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The Florida Legislature's disdain for democracy

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published January 30, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - Florida legislators are in a snit again over the initiatives that pesky voters continue to approve as if the Legislature were irrelevant. It brings to mind H.L. Mencken's observation that "the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. This is like saying that the cure for crime is more crime."

It rarely seems to cross their minds that there wouldn't be so many dreadful initiatives if the voters didn't think the Legislature was doing such a dreadful job.

Just last week, for example, an inspector general's report disclosed that the Department of Health habitually ignores a 1992 law requiring it to tell police and prosecutors of possible criminal conduct by doctors and other health professionals.

Having made that law, the Legislature had a duty to see that it was carried out. This is called "oversight." That word has two meanings, however, one of which is synonymous with "overlook." It took a private citizen's inquiry to trigger the IG's probe.

That merely confirmed, of course, what Floridians intuitively suspected when they voted by near-record margins for the trial lawyers' antidoctor initiatives last November. It wasn't so much that the public doesn't trust its doctors, but that it doesn't trust the Legislature to ensure that the doctors are trustworthy.

Our legislators wouldn't even discuss a state minimum wage. Ergo, another initiative.

The only message the Legislature seems to get, unfortunately, is that it ought to be harder to pass initiatives. Business lobbies once again are pushing a 60 percent approval threshold.

The worst idea on the table - this one is in the House - would fail any initiative that did not carry at least 13 of the 25 congressional districts no matter how huge the majority overall. Georgia's party primaries were rigged in a similar way before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

Have there been bad initiatives? But of course, and there will be more. In my view, term limits was the worst, but the reason why it passed is still the best case for defending the initiative process. The voters could not look to elections for a representative legislature, so they grabbed at a "reform" that they thought would turn over the Legislature more often.

Trouble is, it hasn't. Secure in their safely gerrymandered districts, flush with campaign contributions from lobbyists, the typical legislator now fears nothing but the passage of time.

"If you don't like how I'm voting, vote me out," House Speaker Allen G. Bense, R-Panama City, remarked earlier this month in referring to the initiative dispute. He might as well have said, "Go find another electric company."

He was elected in 1998 without a primary and with 69 percent of the general election vote. He was re-elected in 2000, again without a primary and with nearly 79 percent over the sacrificial Democrat. He had no opposition of any kind in 2002 and 2004.

Bense happens to be a decent guy who seems committed to doing a good job and votes as most of his constituents probably would wish. But there are a lot of other untouchables who would have been sent home long ago if the districts were drawn to be competitive instead of strictly to protect (a) the majority party and (b) the token Democrats whom the Republicans keep around for sport. Remember how many incumbents were defeated last year? None.

Florida's banana republic Legislature is hardly unique. California's is a mirror image, except that the cossetted majority there are the Democrats. Another important difference is that they have a governor who is staking his reputation on shaking up the system. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening his Legislature with an initiative campaign if it doesn't agree to let a panel of retired judges draw congressional and legislative districts. Here's wishing him well, and may Florida profit from his example.

The problem - and Schwarzenegger is hardly the only one to see it - is that gerrymandering is bad for all voters regardless of their party. As the Los Angeles Times explained in an editorial, it is "eroding the vitality of California's democracy . . ."

"In last year's elections," the paper said, "not a single seat of the 153 at stake changed party hands. Having safe Democratic and safe Republican districts shuts out more moderate candidates of both parties, widening a bitter partisan divide that kills honest negotiation on major issues."

Mencken had it half right. The cure is not more democracy, but real democracy. Now is the time to demand it.

Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is dyckman@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 30, 2005, 00:10:19]