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Amendment will stick to grammar and pigs

Add-ons that involved citizen-passed laws and medical malpractice are stripped from the bill.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 5, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - The Senate backed away Thursday from a proposal to let citizens pass laws by petitioning and then voting them in through a statewide referendum.

The chamber stripped that provision and three others dealing with medical malpractice from a proposed state constitutional amendment (SJR 1918) that would correct grammatical mistakes in the Florida Constitution and remove an amendment protecting pregnant pigs.

The Senate then sent the amendment to the House, where a similar proposal (JHJR 7165) has cleared committee and was awaiting a vote.

The sponsor, Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, moved to take out the four provisions, each with its own set of supporters and opponents, because he was afraid they would stir up too much opposition at the ballot box.

"I will be picking up enemies that would be wanting to kill it just for that one particular part," Webster said.

The statutory citizen initiative was intended to encourage people pushing issues the Legislature won't pass to use petitions and the ballot to pass laws rather than use the same procedure to amend the Constitution. It would not, however, have ended their right to constitutional citizen initiatives.

Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, objected to removing the provision.

"We're going back to a situation where whether it's pregnant pigs or issues relating to schools or issues relating to tobacco or anything else will wind up in the Constitution," Klein said.

Once there, it is difficult to change amendments if they have unintended consequences.

"I think it's an important thing," Webster agreed. "But I give."

The pregnant pig amendment, which bans the use of small gestation crates for expectant swine, is often cited as an example of how citizen initiatives can clutter the Constitution with things that don't belong in the blueprint for state government.

Webster's proposal would covert the pig amendment into a law. The Legislature would be prohibited from repealing or altering it except by a three-fourths vote of each chamber.

The Senate removed provisions that would have given similar treatment to citizen initiative amendments capping lawyers' fees in medical malpractice cases, giving patients a "right to know" about adverse medical incident records concerning their doctors and revoking medical licenses of physicians who have committed three or more acts of malpractice.

The first amendment was put on the ballot through a petition campaign backed by doctors and the other two through a similar effort by trial lawyers.

Both groups likely would have campaigned against Webster's amendment if those items hadn't been deleted.

[Last modified May 5, 2006, 02:30:26]