New Florida laws will take effect at the beginning of 2023
TAMPA, Fla. - The new year comes with new laws for Floridians, from expanding lobbying restrictions to disaster assistance, tax season changes and protections for newborns.
Florida’s new toll road credit program will go into effect on January 1, 2023, giving Floridians with 35 or more toll transactions a month a 50% credit to their account.
"We've got folks, particularly in South Florida, that spend more on tolls in a month than they do paying for their loan," said Governor Ron DeSantis when he announced the program.
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As part of Miya’s Law, landlords will be required to do background checks on all employees. In 2021, 19-year-old Miya Marcano went missing from her apartment and was later found dead. Orange County deputies said she was killed by a maintenance worker at her apartment complex.
"I just wanted to say to her, to Miya, although we couldn’t save you baby girl, we’re doing our best to save others," said Miya’s uncle Marvin Marcano, at the governor’s signing of the law.
Newborns are getting more protection too. All babies who fail a hearing screening will get tested for cytomegalovirus or CMV, starting January 1. Pediatric doctors said it’s a fairly common virus that can cause developmental problems in children like hearing loss.
"It tends to cause like a mild fever illness for several days up to a week, and then you get over it," said Dr. Juan Dumois, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Pete. "But one of the bigger concerns is when a pregnant woman gets it for the first time during her pregnancy, it can also infect the fetus and damage it."
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Dr. Dumois said the new law can help track the virus in Florida’s babies.
"So it's to get them set up for treatment early on. And if they're hearing problems that persist, they can be referred sooner to a hearing specialist and even fitted for hearing aids," said Dumois.
Other new laws in the new year include getting rid of the practice called "assignment of benefits" in property insurance, and a new law expands the time for how long some government officials have to wait to start lobbying from two years to six years.