SW Florida Region Award Winners: Distinguished Advocate

A few of your region’s lawmakers have been awarded the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Distinguished Advocate Award following another successful legislative session. The Florida Chamber’s Distinguished Advocate Award recognizes lawmakers who ensured consideration of the business community’s legislative priorities and fought tirelessly for the passage of a Chamber-backed policy or a priority piece of pro-jobs legislation.

Your region’s 2021 Distinguished Advocate Award Recipients:

• Senator Joe Gruters leveled the playing field between out-of-state online retailers and local, brick-and-mortar businesses by closing the online sales tax loophole, while simultaneously preventing an immediate $713M unemployment tax on job creators and cutting the Florida-only sales tax on commercial leases from 5.5% to 2%.
• Senator Kathleen Passidomo continued her leadership in protecting Florida’s business climate competitiveness by authoring bad faith reform language to root out fraud and abuse in Florida’s auto insurance market, and working with the business community to mitigate a sweeping, new private cause of action.
• Senator Ray Rodrigues led policy efforts to protect Florida’s constitution, modernize Florida’s pension system, bring transparency and accountability to Florida’s public sector unions, and invest in resiliency efforts necessary to protect our coastline communities.
• Representative Bob Rommel advanced reforms which address the cost drivers that are destabilizing Florida’s property insurance market and contribute to skyrocketing premiums.

Please join me in recognizing their achievements. Full list of winners her