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Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: House, Senate Agree On Health Care, Justice Budgets

As Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford met in the middle of the Capitol’s fourth floor Wednesday, they celebrated a tidy ending to two potentially messy issues.

A short time earlier, the House and Senate gave final approval to ethics and campaign-finance bills, crossing those issues off a list of legislative priorities for this year’s session. That left the fate of the bills up to Gov. Rick Scott, amid rumblings that he could play hardball if lawmakers don’t approve his priorities such as giving $2,500 across-the-board pay raises to teachers.

Gaetz and Weatherford, however, expressed confidence that Scott would not veto measures such as the ethics-reform bill.

“I think the need to raise the standard of public conduct in this state stands on its own as a moral imperative,” said Gaetz, R-Niceville. “And we’re confident that the governor shares the same sense of urgency that the people of Florida share as Speaker Weatherford and I have listened to people all over this state tell us that they want this bill passed, they want this bill signed and they want this bill to be the law.”

But Scott’s willingness to veto bills is one of many unresolved questions still lingering as the next-to-last week of the session ended Friday.

Perhaps the noisiest questions centered on whether the House and Senate will be able to agree on a plan to expand health coverage for low-income Floridians. But legislative leaders also still needed to finalize myriad details of a roughly $74 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year — details that swarms of lobbyists watched intently.

ALL ABOUT ETHICS AND ELECTIONS

Gaetz and Weatherford have pushed all session for changes in the state’s ethics and campaign-finance laws. But those types of issues can be tricky for lawmakers, who have first-hand experience in complying with ethics laws and need to raise buckets of campaign cash to get elected.

A deal on the issues emerged quickly Wednesday, after being negotiated in private. The ethics bill (SB 2), at least in part, would bar elected officials from taking advantage of their positions to get taxpayer-funded jobs and block lawmakers from lobbying state agencies for two years after they leave office.

The campaign finance measure (HB 569), meanwhile, would eliminate a type of political funding vehicle known as “committees of continuous existence,” or CCEs. Contributions to the committees have been difficult to track, and critics also say CCEs have become a way for some lawmakers to subsidize their lifestyles.

The bill also would increase limits on individual contributions to candidates. Contributions are currently limited to $500, but that amount would go to $3,000 for statewide and Supreme Court campaigns and $1,000 for other candidates.

Scott, however, has already raised objections to the increased limits on contributions, though it remains unclear whether that uneasiness will lead to a veto.

“No one’s shown me a rationale for raising these limits,” Scott said. “So I don’t know why we’d be doing it.”

The Senate this week also approved a bill (HB 7013) aimed at fixing voting problems that again made Florida the butt of jokes after the 2012 elections. The bill, which must go back to the House, includes steps such as giving county elections supervisors the option of offering as many as 14 days of early voting and allowing more flexibility in choosing early-voting sites.

While Republicans touted the bill as addressing the elections system’s problems, Democrats said it didn’t go far enough.

“Republicans don’t want real elections reform, they don’t want to own up to their mistakes — they just want to cross this off their list and go home,” said Scott Arceneaux, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party.

A HEALTHY DEBATE — WELL, SORT OF

Gaetz is fond of saying it “takes three” to get agreement on legislation. And nowhere is that more evident than in a battle about expanding health coverage, with the Senate and Scott in agreement and the third player, the House, taking a far-different approach.

The House on Friday approved its plan to offer $2,000 health subsidies to targeted groups of low-income people as an alternative to expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act. That came a day after House Republicans rejected going along with a Scott-backed Senate plan that would rely on billions of dollars in federal Medicaid money to offer private health-insurance coverage.

Each day, reporters ask House and Senate leaders whether they can resolve the differences. And each day, the leaders give non-committal answers.

But after about five hours of floor debate this week, House Republicans have shown no signs of moving off their position. They say their plan, dubbed the “Florida Health Choices Plus” program, would be a free-market approach to providing health care and also warn that the state shouldn’t rely on federal Medicaid money that eventually could be reduced.

“What happens when we are forced to pick up a tab that we cannot afford?” asked Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, during a debate Thursday.

The majority’s stance, however, faced heavy criticism from House Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey. Democrats repeatedly said House Republicans were ideologically driven and that hundreds of thousands of low-income Floridians could suffer.

“The war on Obamacare is really what this comes down to,” said Miami Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, referring to the more-common name for the Affordable Care Act.

BUDGET INCHES ALONG

Lawmakers can talk all they want about the other bills, but really, truly, the only bill they have to pass before going home next Friday is a budget.

But negotiations between Senate Appropriations Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and House Appropriations Chairman Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, were relatively slow-going this week. The budget chiefs took over the talks from conference committees Tuesday evening and met again Wednesday to swap deals on some relatively minor points — and then didn’t plan to meet again publicly until Friday night.

Throughout, the sticking points remained largely the same: The two sides have to come to an agreement about how to divide $480 million in pay raises for education personnel; the House wants higher university tuition rates, while the Senate wants frozen tuition and more student aid; both sides have their own ideas on how to overhaul Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals.

And there are a raft of smaller items, including some member projects — the very things Scott seemed to warn about Thursday when he talked about the spending plan.

“As you know, in this budget, I’ve started to see a lot of special member projects,” Scott said. “This is the first time since 2006 we have a surplus. I want to make sure that we spend the money well. … I’m responsible for all 19.2 million Floridians, and I want to make sure we get a good return on investment.”

Lawmakers seemed to be readying for weekend negotiating sessions for the second straight week in hopes that a final deal could be reached by Tuesday. With a legally required 72-hour “cooling-off period,” Tuesday is the deadline for presenting a budget so lawmakers can end the session on time next Friday.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Lawmakers approved ethics and campaign-finance reform bills that have been priorities of House and Senate leaders.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I like being married.” — Gov. Rick Scott, when asked about a bill that would revamp the state’s alimony laws.

By The News Service of Florida