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The other day, one of our reporters in Tallahassee heard House Speaker Johnnie Byrd make a revealing comment. Byrd was discussing a bill to require the loss of TWO eyes, legs, arms, feet and so forth - not just one - for a Florida worker to be considered "catastrophically" injured.
The subject of possible changes to the bill came up.
"If there is some consensus for changes that will be good for Florida businesses," the speaker remarked, "I think we can look at that."
Did you catch it?
Good for Florida businesses.
Not what's good for the citizens of Florida.
Not what's good for workers who, what the heck, might have lost a stray limb here and there.
Not a healthy balancing of competing interests in a democratic process.
Good for Florida businesses.
This year marked a decisive tipping point in the history of the Florida Legislature. This was the year that corporate money shut down the public interest and the majority wishes of Floridians on every front.
Each year, I always hold out a little hope that there will be at least one topic that gets the public so mad that the Legislature is forced to listen. It did not happen this year.
Not in my 21 years of watching the Legislature, or in the opinion of many wise observers older than I, has the legislative process been so directly controlled by those who stood to gain from it.
It used to be a mini-scandal when a lawmaker admitted that a lobbyist had written a bill. Now it is open practice. Lawmakers file "shell bills," empty pieces of paper, and then wait until late in the session to ambush the public with industry-written substitutes.
Whether it was jacking up telephone rates, polluting the environment, bullying the disabled, hurting consumers or ignoring the Constitution, I have not seen a Legislature enact so many bills so harmful to so many Floridians - and against the direct wishes of the overwhelming majority of those Floridians.
Florida is broken. Florida does not have a representative democracy.
There are three principal reasons for this, in my opinion. The three reasons are term limits, party-controlled money and the Legislature's power to draw its own districts.
Eight years turns out not to be so long a time if you want to move up the ladder. A young House member soon realizes that he or she must obey the House leadership slavishly, on every vote. The punishment for disobedience is to be made irrelevant, powerless and then defeated for re-election.
The Republican Party of Florida has raised $135-million in contributions since 1996, the year the current "senior class" of legislators was elected. The Democratic Party of Florida has raised $86-million. Much of this has come from corporate interests that stood to gain far, far more in return through favorable laws and appropriations.
Forget the penny-ante contributions of no more than $500 that can be made directly to candidates. Keep your eye on the party money, which in turn is controlled by each party's leaders in the Legislature.
If individual members don't play along, not only do they risk not getting any party money for re-election, but they also run the risk of finding a challenger from within their own party, tacticly supported by the leadership.
That is why a House member must look at you with a straight face - while firing your kid's teaching assistant, raising your phone bill, polluting your environment and slicing up your legal rights - and declare himself to be "fighting for you."
Can the system fix itself? I don't think so. There is no free market in which a citizen revolt will rise up naturally at the ballot box. The Legislature guarantees its own incumbency with overwhelming campaign money and noncompetitive district maps.
Repealing term limits now, by itself, would not improve matters. Repeal would only give a freer hand to the system of money laundering that has reached full flower.
Party money and redistricting, then, are the twin holy grails of those who want a more responsive Legislature. I hope this will be the subject of many of our state's conversations in the coming months.