Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Let’s Go Home For Good This Time

March 13, 2016

As the 2016 legislative session came to a blessedly peaceful end Friday night, you could look at the 60-day assembly through a variety of prisms.

For House and Senate Republican leaders, it was an election-year opportunity to show that they could govern after the messy unraveling of last year’s session, which ended with bruised egos and a lengthy list of unfinished priorities.

http://www.northescambia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/floridaweeklly.jpgAnd while Gov. Rick Scott tried to put a brave face on the outcome of “a good session,” he did so among the wreckage of his legislative priorities — his tax-cut package gutted, his call for $250 million in economic-development incentives ignored and his choice for surgeon general rejected in a rare rebuke by the Senate.

At the same time, several high-profile special interests that had hoped 2016 would be their year walked away empty-handed. A gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe collapsed. Legislation to help ride-sharing services like Uber died. Even the National Rifle Association, usually one of the more successful organizations in the Capitol, saw priorities gunned down.

But for the lawmakers themselves, things were largely copacetic. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, and Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, passed their priorities onto Scott and got his signature early in the session. Democrats got to revel in Scott’s tough luck. And almost any politician can run on a budget that increases education spending and cuts taxes.

The biggest victory for just about everyone in Tallahassee, though, was that a year-long period that featured two regular sessions, three special sessions and a variety of unusual or even unprecedented procedural and legal maneuvers seemed to finally come to a close Friday. At the annual celebration of the final day, one reporter asked Scott if he would consider calling lawmakers back to Tallahassee to use money freed up by line-item vetoes to fund his priorities.

“I think we had a good session. I don’t think we’re going to need to come back for another session,” he responded.

Most of the denizens of the Capitol who lived through the last 12 months would probably agree.

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A LAME DUCK …

In her last debate as a member of the Legislature, Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, spoke about the budget — but also noted one of the overarching themes of her final year.

“The 2016 legislative session may well go down in the history books as the year that the Florida lawmakers formally declared their independence from Gov. Scott,” Joyner said.

No Legislature ever blindly follows the lead of a governor, but Scott had proven relatively adept at getting what he wanted out of the House and Senate. After getting his wings clipped during his first session in 2011, Scott had made an art form of elevating a couple of key priorities to must-pass status and then seeing them pass.

In 2016, that strategy fell apart. Once again, Scott went with two high-profile items: $1 billion in tax cuts and the incentives package. Lawmakers gave Scott $129.1 million for the kinds of tax cuts he preferred and zeroed out his “Florida Enterprise Fund” altogether.

The governor managed to cobble together enough numbers from a Senate plan to hold down education property taxes and last year’s tax package to say he made good on a promise from his 2014 re-election campaign to cut $1 billion in taxes over the first two years of his second term. But even Republicans hinted that there was some creative counting at play.

His legislative priorities weren’t the only front on which the governor was defeated. Surgeon General John Armstrong’s nomination to continue in his job stalled out, failing to get a vote in the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

Scott and the usually press-shy Armstrong launched a public-relations campaign. Armstrong spoke publicly about his fight against cancer. Scott’s office started a parade of statements from health organizations backing Armstrong, whose job involves heading the Department of Health.

It wasn’t enough. Gardiner, a supporter of Armstrong, publicly struggled with whether to try to force the surgeon general’s nomination onto the Senate floor before finally pulling the plug. It was the first time in almost a generation that an agency head lost his or her job because the Senate refused to consider the nomination.

After the end of the session, Scott essentially wished Armstrong well while throwing an unsubtle elbow in the direction of lawmakers for turning away a sick man.

“He’s in the middle of his chemo treatments. This last treatment’s been pretty tough on him,” Scott said, when asked how Armstrong took the news. “He decided to move on. He’s going to do well. He’s always done well in his life.”

In announcing earlier in the week that he wouldn’t force a vote on Armstrong, Gardiner brushed off suggestion that Scott’s defeat on the budget and on the nomination were signs of impending lame-duck status.

“Anytime you’re the governor of the state of Florida and you have a veto pen, you’re not losing any influence,” Gardiner said.

Scott also spent the session working with fewer tools than governors usually have to influence legislative leaders. Early on, Gardiner and Crisafulli sent their priorities to Scott, forcing him to sign or veto the bills long before lawmakers needed to pass a final budget and give the governor a final answer on tax cuts and economic incentives.

In mid-January, lawmakers approved Gardiner’s top priority, legislation helping people with development disabilities, and Crisafulli’s priority, a bill setting new water policies for the state. The early approval also was aimed at repairing trust between the two chambers after the 2015 fracas.

Scott quickly signed the bills, with a comment that foreshadowed his troubles.

