Eleventh hour budget deal includes $4M compensation for ‘Groveland Four’

Florida legislators gathered Sunday to put the finishing touches on a roughly $115 billion state budget that will affect everyone from AIDS patients seeking crucial drugs to the families of four Black men wrongly accused of rape in 1949.

The House and Senate budget chairs met late into the evening Friday and again Sunday with an array of offers covering all elements of a spending blueprint for fiscal year 2026-27, which spans July 1 through June 30, 2027.

It was anticipated that many of the final offers, including a tax relief package, will be accepted sometime late Sunday night.

Comments from top Republicans indicated they were preparing to lock the budget down ahead of a final vote, likely on Friday.

“In January, we had enormously more differences of opinion than we do today, so this has really been a situation where we have compromised, we have adjusted again,” said Sen. Ed Hooper, the top budget negotiator in his chamber. “Neither of us leave real happy. It’s probably a good deal.”

It appeared the two sides reached an accord on environmental funds, including setting aside more than $500 million for Everglades restoration. That’s below what Gov. Ron DeSantis initially asked but higher than what the House proposed in its initial budget earlier this year.

The House and Senate have settled on $425 million for the state’s rural and land conservation easement program while putting in roughly $60 million-plus for the main land buying program identified as Florida Forever.

The chambers also have agreed to spend $75 million in to keep a drug program for people with AIDS operational.

The state Department of Health unilaterally made drastic reductions to the program without passing the requisite rules, purporting a $120 million deficit. After legal wrangling with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and lobbying efforts spearheaded by Ft. Lauderdale community activist Michael Rajner, the Legislature earlier this year unanimously approved about $31 million for the ADAP program to keep it operational through June 30.

The budget agreement reached Sunday keeps income eligibility for the program at 400% of the federal poverty level. Rajner said the budget agreement reached over the weekend nixes restrictions the DeSantis administration placed on the program and also the drugs clients could access.

“It’s my hope that DOH begins to serve the needs of the HIV-community rather than continue to find new barriers to erect,” Rajner told the Phoenix in a text Sunday.

‘Groveland Four’

An 11th hour budget item agreed to Sunday includes a $4 million appropriation for the so-called “Groveland Four,” with budget instructions to divide the money equally among the surviving families.

During the 2026 regular session, the Florida Senate approved a bill to compensate the families of Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas. The men were wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman in 1949 in Groveland in Lake County.

The Florida Legislature in 2017 passed a concurrent resolution apologizing and acknowledging that the men “were the victims of gross injustices and that their abhorrent treatment by the criminal justice system is a shameful chapter in this state’s history.” Two years later, the governor issued full pardons and in 2021 a court in Lake County entered a final order dismissing their indictments.

Although the Senate passed the bill unanimously, the House never considered it during the regular session. 

Two times in two years

The Legislature considers hundreds of bills every session but is required to pass only one: the General Appropriations Act, or the budget.

For the second time in as many years, the Legislature went into overtime to pass the budget, with the extra working hours borne by Florida taxpayers.

Lawmakers convened for a budget special session earlier this month and, after a spate of budget subcommittee meetings, most lawmakers left town. Hooper and his House counterpart, Republican Lawrence McClure of Dover, spent most of last week in closed meetings trying to hammer out agreements.

On Friday, they announced an agreement to spend $50 million for improvements to a Hillsborough College that will help the Tampa Bay Rays build a new stadium and to place $250 million into an emergency fund overseen by Gov. Ron DeSantis that has been used for immigration enforcement.

Legislators nixed plans for an across-the-board pay raise for state workers, opting instead to give out pay raises to select groups such as park rangers, correctional officers, and state law enforcement agents.