Column

Legislative session ends not with a bang but whimpers

We Floridians should all be thankful that this is a national election year. With the heavy hitters in Tallahassee hoping to avoid headline-generating partisan warfare during the runup to a presidential race featuring the governor's big brother, the legislative session ended Friday with whimpers and yawns.

That is not to say that our fearless leaders were idle during the session. They managed to accomplish a fair amount of the people's business, despite being caught up in a surreal political climate created by the truly odd duck House Speaker Johnnie Byrd and his exasperated counterpart in the Senate, President Jim King.

Citrus County's legislative delegation can point to a mixed bag of results for their constituents, with some goodies, such as $620,000 for water projects, and some grimaces. The Sheriff's Office lost again in its bid to take over child abuse complaints for the Department of Children and Families.

Citrus won with a much-needed $850,000 allocation to the Centers (formerly Marion-Citrus Mental Health) that will create 10 crisis beds for children 17 and under. There are no such beds now in either county, and last year alone the Centers sent more than 300 children out of the two counties for care.

State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-Port Richey, also scored with a bill that will allow spouses of people serving in the military to collect unemployment benefits if they are forced to leave their jobs because their spouse has been transferred.

But state Rep. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, lost in his bid to let charities, churches and veterans groups sell instant bingo tickets. His bill passed the Legislature, but Gov. Jeb Bush spiked it, saying it promoted gambling (this in a state that relies so heavily on the sale of Lottery tickets.)

Citrus residents who are part of the state's Medically Needy program won a brief reprieve from having their safety net sliced open. The state will let this important program, which serves people who have life-threatening illnesses but no health insurance, stay around for one more year. But it may well be lost in 2005, which, of course, is not an election year.

It usually takes a few weeks for the dust to settle after a session to figure out exactly what happened during the frantic final hours when the horse-trading is at its peak. This year largely followed form, even with the elected leaders operating at lower temperatures.

News organizations tend to be the first to sort it all out, running lists of winners and losers among the hundreds of bills that were in play and the sometimes minor-sounding word changes to existing legislation that can have tremendous consequences. Over the weekend, the St. Petersburg Times published a reader friendly roll call of legislation that passed and of bills that failed. But as comprehensive as that list tried to be, it left out a number of issues that may be of interest to Citrus County residents.

Here, then, is a list culled from the Associated Press of some of the minor measures that did not get much attention, even though they addressed important topics. Keep in mind, legislative staffers, lobbyists, officeholders and reporters are still studying the hundreds of bills floating around, so there may be some changes in the wind.

Among the bills that survived are those that will:

Make it a crime to harass members of a neighborhood watch group.

Allow crime victims to keep addresses confidential when getting restraining orders.

Allow children to bring cell phones and other wireless devices to school, although the rules regarding the use will be left up to the school districts.

Increase criminal penalties for parents, coaches or others who threaten or assault officials during school sports events.

Set guidelines for voting up to 15 days before election days with special polling places open up to eight hours total on weekends.

Allow charter schools to collect impact fees from new residential developments.

Allow apartment renters to display U.S. flags.

Require all public school and college classrooms in Florida to display a U.S. flag.

Prohibit lawsuits that blame restaurants for making people fat.

Give immunity from lawsuits to government agencies that allow areas for paintball games.

Lower marriage license fees but increase divorce filing fees from $18 to $55. Traffic fines will go up $15.

Make it a crime and allow the state to sue senders of e-mails with deceptive information in the subject line or return address.

Lower health insurance premiums by requiring insurers to offer higher deductibles linked to health savings accounts and expand a pilot program that offers low-cost insurance with fewer benefits.

Equally interesting are some of the bills that died, for a number of reasons. We may not have heard the last of these initiatives, which would have:

Increased penalties for criminals who prey on the elderly or disabled.

Made it a felony to sell violent video games to minors.

Allowed accessory charges against parents who know their children have committed felonies but fail to turn them in.

Given school districts the authority to drug-test middle and high school students participating in all extracurricular activities.

Let parents see their children's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests and answers.

Established state standards designed to put healthier foods and drinks in school vending machines.

Let people in nursing homes put up fliers and send out newsletters to advertise penny-ante gambling games.

Let school boards use tax money raised for construction projects on teacher salaries instead.

Let school boards ask voters to levy an extra 1 percent sales tax to build new schools, improve teacher pay and other expenses.

And, one of my personal favorites, a bill whose defeat is truly an outrage:

Made it a traffic violation to drive in the left lane unless passing.