Peter Schorsch
Sixty Days — A prime-time look at the 2019 Legislative Session
The Last 24
Good Friday evening. Most of the noise has settled in Tallahassee. The implementation of Amendment 4, one of the last remaining controversial issues, passed the House earlier Friday and should soon be on its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk. Last we checked, lawmakers were still deliberating tax breaks — but we’re sure they’ll sort that out. They have a budget voting tee time of no earlier than 1:32 p.m. Saturday, after which the hanky will drop as part of Sine Die tradition. Then, appropriations lobbyists will turn their eyes toward DeSantis, who could pack a punch with his line-item veto power. Meantime, sit back and scroll through this special Friday edition of Sixty Days.
Firefighters win: DeSantis signed a bill that would help firefighters battle cancer.
Secret weapon: Future Speaker Chris Sprowls made the difference in a backroom fight to get a bill passed for Attorney General Ashley Moody’s opioid lawsuit.
Justice overdue: The Legislature’s sweeping criminal justice reform package is on its way to DeSantis.
Pushing the limit: The Legislature approved a bill raising the maximum damages handled in county court cases to $30,000.
Litigation key?: The Legislature backed a bill that would give Moody access to drug prescription monitoring information that could aid in pending litigation.
Hemp hemp hooray: A state hemp program is one signature away from reality.
WARNING: The Legislature backed language on lotto tickets aimed at highlighting the dangers of gambling.
Hospice help: The House and Senate have passed a bill that would exempt hospice doctors from some controlled substances rules.
Welp: Rep. Chris Latvala’s push to reform the child-welfare system stalled in the Senate.
Quote of the Day
“Just a few months ago, President Trump signed into law retroactive sentencing reforms that will free thousands. Meanwhile, the Florida legislature could only find the courage to repeal a mandatory minimum for a crime related to horse meat. That’s not reform — it’s a bad joke.” — Greg Newburn, state policy director for FAMM, remarking on the successful passage of a criminal justice reform bill that does not address mandatory minimums, apart from one regarding horse meat.
Your final Metz Husband Daughton-sponsored question of the day is:
Where did the Beatles perform their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show?
As always, click here to tweet your answer to @MHDFirm.
Last time, we asked: When did astronauts return from space directly to Florida for the first time?
Answer: “On Feb. 11, 1984, the tenth space shuttle mission became the first to land at the Kennedy Space Center. It was the fourth flight of the shuttle Challenger and was highlighted by the first untethered spacewalk by astronaut Bruce McCandless.”
Congrats to Andrew Rutledge (@aprut) who was the first to tweet the correct answer!
Thanks to MHD and everyone who participated in Question of the Day throughout the 2019 Legislative Session!
Bill Day’s Latest
3 Questions
Dean Cannon, who was House Speaker in 2010-12, will soon ascend to the presidency of GrayRobinson, but meantime is still lobbying clients and keeping a keen eye on the Legislative Session. Here are some highlights from a recent “He Said, She Said” podcast interview, where Florida Politics publisher Peter Schorsch and wife Michelle Todd Schorsch talk to the lawyer-lobbyist about the final weeks of Session. If you’re interested in more, catch the full episode online here or download for later via Apple Podcast. (As usual, responses were edited for clarity and brevity.)
Michelle Todd Schorsch: What is really going on behind the scenes right now? A lot of people probably don’t know exactly what it’s like.
Dean Cannon: The real nitty-gritty is, OK, within the big subject matter areas, how much are we going to spend on specific college construction projects, how much are we going to spend on these water projects, we’ve got 500 asks and we have enough to fund 20 of them, which 20 get funded? And that is the real competitive and difficult process of governance from the legislator standpoint — and from the lobbyist standpoint.
Peter Schorsch: So they get 72 hours to look at it, but they can’t change it. Isn’t that like ‘transparency theater?’
Cannon: There’s part of me that agrees with that, but let me give you another perspective. At some point somebody has to say, that’s it. Both me and all the other people who are caring about and have been trying to get projects funded, we’re finally going to see, oh look, this project got funded and this project didn’t get funded. And if it wasn’t final, I guarantee you what I’d be doing: I’d be picking up the phone. I’d keep calling, and I’d keep going … So eventually somebody has got to finally ‘call the question.’
Michelle Todd Schorsch: You did mention that you were Speaker during a recession. How amazing would it be to be Speaker now when you’re not in a recession?
Cannon: I think we had a $3.3 billion cut in my first year and a $3.4 billion cut the second year. So it was more than a haircut. It was like shaving everybody’s hair off. Some people lost a few fingers. It was rough, but it gave us a boldness to pursue policy reforms. That quickly helped us recover from the recession. Florida recovered faster than other states, and really we didn’t waste a crisis in that sense.
We rewrote Medicaid in the most comprehensive rewriting of the Medicaid program since its inception (and) saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars and improved the health care that Medicaid recipients get. We couldn’t have done that without the sort of forced discipline of looking at hard things because there’s no alternative.
Lobby Up
Florida voters approved an amendment last fall that requires every county constitutional officer — sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser, supervisor of election and clerk of court — to be elected.
But Amendment 10 also made the county clerk of court the “custodian of all county funds” unless a law specifically stripping that responsibility from the clerk was passed.
That’s led to some controversy in Broward County, where the county administrator has overseen the purse strings on the county’s investment portfolio for years. The Broward delegation had been backing a bill to keep control in the administrator’s hands, but it was killed by Sen. Gary Farmer Wednesday.
It took a lot of help for Broward County Clerk Brenda Forman to score the win. Her office has been represented by Chris Smith of Tripp Scott PA as well William Peebles, John Wayne Smith, Ryan Matthews and Angela Drzewiecki of Peebles, Smith & Matthews for most of the legislative session.
Last week, however, Forman’s office brought in some backup by way of a contract with Nick Iarossi, Ron LaFace, Megan Fay, Andrew Ketchel, Scott Ross and Chris Schoonover of Capital City Consulting.
It’s probably no coincidence that once CCC joined an already strong team, the bill was quashed in short order.
Breakthrough Insights
The Next 24
A delay in finalizing the 2019-20 state budget means lawmakers will have to come back over the weekend to vote on it.
That’s because of a constitutionally mandated 72 hour “cooling off” period that did not begin to run until Wednesday.
The expected adjournment, or “Sine Die,” of the 2019 Legislative Session is now Saturday. Both chambers are expected to reconvene at around 1:30 p.m.
