Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Out Of The Fying Pan, Into The Fire

November 19, 2016

Elections have consequences, they say, and if the previous week featured the elections, then this week featured the consequences.

Many of the more sweeping consequences emerged from Trump Tower, where the unexpected president-elect began working his way through the process of constructing an administration. But even in Florida, there was work to do.

http://www.northescambia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/floridaweeklly.jpgThe Legislature began working its way through the process of preparing for the spring session, bringing in new members to learn as many of the ropes that can be learned beforehand, while veterans hammered out arcane rules that could set the stage for future fights. House Republican leaders also tried to draft guidelines to put off one potentially divisive fight for at least a year.

Meanwhile, considerations began for those who are eying other offices in 2018. Republican Gov. Rick Scott surprised roughly no one when he acknowledged that he is thinking about challenging U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, in 2018. Democratic mega-donor John Morgan, fresh off a successful campaign to give the green light to medical marijuana in Florida, began mulling whether to run for Scott’s post, which will be open in two years thanks to term limits.

Elections, consequences and then back to elections. Somewhere in between, some governing gets done, as it did this week. The process of selecting a new Florida Supreme Court justice began in earnest, and an unlikely state agency began worrying about the risk of a Chinese threat off Florida’s shores.

FINDING THE BATHROOMS

Like freshmen getting ready to begin their first semester of college, dozens of new lawmakers converged on the Capitol this week for orientation. The metaphor was more familiar to some — like Rep. Amber Mariano, a 21-year-old political science major at the University of Central Florida.

Mariano, R-Hudson, said the experience filling out employment and benefits paperwork and learning the rules of the $29,000-a-year job “is a little bit better” than the start of college.

“I was a (legislative) page back in middle school, and ever since then I’ve known that I wanted to serve in the Florida House,” she said. “It’s surreal that it’s happened so quickly in my life.”

Technically, the new members are already in office under the terms of the Florida Constitution. But they’ll be formally sworn in Tuesday during an organization session, which will also involve the usual housekeeping tasks like passing the rules for the House and Senate.

Led by incoming Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, the House is considering high-profile changes in its rules. But the Senate released its draft rules this week, and they include none of the broad-based restrictions on lobbying and budget measures that will be imposed by the House, instead settling for tweaks and smaller changes.

Under the Senate proposal, members would be required to undergo four hours of ethics training every other year, up from one hour. Restrictions on lobbyists who are temporarily allowed on the Senate floor would be tightened to curtail attempts to use the access to influence senators.

That’s a long way from what the House has planned. Its rules would bar lobbyists from texting lawmakers during committee meetings or floor sessions, require lobbyists to disclose specific issues that they are working on and ban House members from flying on planes provided by lobbyists or their clients.

Perhaps most significantly for the ability of the two chambers to come together on a state budget, the House intends to require members to file separate bills for proposed spending projects. There is no counterpart to that process in the Senate rules released Tuesday.

But shortly before releasing the Senate draft, incoming Senate President Joe Negron told reporters he also wanted a budget process that was less opaque.

“I’m very committed to having an open, transparent budget process,” said Negron, a Stuart Republican who will formally become president during the organization session. “When I was the appropriations chair in the Senate under President (Don) Gaetz, we always had an opportunity for public comment at our (House-Senate) conference meetings, which had not been a traditional process.”

The House GOP also released party rules this week, with an eye on cutting off the distraction of an early battle for who will be the speaker after the 2022 elections. That’s right, 2022. Assuming the House GOP still has power. And that person hasn’t lost a bid for re-election. And, for that matter, the state of Florida still exists.

The proposal, offered by Corcoran, would address a practice of would-be speakers trying to line up support for the powerful position before they have even served in the House.

In an interview Monday with The News Service of Florida, Corcoran said the proposal would prevent would-be speakers who don’t have to deal with contested primaries or general elections in their districts from getting an unfair advantage.

“If we’re going to have a 100-yard dash … everybody should start from the starting line at the same time at the same place,” he said. “There’s nothing fair about having someone start at the 50-yard mark.”

The rules would bar House members who want to be speakers from campaigning for support from their colleagues until after they had served together. Support couldn’t be rounded up until after a full class of lawmakers had gone through its first session.