“This is a great start to session,” he said while flanked by Crisafulli, Gardiner and other lawmakers. “We’ve started with things that are very important to the president, speaker and other members of the House and Senate. Everybody knows my priorities.”

CROSSFIRE ON GUNS AND GAMBLING

Almost any legislative session is going to feature skirmishes over gun issues. Part of that is due to the success of NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer. But Hammer and the gun-rights group saw most of their priorities misfire in 2016.

The House voted in February to send two controversial firearms measures to the Senate. One would have allowed the more than 1.4 million Floridians with concealed-weapons licenses to pack heat while on state college and university campuses. Another aimed to let people with concealed-weapons licenses openly display their sidearms in public, something banned in Florida since the concealed-weapons law was established in 1987.

“We have no constitutional basis to infringe upon the rights of a Floridian to openly carry,” said Rep Matt Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach who sponsored the open-carry measure. “We are for more rights for everyone. We are for more freedom for everyone. We are for more liberty for everyone.”

But the Senate was more gun-shy. Even before the House voted on the bills, Gardiner said both bills “are in trouble.” Their prospects never improved. Meanwhile, the House did not approve a Senate proposal to change the burden of proof in “stand your ground” self-defense cases.

The NRA is unlikely to walk away from the fight, though, and all three measures could return in 2017.

Other battles are likely to be back as well. Legislation that would have helped ride-sharing services like Uber collapsed. Senate leaders wanted to focus on adding insurance requirements for drivers, while the House approved a more-sweeping measure that would have blocked local governments from regulating ride-sharing services.

Colin Tooze, public affairs director for Uber, blamed Gardiner for the stalled talks and pointed to close ties between the powerful lawmaker and Orlando-based Mears Transportation.

“We have not had the same opportunity to make our case in the Florida Senate because of one termed-out individual’s cozy relationship with one taxi company in his district,” Tooze said in a conference call with reporters.

Gardiner responded later that his stance “has nothing to do” with anyone on either side of the issue, as he dismissed Tooze’s statement.

“I’m not going to change my view or my position just because I got attacked by some Uber guy in Washington,” Gardiner said.

The Senate was also the scene of a meltdown on efforts to ratify a $3 billion gambling deal between the state and the Seminole Tribe.

Senate leaders blamed the demise of the legislation on the pari-mutuel industry. The House and Senate plans would have allowed slot machines in at least five new counties and included a number of other perks for dog and horse tracks and jai alai operators.

“The bill had a lot of ornaments added to it, and the tree eventually gets too many ornaments and it falls over,” said Sen. Rob Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican who tried to shepherd the bill through the Senate.

MATTERS OF LIFE, DEATH AND SHACKING UP

Hot-button legal and social issues took up a notable amount of legislative time and energy in an election year, when lawmakers are usually keen to focus on bread-and-butter topics and dodge controversy.

One of the issues was unavoidable. On the first day of the legislative session, as lawmakers were going through the annual ceremonies to mark the opening of another gathering, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision striking down the way Florida has sentenced people to death.

The ruling essentially said Florida has given too much authority to judges, instead of juries, in deciding to send people to Death Row. Lawmakers and Scott moved quickly to approve changes to address the ruling.

“The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough,” Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in the January opinion.

Another high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision — last year’s ruling allowing same-sex marriages in all 50 states — sparked its own legislative fight. Social conservatives rallied around a “pastor protection” bill that would ensure clergy members don’t have to officiate weddings that conflict with their beliefs.

“The bill is a shield. It is not a sword,” said Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach. “Pastors have asked for protection because they’re fearful of being discriminated against.”

While gay-rights groups eventually stood down in their opposition to the bill when it became clear that it wouldn’t be amended to become a broader piece of legislation, they and other critics said it was an unnecessary measure that would send a harsh message to gays and lesbians.

“It’s a mean-spirited jab at the LGBT community… a prima facie that says, ‘Not Welcome,’ ” said Rep. Ed Narain, D-Tampa.

Social conservatives enjoyed another victory late in the session, this one on a bill that would increase clinic regulations and bar public funding for organizations associated with abortion clinics.

Lawmakers did liberalize social laws in one way, though, by repealing a 148-year-old ban on single men and women cohabitating — living together or shacking up, in more common terms. Though the practical effect on many Floridians who ignore the almost-never-enforced law is debatable, it will allow them to breathe a little easier.

Just like everyone in Tallahassee glad to avert another disastrous session.

QUOTE OF THE SESSION’S FINAL WEEK: “For too long, the governor has seemed to govern by press release, with surprise vetoes, with vengeful vetoes motivated not by policy reasons but by sending messages to members of the Senate or members of the House that the governor disagrees with.”—Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, speaking in favor of the budget.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News