Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in Jacksonville Monday morning that the Legislature will return for a special session next month to deal with the property insurance crisis.

His announcement came just a day before lawmakers will return to Tallahassee for the first scheduled special session of the spring to deal with congressional redistricting.

The announcement comes as a number of insurance companies have stopped doing business in the state and homeowners' insurance rates have skyrocketed.

St. Petersburg Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes has been pushing for lawmakers to address the issue of property insurance ever since the regular legislative session ended last month.

Brandes said today that there are three main items that the Legislature must address when they convene in May in Tallahassee:

1. The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund
   
   
2. The private property insurance market 
   
   
3. Citizen’s Property Insurance

He said addressing the Cat Fund, which refers to the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, is the most urgent.

“Most of these (insurance) companies have to have their reinsurance in place by June 1 and by addressing the Cat Fund, we could potentially save Florida homeowners about a billion dollars over the next year,” he said.

Regarding property insurers who have been bailing out of the state, Brandes claimed that statistics say that while Florida represents just 8% of all property claims in the country, 82% of property insurance litigation comes from the Sunshine State.

Citizens Property Insurance is the state-run insurer of last resort. Brandes said that two years ago, Citizen’s had less than 500,000 individual policies, but by the end of this year, that’s expected to go up to a million.

Though lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement during the session, Brandes is confident that they will next month.

“I think that we know the solutions to many of these issues,” he said. “We’ve actually really built the framework for this legislation and over the coming weeks, the governor, with the House and Senate leadership, will be negotiating on these issues. “

After failing to convince the leaders in the Legislature to convene on a special session on property insurance, Brandes used a provision in state law to poll individual members of the Legislature.

DeSantis' announcement about the special session came before the noon Monday deadline for lawmakers to vote in the poll. Results released later in the day showed that a majority of lawmakers did not vote for the special session. All 42 members of the House Democratic Caucus did, as did most Democratic senators. A few Republicans also supported it, but most did not.

“We should have addressed the property insurance market crisis when we had the chance during the regular legislative session,” said Tampa Democratic Rep. Fentrice Driskell. “Every day the governor failed to take action was an additional day that Floridians had to shoulder the burden of out-of-control property insurance rates while also trying to make ends meet in light of Florida's skyrocketing cost of living. This failure rests squarely within the governor's hands.”

Meanwhile, the Legislature convenes on Tuesday for the first special session of the year. This session will focus on reviewing the congressional redistricting map submitted by Gov. DeSantis last week.