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An adage commonly attributed to Bismarck holds that to have respect for laws and sausages, one should not see them being made. If the comparison is to the Florida Legislature, then it is unfair to the sausage industry. Abuse of process, such as keeping the public in the dark about what's about to happen, has become a daily event in Tallahassee.
Some of the recent instances:
A new court of appeals, unrecommended by the Supreme Court and unstudied by the judiciary committee, is written into the House budget. The intent is to force senators to accept it during conference negotiations that, with marginal legality, commonly take place in secret.
A senator tries to use the budget process to mandate revolutionary changes in elder care without appropriate study by a substantive committee.
The House writes a 10 percent statewide payroll cut for fiscal 2006 into its fiscal 2005 budget so that it can pretend that ongoing expenses are less than they really will be.
Two senators get the Criminal Justice Committee to amend a penny-ante poker bill with an amendment authorizing a new racetrack at Ocala and expanding Florida's track-based equivalent of off-track betting. It's an attempt to pre-empt another committee that has jurisdiction over the parimutuels and it comes without notice to the public.
A House committee takes up a 300-page amendment to a 50-page bill overhauling supervision of the funeral home and cemetery industries. The meeting is already in progress before copies are available to the public.
There is a ray of good news amid this. A number of senators, including President Jim King, had a collective fit over much of this last week, which seems to have put a stop to some of it. But with more than a week still left, and with most of the major issues still undecided, the session is unlikely to be remembered as the renaissance of due process.