Four years in the making, a newly signed law aims to stamp out public corruption.
By LUCY MORGAN
Published June 18, 2003
TALLAHASSEE - It took four years and a $20 bet, but Gov. Jeb Bush finally signed a bill into law Tuesday that increases penalties for bribe-taking public officials and makes it easier to pursue government corruption.
The "Citizens' Right to Honest Government" bill was recommended by a task force on public corruption that met in 1999. Bills have been introduced each year since, but the Senate refused to approve a final version until this year, when it became the last bill passed during regular session.
"This is a day of great joy for me," Bush said as he gathered with lawmakers to sign the bill.
On the final day of this year's session, when it appeared the bill would once again fail, Bush said he used a little "reverse psychology" and bet Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, that the Senate would fail to pass it. Villalobos, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, helped get it through.
But when Villalobos mentioned the bet Tuesday, Bush, amid laughter and back slapping, said he didn't believe in gambling and wasn't going to pay.
The law, effective Oct. 1, does not go as far as a governor's task force recommended but does include stiffer penalties for bribery and receiving unlawful compensation by public officials. The maximum penalty for bribery rises from five years to 15.
It defines benefits received by them as "any commission, gift, gratuity, property, commercial interest or any other thing of economic value."
The law also makes it a felony for any public official to disclose confidential criminal justice information and creates the new offense of bid tampering for those who improperly exploit public bidding processes.
It redefines official misconduct to make it easier to prosecute public officials if they falsify, conceal, destroy or alter official records or if they obstruct or delay communication of information relating to a felony committed by another public official.
Bush wanted to give the state Ethics Commission the power to initiate its own investigations, but that provision was cut from the final bill. Under current law, the commission must wait for a citizen to file a complaint before it may investigate the conduct of public officials.
The law was named after Paul Mendelson, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor who was killed in a traffic accident last year.
Sen. Jim Sebesta, R-St. Petersburg, who sponsored the bill every year, was among those who gathered to celebrate.
"This bill sends a message to every government employee, city, county and state that we will not tolerate anything that remotely resembles public corruption," Sebesta said. "You will go to jail if convicted of these crimes."
Sebesta produced a note left on his desk several years ago by the governor. Sebesta said his aide told him that the governor had just paid a visit. He found a note: "Jim, Public corruption? For it or against it? Jeb Bush."
