The Florida House of Representatives is sinking to new lows with its self-serving tricks on the judiciary.
Published April 4, 2004
Forget the sheep. There's a rat pack loose in the Florida House of Representatives. What they tried to do to the judiciary the other day was out of bounds even by the debased standards of contemporary Florida politics.
The appropriations chairman, Rep. Bruce Kyle, R-Fort Myers, got his committee to cut justices and judges out of a two-year-old law that allows elected officials to keep working until the end of their terms after accruing the maximum in deferred retirement benefits. Though 70 other judges would have been affected, the most conspicuous target, as everyone in Tallahassee knew, was Chief Justice Harry Anstead of the Florida Supreme Court. Had Kyle gotten away with it, Anstead would have had to retire this year, instead of at the end of his term in January 2009, or forgo $426,852 in deferred benefits.
Kyle withdrew the attempt during debate on the House floor, but not before some Democrats ridiculed the likely motive behind it by filing an amendment of their own saying that it would not apply to justices and judges whose "published opinions and judicial philosophies have been expressly approved by the House of Representatives." The Republicans have been spoiling for Anstead's scalp ever since he was the swing vote in the court's decision to order a recount of the disputed 2000 presidential election.
The Democrats were also rounding up votes among responsible Republicans and likely had enough to have defeated Kyle's amendment had he insisted on a showdown. Whether elected officials deserve an exemption not available to rank-and-file workers is a fair question, but not if judges are singled out.
Regrettably, there weren't enough responsible Republicans to defeat the main bill (HB 1849), which proposes to create a 6th District Court of Appeal in violation of a constitutional provision - as cited by the committee's own staff report - that requires the Supreme Court to first certify the necessity. Kyle's claim that there was something "tantamount to a certification" six years ago was laughably phony, yet 75 members of the House went along with it. To their credit, seven Republicans did not: Dennis Ross and John Stargel, Lakeland; Frank Attkison, Kissimmee; Marsha Bowen, Haines City; Donald Brown, DeFuniak Springs; Heather Fiorentino, New Port Richey; and Ken Littlefield, Zephyrhills.
Kyle wasn't out of tricks. One of his amendments to the main appropriations bill conditions asbestos cleanup funds for the 2nd District's courthouse at Lakeland on creation of the 6th District, and a provision in HB 1489 specifies that the entire bill is invalid if the Supreme Court holds any part of it unconstitutional. That would eliminate 51 new judgeships the court did recommend.
The Senate has no appetite for any of Kyle's mischief, but strange things can happen when the two houses are trying to barter their way to adjournment. Will the 2nd District courthouse be stuck with its life-threatening asbestos contamination? Will Kyle kill needed relief for overworked courts if he doesn't get a new court Florida doesn't need? How low can the House sink?
