Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
What passed and what failed
By Times staff writers
Published May 8, 2005
Each year, the St. Petersburg Times summarizes the fate of major bills at the end of the regular legislative session. Those that passed, the governor can sign into law, veto or let become law without his signature. To check on a particular bill, call 1-800-342-1827 toll-free during business hours or visit www.eog.state.fl.us and click on Governor's Office, Laws, Executive Orders and Legislative Actions.
WHAT PASSED
BUDGET, TAXES
BUDGET: A $63.1-billion budget includes $16.4-billion for K-12 education, including $556-million for class size reduction and $387-million, or $2,500 per student, to launch voluntary prekindergarten. It devotes $22.5-billion to health and human services, avoiding cuts social services advocates feared, and $1.5-billion to growth management. Tax cuts total $225-million. Raises tuition by 5 percent at colleges and universities. Imposes new limits on the number of prescriptions Medicaid recipients can receive each month.
CIGARETTES: Requires wholesalers to confirm cigarettes have tax stamps before distributing them in an effort to thwart counterfeits. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Asks voters in 2006 to limit lawmakers' ability to pay for ongoing services using one-time cash. Such spending would be limited to 3 percent of the state's operating fund. HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS: Exempts from sales taxes certain hurricane supplies bought June 1-12. INTANGIBLES TAX: Eliminates half of the state tax on stocks and bonds. SALES TAX HOLIDAY: Exempts from sales taxes certain back-to-school items costing less than $50 purchased July 23-31.
ABORTION
CLINICS: Creates new safety and training regulations for second-trimester abortion clinics. PARENTAL NOTICE: Requires doctors to notify parents at least 48 hours before an abortion is performed on a girl under age 18; provides for some exemptions judges can grant.
AGRICULTURE
EQUIPMENT TAX REPEAL: Eliminates a 2.5 percent sales tax on power equipment purchased for farms. OFFICIAL FRUIT: Declares the orange Florida's official fruit.
BUSINESS
ASBESTOS CASES: Requires plaintiffs claiming injuries from asbestos exposure to have a doctor's statement saying they have asbestos-related illness. STREET LIGHTS: Gives utilities and governments immunity from injury lawsuits arising from defective street lights for 60 days after an outage is reported. SUBSTITUTE COMMUNICATIONS TAX: Repeals a never-enforced tax on privately owned communication systems; creates a commission to consider future tax policy for communications.
CHILD PROTECTION
JESSICA LUNSFORD ACT: Requires that someone convicted of molesting a child under 12 be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, and if released to be monitored by satellite for life.
ONLINE PREYING: Toughens penalties for sending pornography to children over the Internet, possessing child porn or using the Internet to lure children.
CONSTITUTION
FUTURE AMENDMENTS: Asks voters in 2006 to require 60 percent voter approval of all future state constitutional amendments.
CONSUMER PROTECTION
HOME INSPECTIONS: Regulates home inspectors and creates standards for mold assessment and remediation.
VIATICALS: Regulates viatical brokers who sell investments in life insurance policies.
COURTS
JUDGES: Creates 55 judgeships statewide to be filled by the governor, at a cost of $8.5-million.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT
DEADLY FORCE: Codifies and extends the right to use deadly force to defend against a life-threatening attack in the home and anywhere else a person "has a right to be." HAZING: Makes hazing resulting in serious injury or death a third-degree felony and makes putting someone at risk for such injuries a first-degree misdemeanor, even if the person consents. JUVENILE RELEASE: Lets judges allow high-risk juvenile offenders near the end of their sentences to return to their communities for up to three days to interview for jobs or enroll in school, and to sentence low-risk offenders to day treatment programs. LASERS: Makes it a felony to intentionally point a laser at someone operating a car, plane, boat or other vehicle. PLACES OF WORSHIP: Increases penalties for crimes of violence or threats against people gathered for religious activities. PREGNANT ASSAULT VICTIMS: Increases the potential charge from manslaughter to murder for a person who attacks a pregnant woman and causes the loss of an unborn quick child.
DOMESTIC ISSUES
ALIMONY: Authorizes a court to terminate alimony payments to a former spouse living with a new lover.
EDUCATION
ALLERGY MEDICINE: Allows schoolchildren with life-threatening allergies to carry epinephrine and give themselves emergency shots at school. BEHAVIOR DRUGS: Prohibits schools from denying enrollment, services or participation in activities to children who refuse to take mood-altering drugs to treat mental disorders. MILITARY SURVIVORS: Pays for the college education or career training in state schools of children of Floridians killed, disabled, missing in action or listed as prisoners of war while serving with the armed services in Iraq.
UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE: Reserves for the Legislature and withholds from the board of governors some financial authority over public universities, including setting tuition, and prohibits lobbyists from serving on board of governors or university trustee boards.
ELECTIONS & POLITICS
ABSENTEE BALLOTS: Denies general public access to much of the information found on applications for absentee ballots. EARLY VOTING: Limits early voting to eight hours a day on weekdays and an aggregate of eight hours on weekends for two weeks, ending the Sunday before Election Day. PUBLIC FINANCING: Allows candidates for governor and Cabinet to raise up to three times as much money and still qualify for taxpayer financing. RUNOFF ELECTIONS: Permanently eliminates runoff elections.
TERM LIMITS: Asks voters to amend the state Constitution in 2006 to increase term limits for state legislators from eight to 12 years. VOTER LIST: Sets up a statewide voter registration list.
ENVIRONMENT AND GROWTH
GROWTH MANAGEMENT: Commits $1.5-billion to roads, schools and developing alternative water sources this year and $750,000 annually in the future; requires that schools and drinking water be available to serve new developments; requires faster completion of adequate roads after new developments are permitted.
LITTERING: Increases the penalty for littering in most cases from $50 to $100. SMOKING IN SLOPPY JOE'S: Allows smoking in the historic Key West bar if no more than 20 percent of revenue is from food; the limit for all other bars is 10 percent. WETLANDS: Shifts responsibility for protecting wetlands smaller than 10 acres from federal government to the state; requires federal consent. FOOD FOR POOR
SUMMER HUNGER: Requires that a summer site to feed poor children be located within 5 miles of elementary schools where a majority of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
HEALTH
EYEGLASSES UNDER MEDICAID: Restores vision services for adults to Medicaid. KIDCARE: Allows parents to enroll children in the subsidized health insurance program at any time, instead of just certain months. MEDICAID: Creates test projects to shift some patients in the federal-state health program for the poor and elderly from fee-for-service care to a managed care plan. MEDICAL MISTAKES: Two measures implement voter-approved constitutional amendments. One limits the release of records about medical mistakes to patients of the hospital where an error happened and only if they have the same condition or diagnoses. The other limits the revocation of licenses of doctors with three or more medical malpractice judgments to cases in which the evidence was "clear and convincing" and concerned injuries that occurred after last Nov. 2. PORTABLE TOILETS: Puts regulation under the Department of Health; creates penalties for failing to comply with state rules on where they can be emptied.
HURRICANES
INSURANCE: Gives consumers some protection from being dumped by their carrier immediately after a storm, provides low-interest loans to hurricane-proof homes; provides regulators access to secretive hurricane loss models that insurers use in drafting their rate requests; allows insurers to bank on getting more money out of the state's hurricane catastrophe fund in the event of another multihurricane season; prevents windstorm providers from paying for damage caused by flooding. SCAMS: Makes it a second-degree misdemeanor for anyone to try to sell goods or services without an occupational license during a state of emergency.
MOTOR VEHICLES
DRAG RACERS: Gives police authority to permanently confiscate the vehicle of someone convicted of repeat offenses of racing on public streets; makes the offense a first-degree misdemeanor.
LEFT LANE DRIVERS: Makes it illegal in most instances to drive in the left lane of a major highway except to pass, punishable by a $60 fine. IGNITION INTERLOCKS: Allows the state to require DUI offenders to install a Breathalyzer-type device that prevents them from starting their vehicles if they are intoxicated. RED LIGHTS: Boosts the fine for running a red light to $125 from $60, with the extra amount going to trauma centers.
SEAT BELTS: Allows police to pull over and ticket a vehicle if an occupant under age 18 is not wearing a seat belt.
PERFORMANCES
NIGHTCLUB PYROTECHNICS: Makes it a third-degree felony to use pyrotechnics in a structure without a fire protection system or without a permit and written permission from the building owner.
PRIVATIZATION
STATE CONTRACTS: Requires state agencies to get approval from a governor-appointed commission before awarding new private contracts worth over $10-million for state services. Prohibits universities from subcontracting the noncompete state contracts they win.
PUBLIC RECORDS
DELINQUENT TAXES: Creates a pilot program in four counties to study the effectiveness of reducing the number of newspaper legal ads required on delinquent property taxes from three to one.
RESTAURANTS
"MERLOT TO GO": Allows restaurant diners to take home unfinished bottles of wine in tamper-proof bags without violating the ban on open alcohol containers in cars.