2018 IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER — REALLY

Critics and even some fans would say that Scott has been running for U.S. Senate since he won re-election to the governor’s office in 2014. But he made it sort of kind of quasi-official this week, telling reporters at a meeting of GOP governors in Orlando that he was considering a bid.

And while Scott met with President-elect Donald Trump later in the week, he told Fox News that he wasn’t looking for an appointment to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a potential fit for the former hospital executive.

“I’m interested in doing whatever I can to help him rewrite Obamacare, redesign the government and help him work with the 33 Republican governors who have great ideas to help (Trump) be successful,” Scott said. “If he’s successful, Florida will be successful.”

Slightly less predictable was the news that John Morgan, perhaps most famous for his law firm’s commercials tagged “For the People,” is thinking about jumping into the race to succeed Scott. Morgan, a Democrat, spent heavily from his personal wealth to get a recent constitutional amendment on medical marijuana approved and was also a strong supporter of former Gov. Charlie Crist’s unsuccessful gubernatorial comeback attempt in 2014.

“Before I go down this road any further I need a lot of time to think about it,” Morgan wrote in an online post. “There are obvious drawbacks and hurdles. But the initial response in the form of phone calls, emails and social media postings has been overwhelming. It is humbling. I must weigh that response against the personal and the practical.”

Much of the talk started Monday when Ben Pollara, who managed the medical-marijuana campaign, sent out an email with the subject line, “TELL JOHN MORGAN: Run for Governor in 2018!”

The email included a link to a website — www.forthegovernor.com — that calls for drafting Morgan to run.

In his own way, Morgan might be a liberal, Florida version of Trump — a bombastic wealthy guy who has never run for office and could attempt to present himself as an outsider. But other Democrats, like outgoing Congresswoman Gwen Graham, have already begun positioning themselves for a campaign, meaning Morgan could have to spend even more of his money just to lock up his party’s nomination.

THE PEOPLE’S BUSINESS

Despite the political machinations, some work was getting done this week. The Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission decided to interview all 11 applicants vying to replace Justice James E.C. Perry, whose forced retirement due to age is giving Scott his first opportunity to make an imprint on the state’s high court.

The nine-member nominating commission unanimously decided Monday to interview all the applicants for the post on Nov. 28. The panel plans to provide Scott a short list of six names that night or the following day, giving the governor plenty of time to make a decision before Perry’s resignation goes into effect Dec. 30, according to commission chairman Jason Unger.

“We wanted to do it a little expeditiously to give him enough time to do his full vetting,” Unger told The News Service of Florida in an interview Monday. “In an ideal situation, there’ll be no vacancy time. The governor will have his appointee ready to go, and actually start meeting with the court and the court processes, before the vacancy actually hits.”

Perry is among five jurists who make up a liberal-leaning majority of the seven-member court, which has drawn the wrath of the Republican governor and the GOP-dominated Legislature.

In a more bizarre bit of governing news, Florida wildlife officials expressed concern that the government of the Bahamas is in talks with China to split fishing rights in waters east of Florida.

State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Executive Director Nick Wiley said the potential deal, as reported, could impact Florida’s commercial and sport-fishing industries.

“China, their interests in this, would get exclusive access to fisheries in Bahamian waters,” Wiley said. “A lot of people may not realize this, but the boundary between the United States waters and Bahamian waters is still in dispute. It’s still not been clarified, so that further makes this an issue.”

Wiley said the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has reached out to the government of the Bahamas for additional details.

“It’s something we really need to figure out what is going on. We really don’t understand it yet,” said Commissioner Robert Spottswood, the president of a Key West real-estate development company. “But the potential impact for us in the Keys, in Florida and for the U.S., of the Chinese government getting involved in fishing in the Bahamas could certainly affect the balance of what is going on in fisheries in South Florida.”

STORY OF THE WEEK: Lawmakers began returning to Tallahassee and figuring out the rules of the road ahead of Tuesday’s organization session, which will set the stage for the spring meeting of the Legislature.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I don’t mean this literally, but he’s going to blow the place up. And I mean that in a good way.”—Former lawmaker Mike Fasano, Pasco County tax collector, on incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News