In session's final days, subterfuge is a certainty
By LUCY MORGAN
Published April 17, 2004
We are down to the final days. The witching hours approach.
In the next two weeks Florida lawmakers are supposed to pass a budget, agree on a few other issues and get out of town.
Can they do it?
It's hard to say. Throughout the Capitol lawmakers and lobbyists say House Speaker Johnnie Byrd is prepared to block passage of the state' $56-billion budget and other significant bills if the Senate refuses to vote on his proposal to freeze new telephone rates.
Asked about it Thursday, Byrd would say only that good public policy is more important than timing. He also called it "a great process."
Gov. Jeb Bush says the bill is not needed because rates already have been frozen by a lawsuit challenging last year's legislation that led to the rate hike.
But Senate President Jim King, after insisting it won't get to the Senate floor, said Friday he now thinks the idea has merit and it might come up after all.
Last year King took tough stands on medical malpractice and the budget and wound up compromising.
This year Byrd, a candidate for the U.S. Senate who is eager to please voters, has help from the AARP, which is organizing a campaign to pressure the Senate.
The question is whether Bush and Rep. Allan Bense, R-Panama City, will let Byrd take the entire Legislature into the ditch over a campaign issue.
Bense is set to become House speaker in November.
He will never have more power than he has today as lawmakers jockey for leadership posts, but so far he's been too nice to use it against Byrd, a lame duck speaker on his way out the door.
House members are growing restless at the thought of a speaker who could make them all look pretty stupid. They want a new leader who isn't making decisions based on who will contribute money to his Senate campaign.
Meanwhile the worst of all worlds swirls around them as lobbyists load up various bills with controversial amendments that would help one business or another.
This week - without any study or thought - the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee approved an amendment that would completely rewrite the state's parimutuel laws, create a new racetrack near Ocala, give tax breaks to dog tracks and dramatically increase simulcast wagering.
The biggest beneficiary? Magna Entertainment Corp., a Canadian company that owns Gulfstream Park in South Florida and 14 other tracks around the country, including Pimlico in Maryland. Magna is offering to spend $150-million to create a Churchill Downs-type track in Florida as bait.
The last-minute amendment was tacked on to a penny ante poker game bill without review by a committee of substance or the state agency that regulates racetracks.
The 25-page proposal wasn't even available to citizens attendeding the committee meeting.
King has taken the precaution of referring the bill back to the Regulated Industries and Finance and Tax Committees in an effort to slow it down. He says he'll wait and see what members want but he'd like to avoid a war between the state's horse and dog tracks and jai alai frontons.
The Regulated Industries Committee is one of the heaviest lobbied in the Capitol.
King says the committee's entire life is "predicated on greed and somewhat based on gotchas."
It is a sterling example of what happens in a legislature where lobbyists are running the show for well-heeled clients who contribute millions and millions of dollars to legislative campaigns.
There will be more of this in the two weeks to come. Strange little amendments will suddenly appear on "must-pass" bills.
Perhaps a tax break for the Marlins or some other influential business.
Dangerous days ahead. And we likely will spend the next six months figuring out what they've done to whom.
