Changes could be coming to the state employees’ health insurance program under a bill passed Friday by lawmakers.

Some changes --- including the use of a drug formulary --- could take effect next year if the bill is signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Other changes won’t take effect until 2023.

The end is near.

Florida lawmakers are slated to finish their 60-day legislative session Friday after what will be a frenzy of activity. Like every other legislative session, lawmakers have left resolution of most major issues to the last week.

That will mean finishing negotiations in the coming days on a roughly $90 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Because of a constitutionally required 72-hour “cooling off” period, the budget will have to be done Tuesday for lawmakers to vote on it Friday.

Buckle up. The 2019 legislative session is about ready to pick up speed.

When lawmakers come back from the holiday weekend, they will be poised to start budget negotiations and to try to resolve a laundry list of major --- and controversial --- issues. That means a sprint toward the scheduled May 3 end of the 60-day session.

In 1988, Florida lawmakers approved a bill requiring parental consent before minors could have abortions.

The next year, the state Supreme Court issued a controversial ruling that said the requirement was unconstitutional.

Now, three decades later, the debate is back. The Florida House during the coming week could pass a parental-consent measure, and the Senate also has started moving forward with its version of the bill.

As he built his administration, Gov. Ron DeSantis looked early and often to the Florida House.

First, he picked then-Rep. Jeanette Nunez, a Miami Republican, to be his running mate. And after they were elected in November, he tapped former House Speaker Richard Corcoran to serve as education commissioner, then-Rep. Halsey Beshears to become secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, then-Rep. Danny Burgess to lead the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and then-Rep. Jared Moskowitz to direct the Division of Emergency Management.

When Floridians went to the polls in November, they approved 11 constitutional amendments on issues ranging from restoring felons’ voting rights to banning greyhound racing.

Now, it’s clear that many Republican lawmakers hope to avoid a repeat of such ballot-driven decision-making in the future.

Proposals are floating in the Legislature that would make it harder for citizens and groups to put constitutional amendments on the ballot --- and make it tougher to pass amendments that get there.

Florida lawmakers might want to rest up.

With about a third of the 60-day legislative session finished, the coming week is going to be filled with some of the highest-profile --- and noisiest --- issues of the year.

Felons’ voting rights. Canadian drug imports. Fracking. Armed teachers. The list goes on.

And in the middle of the week, House and Senate appropriations committees are expected to take up proposed state budgets that are in the neighborhood of $90 billion.

MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2019

Legislature:

Gov. Ron DeSantis could be on the verge of getting his first major legislative victory.

The House is expected during the coming week to approve a bill that would allow patients to smoke medical marijuana, a proposal that has already passed the Senate.

Voters in 2016 passed a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. Lawmakers in 2017 approved a bill to carry out the constitutional amendment and included a ban on smokable marijuana.