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Wild cards come up in Bush's reshuffling
© St. Petersburg Times Come Tuesday, Florida will swear in a new governor. Wait, it's the same ol' governor we've been kicking around for the past four years. But now he's got a new four-year lease on the office and a chance to fix the problems he encountered the first time around. The new Gov. Jeb Bush has been cleaning house, tossing out a few agency heads, bringing in a few new faces and surrounding himself with fresh bodies to staff his own office. The men and women who run the Department of Corrections, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Community Affairs, Transportation and Management Services are leaving Tuesday. Lottery Secretary David Griffin is leaving that job for a position yet to be named, but rumored to be very close to the governor. In a few days everyone expects Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan to abandon the ship of state and become president of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Once he leaves, it will be up to the governor to select a successor. Some think Bush might actually give the lieutenant governor a job to do. Most governors have used the lieutenant governors to go to places where the governor didn't want to go. They spend their days cutting ribbons, smiling a lot and meeting with legislators and other people the governor doesn't have time to see. Gov. Lawton Chiles used Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay to take on difficult tasks like sorting out Miami's financial problems or dealing with the mess at the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. The name was changed to the Department of Children and Families, but the problems remain. Other governors of the recent past had their lieutenant governors serve as secretaries of commerce, and several have designated lieutenant governors as their chief lobbyist, as Bush has done. Trouble is the lawmakers never quite feel they've got a deal until the governor himself speaks. Some see Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood as a likely replacement for Brogan. But Bush appointed her secretary of state, a job she is supposed to take in February. Could the governor be considering combining secretary of state and lieutenant governor? He won't say. Last week I e-mailed a question to him on the subject. His answer: "Have a great Christmas, Lucy." Maybe that actually was an answer of sorts. We'll have to wait and see. An interesting little problem arises when you take a look at the line of succession under Florida law. The Constitution, changed in 1968 to recreate the job of lieutenant governor, says the lieutenant governor will succeed the governor when a vacancy occurs and leaves the remaining line of succession up to the Legislature. Current law lists the secretary of state as the next in line behind the lieutenant governor. The 1998 Constitutional Revision Commission didn't consider this section of the law when it placed a referendum on the ballot making the secretary of state an appointive position. So if a beer truck were to run over the governor after Brogan leaves, the secretary of state would be governor. But if the beer truck came along before Hood takes office in February, would the job go to interim Secretary of State Ken Detzner or to the next in line -- Attorney General Charlie Crist. The issue didn't come up when voters decided to remove the secretary of state from the ranks of the elected. Legislators could change the law and the line of succession. They probably need to make a change because it lists the comptroller and insurance commissioner as the next in line. Cabinet revisions approved by voters in 1998 merged those positions into a chief financial officer. If we have a catastrophe and all the Cabinet members are gone, the Legislature would convene and choose a governor. Makes me feel a lot better.
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Times columns today From the Times State news desk |
