In the wake of a session that included what veterans said was an abnormally large number of conforming bills usually meant to simply bring state policy in line with the next years budget, interest groups and others are still sifting through all that was in them more than a week later.
Gov. Rick Scott now has about two-dozen conforming bills that nearly brought down the session earlier this month when the Senate killed two of the measures.In all, lawmakers considered 43 conforming bills that emerged from House-Senate conference committee -- including some that failed or died bouncing between the two chambers -- weighing in at 2,268 pages.
The volume of the measures, which face an up-or-down vote and cannot be amended after legislative leaders agree on their wording, has sparked outrage among some long-serving lawmakers.
Its obscene, said Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, the unofficial dean of the Legislature. And when you look at whats in those conforming bills, its even worse.
The measures include a slate of policy proposals: slicing, dicing and repackaging government agencies; overhauling health-care benefits for state employees; tweaking state rules for charter schools, including an adjustment to a bill passed during the same session.
While negotiators removed one measure incorporating personal-injury protection insurance changes from a conforming bill, a series of subtle changes to the reports that law enforcement officers have to fill out at the scene of accidents remained in the bill (SB 2160) dealing with changes to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Its certainly not what we were trying to get, and we are concerned it might be a step back, said Sam Miller, executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council, about the little-noticed PIP proposal.
Miller said the council was concerned about a measure that introduces a vaguely-defined driver exchange-of-information form to the list of documents a law enforcement officer can leave with drivers involved in a seemingly minor accident.
That could offset some of the gains made in the bill, including an expanded short-form report giving more information about who was in the car at the time of the crash, if busy law enforcement officers decide to use that instead of one of the other forms.
If officers will use the short-form report, its really good, Miller said.
But Steve Schale, spokesman for the trial-lawyer lobby Florida Justice Association, said his organization was unaware of any disagreement about the measure.
That was not one of the controversial elements of PIP, he said.
The same bill requires the state to contract with online drivers education course providers to offer online tests for learners permits and creates a task force to consider the consolidation of state law-enforcement agencies.
A government reorganization bill (SB 2156) running 839 pages overhauls the arrangement of most of the states economic-development agencies. Perhaps most infamously, two bills (HB 5005, 5007) stretching over 96 pages would have undone a series of regulations. Both were killed on the Senate floor, in part at Jones urging.
The education bills (SB 2120, 2150), which totaled 150 pages, require each school district to include a middle-school career and professional academy in its five-year plan; repeal the Department of Educations role in monitoring rehabilitation providers; and include a slew of changes to the states textbook and instructional materials laws.
In the aftermath of the end of the Houses session, Speaker Dean Cannon brushed aside a suggestion that the number and import of conforming bills were the reason for any breakdown.
I think the depth of the difference in the budgets and the depth of the shortfall ... was, I would say, the main catalyst for the difficulty this year, said Cannon, R-Winter Park. Because we were the first Legislature to really confront the economic contraction of 08 and the global disappearance of about a third of the wealth that weve seen, it made it extra hard.
And supporters of some measures cut down in the crossfire said some of the bills were related to the financial decisions made to make the budget balance.
A proposal (HB 5309) to allow the Department of Children and Families to rely on the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violences monitoring of 42 certified domestic violence shelters was an effort to deal with staffing cuts at DCF, said Leisa Wiseman, director of internal and external affairs for the coalition.
Those positions at DCF are gone, and the functions have to be done, Wiseman said.
The bill never got a vote in the Senate in the final chaotic hours of the session. For now, Wiseman said, the coalition will likely do the work under a contract with the department.
"Its something that will need to be addressed going forward, she said.
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