When lawmakers return to Tallahassee every year for the legislative session, they are usually more or less proactive, passing legislation and holding committee hearings that shape the news that comes from the Capitol.
Every so often, though, outside events tend to shape what goes on in the Legislature more than the members of the House and Senate do. This week was one of those periods.
The biggest or most significant stories of the week --- including the decision of Senate leaders not to push forward with a redistricting appeal and the move by state economists to slash almost $400 million from revenue projections --- involve legislative reactions. Senate leaders were reacting to court rulings, while lawmakers will have to react in the coming weeks to the economists' forecast. Meanwhile, much of the political energy remained focused on the Republican presidential primary, where real estate tycoon Donald Trump continued his reign in the polls.
It was only the second week of the session. For better or worse, the House and Senate will have to regain the initiative over the next several weeks. There are budgets to be passed and legislation to be hammered out. And no one, at least no one on the Republican side, wants a replay of the slow-motion collapse of the session that happened last year --- an encore that would take place just months before voters go to the polls.
But much of what they do before the traditional session-ending hanky drop could be shaped by what happened this week.
THE END OF THE LINE
For nearly four years, Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been locked in the litigious equivalent of warfare with voting-rights organizations that say Senate and congressional districts drawn by the Legislature in 2012 violated a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering.
After repeatedly losing at the trial-court level and repeatedly appealing to the Florida Supreme Court, top lawmakers announced this week that they've had enough. Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said his chamber would not appeal a ruling that would result in a version of the Senate map drawn by the voting-rights groups.
The ruling, issued last month by Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds, gives Democrats a chance at eating into the GOP's 26-14 edge in the state Senate during the November elections--- and maybe a far outside chance of breaking even in the chamber.
Senate Reapportionment Chairman Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said it was time to move on.
"At this point, with the lines themselves, I think the members of the Senate are ready to have closure with regard to those lines," Galvano, who also serves as Senate majority leader, told reporters. "We want to do our work this session and then pivot into the political season."
Galvano said he believed there were still open questions about how lawmakers should operate under the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts amendments, added to the Florida Constitution in 2010. But he suggested those issues could be hammered out during a constitutional revision commission that starts meeting next year or when the once-a-decade redistricting process rolls around again in 2022.
A lawyer for the coalition of voting-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida, declared an unqualified victory. The organizations also drew a congressional map that will be used in November.
"In 2010, Florida voters sent a strong message to the Legislature: Stop drawing districts to favor yourselves and your parties. Just over five years later, we are thrilled to be able to say that the voters' wishes have been granted," lawyer David King said. "With the Legislature's decision not to appeal Judge Reynolds' final judgment, in 2016 Floridians will for the first time have the opportunity to vote in legally drawn Senate districts that fully comply with the Fair Districts Amendments."
The only ongoing legal challenge to the current redistricting proposals is a federal lawsuit filed by Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown, who says changes to her district would undermine the rights of African-American voters. If needed, oral arguments in that case are set to be heard March 25.
WHAT'S $400 MILLION BETWEEN FRIENDS?
Gov. Rick Scott set a lofty agenda for this year's budget, asking lawmakers to approve $1 billion in tax cuts, boost economic-development incentives by tens of millions of dollars and increase education spending to record levels. Making room for all of those proposals already required an elastic definition of what constitutes the "surplus" that lawmakers have to work with this year.
The definition doesn't matter quite as much anymore, after state economists slashed almost $400 million from their forecast for state tax collections over the next 18 months, something that will force budget-writers to try to squeeze the priorities of the Legislature and Scott into a smaller spending plan than the one the governor suggested. Even the House, which had said it was willing to along with $1 billion in tax cuts, suddenly sounded more guarded.
"Fortunately, we have instituted conservative budgeting principles year after year," said House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island. "We will be able to make adjustments to our spending plan which will come out in the next few weeks."
Scott's office tried to play down the drop as "a minor reduction" and pointed to a proposed gambling agreement with the Seminole Tribe that would bring in $2.3 billion over eight years. While that funding wouldn't be available until after the coming budget year, it could soften the tax cuts' impact on future spending plans.
"We are pleased to also learn that we still have a significant increase in revenues of over $1 billion in fiscal year 2016-17," said Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz. "Additionally, most actual revenues end up higher than revenue estimates."
Left unsaid in Schutz's statement was the gambling "compact" with the Seminole Tribe is what Capitol dwellers call a heavy lift --- and a bipartisan grilling of one of Scott's aides during a meeting of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee was a reminder of that.
The meeting was the first public vetting of the deal since Scott and tribal leader James Billie signed it on Dec. 7. The agreement would allow the Seminoles to add craps and roulette to their casino operations in exchange for increased guaranteed payments to the state over seven years.
House and Senate leaders have said that the compact would have to be tweaked to get needed approval from the Legislature, which was evidenced by pointed questions from several members of the committee.
Committee Chairman Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, told reporters after the meeting that he hadn't decided whether to put the compact into bill form. Its future may rest in Scott's hands, Bradley indicated. At the same time, the economic forecast Tuesday showing lower-than-expected state tax revenues may broaden the compact's appeal for lawmakers as they craft the state's budget, Bradley said.
" ... Anything that can be impactful on the revenue side of the ledger, such as adding money from revenue sharing with the tribe, is a very important part of the discussion," he said. "This all should be viewed through the lens of making the budget balance. I think that, as the revenue projections go down, it certainly does ratchet up pressure to take a serious look about whether we need these dollars in order to provide basic services."
TRUMP'S LEAD: STILL YUGE
Donald Trump is known to like bragging about his poll numbers as his longshot bid for the Republican presidential nomination has turned into a credible threat to the GOP establishment. And a new poll released this week by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative gave him new ammunition: a 32-point lead over the next-closest candidate among Florida's Republican voters.
The business magnate and reality TV star had the support of 47 percent of the party's voters, 12 points more than the same poll gave him in September and enough to have a yawning lead against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Coming in third was U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida --- one of two candidates expected to have a home-field advantage in the Sunshine State --- with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush landing in fourth with 9.5 percent.
Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who was challenging Trump in earlier polls but has slumped in Florida and nationally, checked in at fifth with 3.3 percent.
"The mood of the electorate is very anti-establishment. That's clear. In a lot of ways, Donald Trump is probably one of the most reassuring candidates to people who are frustrated with the state of American politics," said Kevin Wagner, an FAU political science professor.
The new poll also showed Democrat Hillary Clinton leading U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders by 36 percentage points and gaining in match-ups against the Republican candidates in Florida.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The Senate decided not to appeal a case setting districts for the November elections, ending most of the litigation surrounding the redistricting process that began in 2011.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "But Sen. Bradley knows that accurately and fairly reporting to a hungry man without money the true prices for all the items on the menu that he can't afford in the restaurant he can't get to doesn't mean he'll get to eat. Price transparency is good for its own reasons --- and I sure support it --- but posting a price list doesn't by itself reduce costs or provide access to care."---Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, discussing efforts to increase health-care price transparency, including a transparency bill filed by Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island. Gov. Rick Scott has pushed price transparency as part of a solution to the state's issues with health-care spending.
