Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: On The Edge

August 9, 2015

It’s been a tense year in Tallahassee.

Even before the regular legislative session began in March, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration was consumed in one of the most-serious controversies it has faced, when questions were raised about the governor’s attempts to push out some state agency heads.

http://www.northescambia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/floridaweeklly.jpgThen came the botched rollout of the state’s new standardized school test and the health-care fight that blew up the regular session. That was followed by a special session to finalize the state budget. And then along came a 5-2 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that ordered lawmakers back to Tallahassee — yet again to redraw the state’s congressional districts.

So perhaps it’s not a surprise that everyone seemed a bit on edge this week. Members of Congress were waiting for a new map to emerge from a legislative redistricting staff that was essentially sequestered. Rep. Matt Gaetz was ill from something, though reports could have led one to believe it was anything from allergies to bubonic plague.

But some progress was made on a couple of longstanding issues, including the brouhaha over agency heads. Maybe autumn will calm things down in the capital city.

After a special session on state Senate redistricting, of course.

ON THE EDGE OF THEIR SEATS

Everyone expected the new congressional map — the third one the Legislature will have drawn — to be somewhat controversial after it was released. But the plan was already generating waves before it was crafted, as the very voting-rights organizations that got the current districts struck down were complaining about the process for drawing the new ones.

The League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida released a letter to Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, taking issue with the top lawmakers’ announcement that legislative staff and lawyers would be secluded as they drew a map intended to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision rejecting current districts.

That map will serve as a “base” for lawmakers as they consider amendments and give ultimate approval to a congressional redistricting plan during a special legislative session that starts Monday.

“We believe that the ‘base map’ should be discussed and drawn in public, as that map will play a central role in the legislative process of drawing the congressional redistricting plan,” wrote League of Women Voters President Pamela Goodman and Peter Butzin, chairman of Common Cause Florida. “We hope and expect that the Legislature will provide a mechanism for the public to view the drawing of the ‘base map’ and any associated discussions.”

The legislative leaders, who have been battling the two groups in court for more than three years, did not seem overly concerned.

“As with similar politically motivated letters that have been received regarding the redistricting process, the speaker has no comment,” Crisafulli spokesman Michael Williams wrote in an email.

The anticipated disputes also cropped up when the base map itself was released. The plan would re-jigger lines across the state — particularly in Northeast Florida, the Orlando area and Southeast Florida — and likely tilt the playing field slightly more in the direction of Democrats, allowing them to chip away at the GOP’s 17-10 edge in the U.S. House delegation.

But the biggest and most-charged change came with Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown’s district, which has for years run from Jacksonville to Orlando and gives African-Americans a chance to elect candidates of their choice. The new version of the district would still do that, supporters say, as it runs from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west.

Brown is not among those who think the district will work out as well for black voters, and she promptly headed to court to try a convoluted legal move to block the new orientation.

“It’s about drawing districts that put communities of interest together. Period,” Brown said during a press conference in Orlando. “Jacksonville, Florida has nothing in common with North Florida.”

(Left unexplained was what Jacksonville has in common with Orlando.)

There could be changes to the base map, but those who want to file amendments will face a daunting list of requirements. House members, for example, will have to disclose everyone who helped them draw maps and give detailed, non-political explanations for why the districts are shaped certain ways.

EDGING AWAY FROM QUARANTINE

Everyone knows that Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, likes to tell tales and that some of them might have a North Dakota-sized dollop of exaggeration in them. But when Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, missed a father-son speaking engagement Wednesday, the elder Gaetz told reporters that Matt had come down with highly contagious whooping cough.

“The bad news is, Matt has whooping cough,” the senator told students from the FSU master’s program in Applied American Politics and Policy. “The good news is, Matt is quarantined.”

Don Gaetz went on to explain that his son was not waylaid — Matt was “doing lots of legal work for his clients, because he can still bill, even though he can’t cough on you.” He also said his son apparently caught the disease from Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo, who confirmed this week that he had been diagnosed with whooping cough, also known as pertussis or “the 100-day cough.”

But the thing is, Papa Gaetz was getting ahead of the story.

Matt Gaetz tweeted Friday that test results showed he does not have the disease.

“Whooping Cough tests are negative. Special thx 2 Okaloosa Health Dept. Many apologies @RepCurbelo. Quarantine lifted!” the younger Gaetz tweeted.

EDGING TO RESOLUTION

The good news for the taxpayers of Florida: Two lingering legal cases facing the state have been resolved. The bad news: Those settlements will result in $1.3 million being shelled out to lawyers.

One case brought an end to a saga that toppled a House speaker and put just a little bit more of the budget process into the sunlight. But corruption charges against former House Speaker Ray Sansom that started the entire affair in 2009 were eventually dropped, and the state has now agreed to pay most of his legal bills.

Indeed, the state has paid $600,000 to settle a case about whether Sansom was entitled to more than $800,000 in legal fees for his successful defense against charges linked to a budget item approved while he chaired the House budget-writing committee.

“I respect the court’s ruling and am pleased that we could reach a settlement that is significantly less than the judgment and will end all further litigation on this matter,” House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said in a statement released Tuesday by his office.

Meanwhile, the state was preparing to shell out $700,000 to settle a public-records dispute brought by Tallahassee attorney Steven Andrews, who has tangled with the governor several times over the years.

In the course of a property battle with Scott and the Cabinet, Andrews made public-records requests. Ultimately, a California judge ordered Internet giant Google in April to turn over correspondence through computer IP addresses from the Gmail accounts of Scott and two former staff members. Andrews argued that Scott used Gmail to sidestep the state’s public-records laws.

The agreement to pay Andrews in the public-records dispute was signed Wednesday, the same day that Scott and Cabinet members approved a settlement that ended the property battle.

The Cabinet on Wednesday also made permanent the appointments of Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Jon Steverson and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Rick Swearingen to their $150,000-a-year jobs.

Both were initially recommended by Scott in December and appointed a month later. But Steverson and Swearingen had to go through a new Cabinet-level agency head application process as they were among 16 Scott appointees who failed to land Senate confirmation during the 2015 legislative session.

That process itself was an outgrowth of the controversial ouster of former FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey, something that dogged Scott for weeks, long ago, when things were perhaps less stressful in the Capitol.

STORY OF THE WEEK: The Legislature released a “base map” that would recast congressional districts across the state and could shake up the future of Florida’s U.S. House delegation.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I would feel awful if I became Okaloosa County’s Typhoid Mary.”—Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, on staying home while he waited for test results about whether he had whooping cough.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News