Budget negotiators sent their thorniest issues to the respective budget chairmen this weekend, as both the Senate and House lined up priorities for the expected final week of the session.
On a few issues, there was some closure this week. Lawmakers signed off on a $1.35 million compensation package for William Dillon, who was imprisoned for 27 years for a murder he didn't commit. The Senate passed that bill early in the week and sent it to Gov. Rick Scott who signed it a couple of hours later.
The Legislature also this past week sent the governor a bill allowing students to give "inspirational messages" on an apparently limitless universe of subjects from God and the Founding Fathers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Kim Kardashian.
While the bill was pushed by advocates for more Christian school prayer, hoping that more of that will happen at graduations, football games and other assemblies, they acknowledge that in an effort to render it constitutional, the plan will have to allow students to say anything they want with no interference from school officials.
Still, the fear remained among those in the religious and political minorities that it will mean just what backers hope lots of Christian prayers that will make public school a little more uncomfortable for Jews, Hindus, Muslims and others who thought the state schools were a haven from being subjected to the majority's religion.
But even with those two closely watched bills being sent from the fourth floor of the Capitol to the first, where Scott's office is, there remained major issues for the final week. Chief among them was the finishing touches of the budget, which remained unresolved on Sunday heading toward the deadline. Because of the waiting period between printing a proposed budget and passing it, budget leaders must reach agreement early in the week if they're going to finish the session by Friday as they intend.
Other major issues remain to be passed (or failed) in the final week, including Scott's top priority an overhaul of the personal injury protection auto insurance system. The two chambers have different bills on PIP the House limiting lawyer fees, for example, while the Senate doesn't. The House plan (HB 119) also caps physician visits and excludes a number of professions from accepting patients. The Senate has taken a more limited approach in its plan (SB 1869), but has yet to take up its version on the floor.
The governor has pushed hard for lawmakers to pass a PIP bill, and while it looked this week as if the Legislature was moving toward doing that, the final measure still has to pass.
The focus the last week, and through the weekend, however, was the budget.
Budget writers did agree over the weekend on a couple of high-profile items keeping open Jefferson Correctional Institution near Tallahassee, while closing Hillsborough C.I. near Tampa. While the prisons budget is a tiny part of the overall spending plan, the plans by the executive branch to close various prisons this year has been a high-profile fight, mixed in with a fight over prison privatization, that has made the Capitol a second home for hundreds of guys and women who spend their working hours walking through the state's lockups dealing with its imprisoned.
Another budget breakthrough over the weekend was for another of Scott's priorities: freeing up more than $61 million to lure businesses to the state. The economic development money had been in doubt, but Senate Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said freeing up the cash for Scott was a good idea.
The governor, Alexander said, has "made good arguments that in his efforts to sell our state and bring quality employers in there, he needed to be able to make commitments faster." Scott would also be able to ask the Legislative Budget Commission for permission to spend another $25 million in incentives, under the budget deal.
But some of the big-picture items were still being worked on Sunday, including how to divvy up nearly $300 million in cuts to higher education and major portions of the state's health-care spending plan.
It's not dire, if history is a guide. Lawmakers often enter the final week of the session still working on a budget, and overtime sessions are rare. It usually gets worked out.
INSURANCE ISSUES STUMBLE FORWARD:
While the House passed its reform package targeting the state's no-fault automobile insurance system, a couple of other insurance issues remain.
On the property insurance front, a proposal (SB 1346) to shift the way the state-backed insurer pays claims is only now on its way to the Senate floor after being changed to lower the state's overall risk following a major storm.
The House has already passed its version (HB 1127) of the change. Both bills shift the responsibility for repaying hurricane claims and reduce immediate assessments for coastal homeowners and the insurance companies who cover them.
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR?
A college education in Florida is undeniably cheaper than in most other places. The House agreed this week that, generally, you get what you pay for, and that's what's holding the state back from being on the cutting edge in research.
The quality of at least a couple of universities right now, the University of Florida and Florida State University could be improved if they could charge market-rate tuition, the House decided this week in approving a bill to let them do that. The measure passed the House 85-28 on Friday. Those who opposed it say the idea prices poor students out of high-quality higher education.
STATE WORKERS ALREADY TESTY, NOW MIGHT BE TESTED:
The House this week passed a bill to allow state agencies to test employees for drugs if the agency leadership decides to.
The bill (HB 1205) follows a similar requirement for random drug testing and pre-employment screening put in place a year ago by the executive order of Gov. Scott. That order is on hold pending the outcome of a court challenge, with Scott telling most agencies in June to hold off on the plan until the courts rule.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jimmie Smith, R-Inverness, would limit the number of employees tested to no more than 10 percent of each agency's work force every three months. The measure passed 79-37 over the objection of Democrats who said it violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution anyway and will likely be overturned. The Senate hasn't taken up the bill on the floor.
Speaking of executive orders by Scott, the House also voted to give the governor more power this week, though backers of the measure said that's not what their bill did.
But currently, by order of a court, the governor is limited in what he can tell his own agencies to do when it comes to rule-making. The bill (HB 7055) would remove limits on the governor's power in rule-making unless the Legislature expressly says otherwise. That bill also awaits Senate approval in the final week.
A number of other bills passed this week by the House but waiting for the Senate include: a measure requiring that local judges approve when a public hospital is to be sold or leased to a private entity (HB 711); a bill requiring a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can have an abortion (HB 277); a bill speeding up the process for foreclosures (HB 213); and a bill repealing a statewide septic tank inspection program (HB 999).
And early in the week, the House passed HB 3, a ban on Internet-based gambling at the "Internet cafes" that have sprung up around the state. The Senate, however, has indicated the measure won't pass there.
REDISTRICTING:
The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments from the Legislature on why political maps passed by lawmakers for the coming decade are constitutional, and from opponents on why they're not. The court must let lawmakers know by March 9 what it thinks. Even if the court says before then what its assessment is, any changes that lawmakers make are widely expected to wait until a special session, probably later this month.
TEXT AND ALSO DRIVE FAST:
Earlier this week the House passed the agency bill for the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, and the body's most vocal advocate for highway safety, Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, lamented that the bill didn't include much in the way of actual highway safety requirements. One bill he'd like to see passed which looks highly unlikely is one that would ban texting while driving. That wasn't part of the bill, he noted, so how could it really be called a highway safety bill?
It could be argued that the inability to ban texting and driving goes beyond the immediate debate about the safety of that particular bad habit, and extends to a larger debate about the role of government in people's lives.
But, it might be that this Legislature just likes a little bit of danger, a little bit of speed.
On Friday, the Senate gave the checkered flag, at least on that side of the Capitol, to SB 266, which makes auto racing Florida's official state sport.
A PASSING OF NOTE:
Former state legislator and secretary of state George Firestone died this past week at 80 years of age. Firestone, a Democrat, was elected to the House in 1966, elected to the Senate in 1972, and then was elected secretary of state in 1978, serving until 1987.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The House and Senate began budget negotiations trying to work out the final spending plan ahead of the end of the session, scheduled for Friday.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Members, I'll be brief." -- At least four members of the House or Senate beginning farewell speeches that then went on more than a half hour as the clock ticked away on the session this week and bills got closer to death for lack of time.
