Bush calls session on school code

The special session would focus solely on re-enacting laws affecting education.

By STEVE BOUSQUET and JULIE HAUSERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 27, 2002

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday called the Legislature back to work next week for a four-day special session devoted to one issue: rewriting the state's public school code.

The 60-day regular session ended Friday night without passing the bill.

The Senate's rejection of an agreed-upon version angered Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, who called it "political nonsense." Senators balked at voting on an 1,800-page bill most of them had never seen. Instead, with the concurrence of Senate President John McKay, they spent an hour blasting Bush for his veto last year of a Democrat-sponsored crib safety bill, and accused him of refusing to consider a compromise.

Bush issued a brief proclamation convening a special session to start at 9 a.m. Tuesday and end at 11:59 p.m. April 5. The order gives the session's "sole and exclusive purpose" as taking up the school code rewrite. "I'm going to try to keep the focus of the special session very narrow," Bush said. "If there's a consensus in the Legislature, then they can get a two-thirds vote and expand the call on their own. But my guess is we ought to stay really focused."

The Legislature has the power to expand the agenda by a two-thirds vote of both houses.

The school code rewrite is a must-pass bill. It re-enacts laws affecting public schools, charter schools, community colleges, universities and the state Board of Education. The bill would require every school board to set its own salary every October, instead of the current system that ties automatic pay raises to a state formula.

Buried deep in the bill is a $40-million expenditure to create the Florida Alzheimer's Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida. It is a priority of Rep. Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, the incoming House speaker.

The school code session will be the third special session since October, and it won't be the last. Lawmakers went home without adopting a budget or merging two Cabinet offices into the job of chief financial officer, as voters had instructed in 1998.

Special legislative sessions are budgeted at a cost of $40,000 a day. That figure has not increased in the budget for at least a decade.

The hostility between the Senate leadership and Bush has not subsided, and one key senator said Bush's insistence on a single-subject session was an attempt to minimize the Senate's influence.

"I think coming up with a single issue takes away a little bit of the leverage factor," said Senate Majority Leader Jim King, R-Jacksonville, who is in line to become the Senate president in November.

King was invited to a private meeting with Bush Tuesday, another sign that the governor would rather communicate with the incoming Senate leader than McKay. But King said McKay still calls the shots in the Senate. "It's his gavel," King said.

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