likely have cost savings for the state,” Morton told the panel. “We urge you not to include costs rooted in speculation about future litigation or long-term economic impacts. And finally, we urge you to make your financial impact statement clear about its purpose and to be based on facts, not ideology.”
Financial impact statements appear with ballot initiatives to provide estimated effects of the measures on government revenues and the state budget. The panel released an initial statement for the abortion proposal in November 2023.
But on April 1, the Florida Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to go into effect. DeSantis and lawmakers had approved the six-week limit in 2023, but it has been languishing in court for nearly a year.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, a political committee leading the effort to pass the amendment, filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the November financial impact statement needed to be revised because it was out of date after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper agreed with the committee, but the state appealed to the 1st District Court of Appeals, where the case is pending.
Amid the case, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, and House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, directed the Financial Impact Assessment Conference to reconvene to review the statement.
During Monday’s meeting, Spencer frequently aligned himself with economist Rachel Greszler, who represented the House, while Baker frequently aligned himself with economist Azhar Khan, who represented the Senate.
Committee raises another $239,000
Floridians Protecting Freedom raised $293,008 from June 22 to June 28, according to a newly filed financial report. The political committee has raised a total of $38.27 million since it was formed in the spring of 2023, while spending about $22.73 million. Much of the spending went to collecting and verifying petition signatures to put the abortion bill on the ballot.