Election 2004

Train, malpractice make ballot

Voters will decide on a crackdown on doctors and whether to repeal the high-speed rail amendment.

By JEAN HELLER and ALISA ULFERTS
Published July 30, 2004

Voters in November will decide the fate of Florida's bullet train and two medical malpractice proposals pushed by trial lawyers.

The amendments, which qualified for the ballot Thursday, bring to eight the number of constitutional questions voters will face in the general election.

The Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers is backing an amendment to strip the license of any medical doctor found to have committed three or more cases of medical malpractice, excluding settlements. The amendment would apply retroactively.

Another amendment would give the public access to records of mistakes made in medical facilities that result in harm to patients. Those records now are exempt from Florida's public records laws.

The bullet-train measure will be the second chance in four years for voters to demand or reject high-speed rail links to the state's most populated areas.

The repeal measure, led by Gov. Jeb Bush and Tom Gallagher, the state's chief financial officer, obtained 499,610 verified signatures on petitions, more than the 488,722 needed for an encore appearance before the voters.

Almost immediately, lawyers for C.C. "Doc" Dockery, the millionaire Lakeland businessman who spent $2.7-million of his own money in 2000 to win approval for the constitutional amendment mandating construction of the bullet train, filed an action challenging the signature drive.

Dockery's attorneys argued that Derail the Bullet Train, the group fronting the effort to repeal the amendment, broke state laws in its petition drive. They filed three complaints with the Florida Election Commission, saying DEBT should pay a $1,000-per-signature penalty.

"There have been multiple allegations of voter fraud in the collection of signatures for the DEBT petitions stemming from the use of paid petition circulators," said attorney Robert Aranda. "The allegations of voter fraud include paid petition gatherers forging the signatures of the voters who provide their signature for a different initiative petition onto the DEBT petition."

Dockery, who was traveling Thursday, could not be reached for comment.

Fred Dudley, the Tallahassee lawyer who is chairman of the Florida High Speed Rail Authority, said he is not surprised that the repeal effort was certified.

"They had an awful lot of money to buy all the signatures they needed," said Dudley. "This is the right place for it. Put it on the ballot and let the voters decide."

He said Bush and Gallagher should tell the voters what their vision is for Florida's transportation future if not high-speed rail.

"If they think that building a lot of lane miles of new roads is the answer, then many of us would like to know that so we can move out of the state before it catches up with us," Dudley said.

Gallagher said if the repeal fails, he thinks the governor and the Legislature have a responsibility to carry out the people's will. But, he added, more roads are a better alternative.

"People want to take their cars," Gallagher said. "The cost of high-speed rail versus cars is 122-to-1. Think of the roads you could build for the money it would take to buy the train."

Whether Dockery will spend more of his own fortune to beat back the repeal effort was unknown, but Dudley said he didn't think there was any legal reason that he couldn't, although he holds a seat on the Rail Authority board.

Opponents of high-speed rail say it is a nice dream but too expensive. The first leg, from Tampa to Orlando, is projected to cost about $2.6-billion. The construction proposal calls for the state to provide $75-million annually for 35 years, with an eventual payback of $526-million from a revenue-sharing plan.

The amendment to build the train was the sleeper of the 2000 election, a citizen drive given little chance to succeed that managed to pass with 53 percent of the vote. In the Tampa Bay region, Hernando was the only county with a majority voting against.

Although the petition drive to undo the 2000 vote has been characterized as a grass-roots effort, its $1.3-million in financing came mostly from organizations whose interests are not served by high-speed rail.

A road builders' lobbying group chipped in $330,000.

SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando donated a combined $470,000 after they lost out to Disney for a passenger station on the first leg of the train's route from Tampa to Orlando International Airport.

Ironically, as the repeal measure was certified by the Division of Elections, Bush was on a trade mission in Canada seeking business investment in the state. Bombardier Inc., one of Canada's most-respected companies, is the lead partner in the consortium chosen to build Florida's bullet train.

But from a distance, Bush applauded the success in getting the repeal measure certified.

"Now that the enormous costs are well-known," he said, "I am confident the people will remove this boondoggle from their Constitution in November."

On the medical front, trial lawyers originally had a third amendment to force doctors to charge all patients the same rate for specific services, but they withdrew it.

"Florida voters intuitively know that these amendments will arm them with the information they need when making important health care decisions and will protect them from the handful of doctors who are responsible for the bulk of medical malpractice lawsuits," said Dr. Carl Flatley, a Dunedin oral surgeon whose daughter died as a result of medical malpractice.

Flatley is now on the board of governors of Floridians for Patient Protection, the lawyer-backed organization pushing the amendments.

It's unclear exactly how many doctors the "three strikes" amendment might affect. One study showed 7 percent of doctors with malpractice claims against them had three or more. The Florida Board of Medicine has disciplined only 13 doctors three or more times for substandard care.

The trial lawyers' nemesis, the Florida Medical Association, beat them to the ballot earlier this month with its own amendment to cap attorney fees. That amendment would cap fees at 30 percent of the first $250,000 awarded a plaintiff in a medical malpractice suit, and at 10 percent of damages above that.

The two sides have been locked in battle ever since both walked away disappointed with the medical malpractice bill lawmakers passed last year after a series of contentious special legislative sessions.

With less than a week to go before the deadline to get a proposed amendment on the ballot, there are no more awaiting approval. The eight questions voters will decide are a far cry from the 50 lawmakers said had the potential to be placed on the ballot earlier this year when they tried to make it more difficult for citizens to amend the state Constitution.

[Last modified July 29, 2004, 23:57:19]