A measure doing away with a century-old prohibition on using state funds for religious purposes is back on the November 2012 ballot, for now, after Attorney General Pam Bondi rewrote the proposal using a Tallahassee judge’s guidance.
Circuit Judge Terry Lewis last week tossed the proposed “Religious Freedom” constitutional amendment, placed on next year’s November ballot by lawmakers, saying it was misleading because it left the impression that it would “make it a lot harder for the state to deny funding or program benefits to a sectarian institution.”
Under a new election law signed by Gov. Rick Scott this spring, Bondi had 10 days to rewrite the ballot summary. She crafted the revised measure as Lewis suggested in his Dec. 13 ruling by deleting the phrase “consistent with the United States Constitution” and inserting “except as required by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Critics say the amendment makes it easier for the GOP-dominated legislature and executive branch to steer taxpayer money to religious entities, including schools. The amendment’s ballot summary would change Florida’s constitution to ensure that “no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding, or other support.” At least 60 percent of voters must approve the measure for it to pass.
The plaintiffs in the case, including religious leaders and the Florida teachers’ union, also tried but failed to get Lewis to strike down the law allowing the attorney general to revise the summary if a court strikes it down as misleading. Bondi’s rewrite Tuesday is the first time the new law giving her that ability has been used.
The Florida Senate narrowly approved the joint resolution by a bipartisan 25-12 vote, one more than needed for the measure to pass. Some argued that the measure would create further inequities in the state’s tax structure that creates a disparity between property owners depending on how long they’ve owned or lived in the structures and that it would not help create jobs.
“I have not had one person call me up and say ‘Please reduce my property tax,’” said Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, one of the three Republicans who voted against the amendment. “In your heart, you all know it’s a cop-out to say let’s let the voters decide.”
But supporters said the proposal would infuse life into the anemic real estate market.
“We have literally tens of thousands of unoccupied homes in the state,’’ said the bill’s sponsor Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. “We’ve got to create some incentives.” (more…)
GOP House leaders hatched a new plan to keep the Florida Supreme Court from scrapping the legislature’s proposed constitutional amendments from the ballot.
The new plan (HB 1261) is the latest salvo in House Speaker Dean Cannon’s battle with the high court, which last year removed three proposed constitutional amendments the legislature attempted to put on the ballot. Cannon released his latest plan to overhaul the Supreme Court earlier today.
The latest proposal would require that the full text of a proposed amendment goes on the ballot even if the court rules the ballot summaries are misleading, confusing or defective. Court challenges about the summaries would have to be filed within 30 days after the amendments are filed with the secretary of state.
A House committee is expected to vote on the measure tomorrow.
A measure that would bar the Florida Supreme Court from stripping proposed constitutional amendments off the ballot because of deficiencies in the ballot title or summary narrowly made it through its first stop in the Senate this morning.
The proposal (SB 1504) also would impose more restrictions on petition gatherers.
House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos have gone after the court for tossing a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow Florida to opt out of the federal health care law. The proposal would require the court to send an amendment back to the state department with instructions on how to fix it and allow the secretary of state to alter it and then place it directly on the ballot without further court review.
The measure, sponsored by Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, would also:
-Require the paid signature gatherers to be eligible vote in Florida;
- Prohibit them from being paid by the petition;
- Require that their names be on all the petitions;
- Reduce from four years to 20 months the amount of time the petitions are valid.
The bill passed on a 7-5 vote, with Republican Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, joining Democrats in opposition.
The Florida Senate approved a constitutional amendment that would cap government spending, a variation of the “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights,” or TABOR, Colorado instituted in 1992 but repealed in 2005.
The so-called “Smart Cap” measure, sponsored by Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, limits future state spending to growth based on population and cost of living and constrains borrowing. Voters in 20 other states have rejected similar measures.
Opponents of the proposed amendment argued that the state constitution already curbs state spending by requiring a balanced budget and that the spending caps could harm the state’s most vulnerable in economic downturns like Florida is now experiencing. Lawmakers are struggling to slash at least $3.62 billion from last year’s budget.
