Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Back To The Future

September 19, 2015

Sen. Jeff Brandes drove an electric car around the state Capitol on Thursday. Someone might want to ask him if he got up to 88 mph.

Because much of this week in Tallahassee seemed like it was going Back to the Future. (The DeLorean in the 1980s film franchise had to reach 88 mph to start the time-travel process.) From the debate over guns on college campuses to the continuing fallout from this year’s botched rollout of the state’s new standardized tests, the discussion seemed to be holdovers or leftovers from the 2015 legislative session — or even earlier.

http://www.northescambia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/floridaweeklly.jpgMeanwhile, both sides of the ongoing debate about the state’s congressional districts went back to court, and one side was accused of using political consultants to try to carve up the state for partisan gain. This time, though, the voting-rights organizations and voters who challenged the map lawmakers drew in 2012 were put on the defensive.

So, again: Just how fast did Brandes drive that car?

‘WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY …’

During a trial last year over whether the Legislature’s 2012 congressional redistricting plan violated the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” standards approved by voters in 2010, critics of the map built their case on an alleged conspiracy between Republican political consultants and legislative leaders to draw the lines in a way that helped the GOP.

The Legislature this week tried to use that fact to suggest that there was a dose of irony or hypocrisy — take your pick — when two groups of plaintiffs who fought the 2012 map in court filed proposed alternatives that had been discussed with Democratic operatives. In one case, some of the plaintiffs talked about their plan with the organization devoted to electing Democrats to Congress.

Attorneys for a group of voters known as the Romo plaintiffs “discussed aspects of the Romo plaintiffs’ proposed remedial plan with staff members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” and others, court papers said.

Meanwhile, plans pitched by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida were drawn by an employee of Strategic Telemetry, a firm whose founder worked for the presidential campaigns of Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. Strategic Telemetry is also ensnared in a controversy over maps it helped craft for Arizona’s independent redistricting committee.

Lawyers for the state House quickly went to the Florida Supreme Court and called for the opportunity to dig deeper into the background of those maps by lifting the court’s ban on discovery — essentially, the ability to get documents and gather testimony — ahead of a hearing before a Leon County judge next week.

“Without apparent shame, plaintiffs have presented to the trial court alternative maps that were drawn, reviewed, discussed, modified, and approved in a closed process, in complete darkness, by national political operatives,” the filing said. “The fact that plaintiffs’ maps, despite their origins, are pending before the trial court for a possible recommendation to this (Supreme) Court should dismay and disturb all Floridians.”

The plaintiffs fought back, saying the identities of who came up with the maps are irrelevant. In a response to the legislative argument, the voting-rights organizations’ attorneys filed a brief drawing a distinction between the way lawmakers and consultants drafted districts in 2012 and the way the plaintiffs’ maps were drawn for the court process.

“The coalition plaintiffs are not secretly submitting proposed maps through subterfuge, and the courts are certainly not conspiring with the plaintiffs to secretly consider these maps,” the response said. “The plaintiffs have submitted their maps through public filings in court under their own names that directly identify who helped prepare the maps.”

The papers were still flying at the end of the week, with Circuit Judge Terry Lewis set to begin a hearing on the proposed maps Thursday. Lewis will ultimately recommend a map for the Supreme Court to consider.

TAKING ANOTHER SHOT

Despite trying and failing in the past to get lawmakers to approve a proposal that would allow people with concealed-weapons licenses to pack heat while hitting the books on college and university campuses, advocates haven’t given up. And the measure notched it first two successes this week, even as one of its highest-profile opponents was unmoved.

The legislation (SB 68 and HB 4001), which won support from criminal-justice committees in the House and Senate, is supported by gun-rights groups but widely opposed by academic leaders.

Proponents argued that the proposal would make colleges safer, while opponents questioned the need to allow weapons into an already stress-filled atmosphere. But Florida State University President John Thrasher, a former lawmaker who helped derail a similar measure in 2011, told The News Service of Florida that allowing more guns on campus will not make schools safer.

“We live in a different environment where, if you look at the footprint of this campus and you see where this campus is and where it goes, and then you look at the outskirts of it, there are multiple places to be served alcohol, there are multiple types of high-risk behaviors that go on at universities when you have 42,000 students,” Thrasher said. “I frankly think it’s just a mistake to do it. … I believe in the Second Amendment. I supported it when I was in the Legislature, but I think there certainly are reasonable exceptions. This is one of those.”

A number of students, some pointing to a November 2014 shooting at Florida State’s Strozier Library that left three people injured, told lawmakers Wednesday that they don’t feel safe. Even though the gunman in the Strozier Library shooting was killed by first responders, there remains a two- or three-minute response time — time in which people with concealed-weapons licenses could react, several students noted.

“A lot can happen in two to three minutes,” said University of Florida student Brandon Woolf, a vice president of the campus chapter of Students for Concealed Carry. “Nobody here wants to call my parents and tell them I was killed while hiding behind a desk.”

WHO WILL TEST THE TESTERS?

The debate over the messy Florida Standards Assessment rollout is over. Long live the debate over the messy Florida Standards Assessment rollout.

The last official review related to the new standardized test for public-school students came to an end Wednesday, when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced it had identified neither a clear motive nor a suspect in a cyberattack that was one of the many technology woes the exam faced earlier this year.

State officials emphasized that the March incident was what is known as a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack — which occurs when someone bombards a server with requests to overload it and make it unable to handle legitimate traffic.

“Most importantly, I want to reassure our state’s students, parents and educators that, because of the nature of the cyberattack, no student information was accessed and the content of the assessment was not compromised,” Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement issued Wednesday.

The next day, though, the debate was kicked back into high gear when senators from both sides of the aisle raised sharp questions about a study that Florida Department of Education officials say validated the controversial new test.

Members of the Senate Education Pre-K-12 Committee reviewed the study of the Florida Standards Assessment and suggested that the department had portrayed the report’s conclusions in an overly optimistic light and wondered whether teacher evaluations and school grades should be tied to the exam.

For all the sound and fury, though, Committee Chairman John Legg, R-Lutz, seemed to be content with a testing bill that lawmakers approved last year.

“My intent is, after today we have other legislation that we’re going to be reviewing in our committee,” he said. “So my time will be limited.”

But Sen. Bill Montford, a Tallahassee Democrat who doubles as CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, wasn’t as quick to walk away.

“This meeting today gave me no more comfort. In fact, it even raised more questions about the process that was used, the conclusions that they came to. I am not satisfied,” he said. ” … I don’t think this is just going to go off into the sunset.”

STORY OF THE WEEK: The spat over congressional redistricting continued, as both sides filed their proposed maps with Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “He was, I think, feeling his oats a little bit, out in Iowa. It was on a sports program, and I get that. I think Marco’s a very gifted young man, no question about it. But our folks took a little bit of exception to what he had to say.”—Florida State University President John Thrasher, on a back-and-forth between himself and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s running for the White House. Rubio, a Gator fan, took a shot at FSU in a radio interview.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News