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A civil face on same old legislative finagling
By LUCY MORGAN
Published May 7, 2005
It was late afternoon on the final day of a legislative session that has been characterized by the civil conduct of its leaders, yet none of the major issues lawmakers considered for 59 days were resolved.
In other words, situation almost normal.
In past years leaders of the House and Senate would be yelling at each other or making pointed comments questioning someone's ancestry.
This year the acrimony was more a matter of individual senators vs. individual House members.
Session 2005 was calm until the final day, when differences between a very conservative House and a more moderate Senate - both led by Republicans - left lawmakers unable to resolve many of the major issues.
There was talk of going home early - or staying late. A new rumor popped up every minute or two. One example: The House or Senate was going to pass a budget and go home without taking up any major bill.
Senate President Tom Lee and House Speaker Allan Bense spent most of Friday behind closed doors talking to their members and staff as they played a high-stakes game of brinksmanship.
The trouble began when House members voted against hearing legislation to force lobbyists to disclose their fees and identify the lawmakers they wine and dine.
Bense had promised Lee he would give the bill a hearing on the House floor. His members loudly disagreed - evidence of just how powerful lobbyists can be.
The lobbyists were gleeful. They had defeated the big bad wolf gnawing at their door and were certain Lee would be seen as the bad guy who ran everything in the ditch in his zeal to pass a bill to cast a bright light on lobbyists.
They overlooked the point.
Lee was trying to change a culture in which legislators run their campaigns with money gathered almost totally from the lobbyists who wine and dine them as they pass laws. It is a culture steeped in money - campaign contributions, gifts and good wine with little public knowledge.
What good is a growth management bill dictated by lobbyists for the interests who want to pave over the state?
What good is a Medicaid bill dictated by lobbyists for managed care companies or pharmaceutical companies that can determine where health care and medicine are purchased?
What good is any bill written by lobbyists for the big corporations that hire them? Aren't Floridians entitled to know how much money corporations spend on lobbyists to get state law rewritten so they can make more money or avoid regulation?
And shouldn't voters know which legislators are being wined and dined by the lobbyists?
No, says the Florida House.
Shortly after 4 p.m. the House returned from a five-hour recess and quickly stripped Lee's bill of virtually all its substance.
Under the House version of the bill, lobbyists wouldn't have to identify whom they entertain and would report only their total expenditures, a requirement already in state law.
Democrats tried in vain to limit gifts from lobbyists to $10.
A few hours later the Senate returned to the floor and rejected the House version of the bill.
Outside the House and Senate chambers, lobbyists stood around and talked or lounged in lawn chairs brought in for the final days.
The place was beginning to smell like stale pizza, evidence of a day spent inside the Capitol with no chance to leave.
"I feel like I'm at the beach," said former Senate President Jim Scott as he sat in a green flowered lawn chair outside the Senate chamber. Now a Broward County commissioner, Scott was keeping an eye on legislation affecting his county.
Trash cans were brimming over with empty water bottles, pizza boxes, plastic foam cups and other debris collected from a day of eating and drinking.
This is the way laws get passed in Florida.
Some things never change.
[Last modified May 7, 2005, 01:01:10]
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