WHAT FAILED
Measures that did not succeed would have:
ACADEMIC CONFLICT: Let college students sue professors who they believe teach extremist or untrue views or fail to include other viewpoints in their lessons.
AUTO INSURANCE FRAUD: Set a two-year minimum mandatory prison sentence for filing a fraudulent car crash report to bilk an insurance company. CITIZEN INITIATIVES: Asked voters in 2006 to limit statewide ballot measures to items dealing with basic rights, government structure or other topics already in the Constitution.
CLASS ACTIONS: Limited plaintiffs in class action suits to Floridians or people whose injury occurred here, required defendants be given 60 days to settle. CLASS SIZE: Asked voters to scale back school class size reductions mandated in 2002 and set a $35,000 minimum teacher salary. FITNESS IN SCHOOLS: Required schools to assess the fitness of third- through eighth-graders twice annually.
DEATH PENALTY APPEALS: Sped up death row appeals. DNA EVIDENCE: Extended beyond this October the deadline for inmates to file applications for DNA testing of evidence in their cases.
DRINK TAX: Eliminated per drink taxes on liquor, wine and beer consumed in a restaurant or bar. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Provided money for international efforts including Miami's campaign to win the headquarters for the under-negotiations Free Trade Area of the Americas.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: Required a minimum 2.0 grade point average for high school students to participate in extracurricular activities. FARMLAND REZONING: Given owners of farmland surrounded on 75 percent of perimeter by development new leverage to win zoning changes. FOREIGNERS' DRIVERS' LICENSES: Provided for special drivers' licenses valid for up to six years for foreigners who frequently visit Florida. HIGH-SPEED CHASES: Protected police from liability lawsuits when innocent people are killed or injured in police pursuits. IMPACT FEES: Restricted counties' collection of impact fees from developers.
INDECENT UNDERWEAR: Made a misdemeanor the public exposure of below-waist underwear in a way calling attention to one's sexual organs. JOINT-AND-SEVERAL LIABILITY: Abolished a centuries-old tenet that allows courts to tap deep-pocketed defendants to pay more to compensate a plaintiff than their portion of the liability.
LOBBYISTS: Required lobbyists to report their fees from clients and tell which legislators and other public officials they spend money on and how much. MARLINS: Provided tax breaks for a Florida Marlins stadium, an Orlando Magic arena and to help Daytona Beach lure a NASCAR hall of fame.
MOBILE HOMES: Expanded mobile home park residents' rights to bid on the property before it is sold. ONLINE DATING: Required online dating Web sites to post a warning if they do not provide criminal background checks. PETITION FRAUD: Required people paid to collect signatures for citizen initiatives to wear IDs and disclose more information to voters, imposed deadlines on groups sponsoring initiatives. PREMISES LIABILITY: Lessened businesses' liability when someone is injured by a crime or hazard on their property. PROBATION VIOLATORS: Required that violators of probation for violent crimes be jailed without bail until a judge decides they are not a danger to the community. PRODUCTS LIABILITY: Granted immunity to merchants for selling a defective product. PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION: Ended the governor's power to make PSC appointments, transferring sole responsibility to the Legislature.
READING FAILURES: Allowed public school students who repeatedly fail the state reading test to get private school vouchers. RIGHTS RESTORATION: Required county officials to help felons getting out of jail to fill out applications for restoring their civil rights.
SAVE OUR HOMES EXPANSION: Asked voters to approve a constitutional amendment allowing home sellers to carry over property tax savings they enjoyed under the existing "Save Our Homes" amendment to new homes purchased within a year. SLOT MACHINES: Established regulations and a tax on revenue from slot machines voters authorized at parimutuel facilities in Broward County.
SMOKING ACTORS: Allowed actors to smoke during a performance where it would not otherwise be permitted by law. STEROIDS: Created a pilot program for testing high school athletes for illegal steroids; required high schools to adopt antisteroid policies. TERRI SCHIAVO BILL: Barred removal of a feeding tube unless a patient signed a living will opposing artificial sustenance, or met one of several other narrowly drawn exceptions.
VETERANS DAY: Made Veterans Day a public school holiday. VOUCHER ACCOUNTABILITY: Tightened financial and academic requirements of private schools participating in three state voucher programs; prohibited schools that accept vouchers from discriminating on the basis of religion. WILTON DEDGE COMPENSATION: Allowed a person found wrongly convicted of a crime to sue the state, and allowed the attorney general to negotiate a settlement of up to $5-million. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
[Last modified May 8, 2005, 00:45:19]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
THE LATEST
