Florida's Legislature is about to convene -- and that should make you very nervous
News and views for Floridians and other thoughtful Americans
The Florida Legislature convenes this week with a sprawling—some call it chaotic— agenda, some of which seems destined to be pushed into special sessions later in the year.
According to Politico:
There is already widespread speculation that the upcoming legislative session, opening Tuesday, could be messy and unproductive. State House and Senate leaders aren’t in sync, and (Gov. Ron) DeSantis has been in numerous clashes with House GOP leaders.
Among those clashes are his plans to convene a special session in April to redraw boundaries for the state’s 28 congressional districts to dilute the number of Democrats from Florida in Congress.
The House, however, is not waiting and is already holding hearings on this. To be clear, the conflict isn’t over whether or not to follow Donald Trump’s orders to rig the mid-term elections in Republicans’ favor, just how to get there.
DeSantis also has teased that he may call yet another special session to craft a ballot initiative to eliminate property taxes rather than attempt that “reform” during the regular session.
This proposal has local communities jittery as they are heavily dependent upon ad valorem property taxes to fund services. Easy to look heroic and kill taxes; harder to actually keep the lights on.
This regular legislative session will be DeSantis’s last as Florida mirrors the U.S. Constitution that limits chief executives of government to two terms,
(Yes, Donald, it’s the law, although we realize that isn’t especially important to you.)
With his legacy in mind, DeSantis has his publicists already spinning the story of his tenure:
“Gov. Ron DeSantis is the most transformative leader in Florida’s history,” said Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for the governor.
“Transformative” is one of those catchy words bandied about to imply greatness. But there are all manner of transformations. The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was transformative, for instance. But, in all fairness, so was the invention of the polio vaccine.
Which brings us to other items on the Legislature’s to-do list, including:
Who needs vaccines?
House Bill 917, for instance, is styled as the “Health Care Medical Freedom Act.” It would among other things give parents more “freedom” to opt out of vaccinating their kids and would eliminate the need for a prescription to buy the drug ivermectin, touted during the COVID-19 epidemic by quacks as an effective treatment. Ivermectin, for the record, is used to treat parasites like head lice, not viruses.
So far, despite the drumbeating by DeSantis and his surgeon general, Joe Ladapo, no bill has been introduced to specifically eliminate the requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated against dreadful diseases such as the aforementioned polio, although H.B. 917 looks to me, at least, like a potential loophole.
For the record, doctors think this is a terrible idea, but what do they know about medicine?
Guns on campus
Two Republicans from the Florida Panhandle — Don Gaetz and Michelle Salzman — think it would be a swell idea to get more guns on public school campuses.
Their bill would allow trained faculty, staff members or students to carry firearms on school grounds.
Charlie Kirk Drive
A bill proposed by a Pasco County Republican — Kevin Steele — would require the University of Florida to rename its heavily trafficked Stadium Road to “Charlie James Kirk Drive.”
This from a member of the same party that is constantly bellyaching about the politicization of our universities.
(And a small point: It does not honor Charlie Kirk’s memory — however you feel about that — to force people to rename their roads after him. Really, it’s embarrassing. It’s the kind of heavy-handed propagandizing you’d expect in Beijing, not Tallahassee.)
A dream for developers
Real estate developers have allies in both the House and Senate who are flooding the zone with bills that would benefit them.
As independent reporter Jason Garcia reports:
Since 2017, companies linked to a multibillion-dollar investment manager in New York have spent at least $230 million buying up more than 80,000 acres across north Florida — amassing giant tracts of largely rural land near Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Panama City.
That same investment firm now wants Florida lawmakers to make it much easier to develop that land.
You can read his report here.
Abortion bounties
It’s not enough that Florida has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Now, legislators want to give fertilized eggs and embryos some of the same protections as living children, which would pretty much ban abortions altogether.
But there’s more!
… one new set of bills would put $100,000 bounties on doctors and others who help Florida women obtain abortion medication through the mail (House Bill 663, Senate Bill 1374). Another would extend the state’s existing abortion ban to fetal-reduction procedures performed as part of in vitro fertilization (House Bill 993, Senate Bill 1044).
You can read more about this here:
Keep the robots away
Insurance companies are using artificial intelligence to evaluate health insurance claims, and the state’s insurance commissioner and some legislators are not having it.
As the Tampa Bay Times reports:
Two Republican lawmakers, Rep. Hillary Cassel of Dania Beach and Sen. Jennifer Bradley of Fleming Island, have introduced bills that would ensure that humans make decisions about denying claims.
That’s right! Nobody wants their insurance claim denied by a robot when it can be denied by a human instead.
Give the state the bird
As reported previously in this newsletter, there is also a proposal to change the state bird from the northern mockingbird to the flamingo. While predictions that this annual session of the legislature will be a mess and accomplish little (fingers crossed), we can hope that at least this one piece of legislation enjoys overdue bipartisan support.
Florida Phoenix columnist Diane Roberts has more on this and other issues before the Legislature of which we should be aware—or beware.
You can check out her hilarious column here:
This just skims the surface of the sausage-making that will be taking place in Tallahassee over the coming 60 days. Stay tuned for updates.
Clarification
In a recent email post on President Donald Trump’s assertion that he doesn’t want Russia as a neighbor, I failed to provide context for Saturday Night Live actress Tina Fey’s parody of Sarah Palin’s “I can see Russia from my house” comment.
Former Alaska Gov. Palin, who was Sen. John McCain running mate, in the 2008 presidential election, said in an interview regarding Russia:
"They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska …”
Instead of that quote, I used Fey’s wildly popularized version. When I realized I didn’t provide context for that, I quickly updated the story on the Tropic Press website where many people view these newsletters. The update reads:
Which explains why, in a 2008 interview, former Alaska Gov. and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her home state, and which Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey famously paraphrased:
“I can see Russia from my house!”
Several readers had questions about that, so I hope that clears it up. My apologies.
Both quotes, of course, make the same point: Russia is already our neighbor. In fact, it is the closest foreign country to the U.S.A. that is not contiguous to us as are Canada and Mexico. Across the Bering Strait, mainland Russia and Alaska are only about 55 miles distant, but there are islands in between that separate our two countries by less than three miles. In fact, during the winter, when the water between those islands freezes, it is literally possible to walk between Russia and the United States.
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The idiotic and performative Rethug Kevin Steele may as well have told UF to rename Stadium Drive "Horst Wessel Drive." It's the same damn thing.
Friends of the Everglades just gave a great summary of the many pro-development bills slated for this session.