GOP senators want 8-year term limits on school board members as well as county commissioners

After the full House of Representatives approved reducing school board term limits from 12 years to eight last week, a Senate committee is pursuing a similar bill: adding both school board members and county commissioners to those limits.

That means the two bills are not the same between the House and Senate, which can create a conundrum as lawmakers come together to craft and approve an identical bill.

The Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican who represents Citrus, Hernando and Sumter counties and part of Pasco County. The bill passed the Elections and Ethics Committee on Tuesday, though some Democrats voted against the measure.

“This particular piece of legislation as it stands today, without even without really having the ability to encapsulate what 12 years would do, it takes it out of the hands of the citizens,” Sen. Bobby Powell said Tuesday. He voted against the bill.

“And by doing this it almost says that you don’t trust our citizens to make the right decisions — that the government knows best,” Powell added.

However, Ingoglia believes that term limits are “very, very popular with the voters” and are generally “a good thing.”

“If it works for us, it should work for them,” he argued, referring to school board members and county commissioners.

The bill passed in the full House on Friday on a 79-29 vote, mostly on party lines with Republicans in favor. However, there were 11 absences on the vote tally, including many Democrats.

But the focus of the school board member term limit is a continuation of efforts to change how locally-elected school board elections operate in Florida. Shortening the term limits of school boards would allow current school board members to be cycled out sooner to make way for new, potentially more politically conservative candidates.

Also being considered in the 2023 legislative session is a bill that would allow Florida voters to decide if currently non-partisan school board elections should be a partisan affair. Should that bill pass and get signed into law, voters would be able to decide if school board candidates should have an indicator of their party affiliation — either Democrat, Republican, a third-party or no-party affiliate — on the ballot.

In 2022, the legislature first imposed the 12-year term limit, even though most districts in Florida didn’t place term limits on their school board members at all, raising questions about overstepping local authority or Constitutional rules.

In addition, the atmosphere surrounding local school board elections have become increasingly politicized over the past couple years. In summer 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed over two dozen local school board elections, a previously unprecedented move.