The Colorado measure also capped local government spending increases, something not included in Bogdanoff’s proposal, and resulted in a dramatic decline in education and social services funding.
“We already have a revenue limit in Florida. We have repealed as much as $19 billion in taxes over the last 12 years. We simply don’t need an even more restrictive cap in the state constitution,” Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston argued. “If you think we’ve had hard choices to make…over the past few years,
TABOR will only make it worse.”
But Bogdanoff insisted her bill is necessary to rein lawmakers in.
“We already have a cap in the constitution. But it’s not working. We need one that’s going to work better,” Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said. “This is not Colorado. We have learned from the mistakes of other states.
We didn’t want to repeat what they had done…If government takes less, the people have more. and I don’t know about you but I’m okay with that.”
The measure passed with a 27-13 vote. Two Republicans, Sens. Paula Dockery of Lakeland and Nancy Detert of Venice, voted against it; one Democrat, Sen. Bill Montford of Tallahassee, voted in favor.
The proposal is one of Senate President Mike Haridopolos’ top priorities. Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, is running for U.S. Senate, and, if approved by the House, could join him on the November 2012 ballot if he wins what is expected to be a crowded GOP primary.
The House has not yet voted on the bill (SB 958). It would require 60 percent approval by voters to get into the state constitution if it makes it on the ballot.
Senate President Mike Haridopolos’ opening speech for the 2011 legislative session began with an homage to Winston Churchill, wove in several biblical references and ended with a Shakespearean quote as he set the stage for the next 60 days.
The Merritt Island Republican and U.S. Senate candidate blasted the federal health care law, calling it reckless and arrogant. The Senate will debate one of Haridopolos’ top priorities later today – a proposed constitutional amendment letting the state opt out of the federal law.
Haridopolos, his wife Stephanie seated beside him, waxed biblical over a second priority – a proposed constitutional amendment known as “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights,” or TABOR, that would cap state spending and debt.
“I call my plan Smart Cap, because it is both. But it could be called the Old Testament Option, as the concept was originally Joseph’s. In the good years, don’t eat all the corn. Save some, so that in the bad years you don’t have to eat sand. Very wise, and very much needed if we do not want our spending in the past to be the prologue for the future,” Haridopolos said.
House Speaker Dean Cannon, wrangling with the Florida Supreme Court since it killed three constitutional amendments pushed last year by the Republican Legislature, unveiled his latest idea Monday — overhaul the Supreme Court.
Cannon said the House will propose creating two, five-member Supreme Courts, one charged with overseeing civil matters, the other criminal cases. Justices from the current, seven-member court could form the core of the new, 10-justice lineup, but there would be no guarantees, he conceded.
The Winter Park lawmaker, during a briefing with reporters, also said he wants to change existing merit retention election standards. He’d require appellate justices to win the support of more than 60 percent of voters to stay on the bench. Currently, justices only need to secure a majority. (more…)
With the Florida Senate poised to approve a strict state spending cap possibly as early as next week’s opening days of the legislative session, opponents are trying to marshal forces.
The League of Women Voters warns that the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) that Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, is looking to put before voters next year could doom Florida to years of inadequate financing of health and social service programs.
Critics say the state’s tough revenue picture is only going to get more brutal if TABOR is OK’d by voters.
“This is like telling people who are dying of thirst in the desert that they need to have flood insurance,” said Ben Wilcox, a league lobbyist.
Florida already has a revenue cap in the state constitution, approved by voters in 1994. But the latest proposal tightens it from being based on personal income growth to a new standard tied to population growth and inflation, while also limiting future borrowing.
It doesn’t apply to cities and counties.
Colorado approved the nation’s first TABOR in 1992, but later suspended it do to government cash-flow problems. Haridopolos, a candidate for U.S. Senate, says TABOR is needed to restrain state government — especially when the recession eases and tax collections return to earlier levels.
Former Gov. Charlie Crist and former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink will lead a bipartisan rally today to support a constitutional ban on offshore drilling today.
Crist, a Republican-turned-independent, and Sink, a Democrat, will appear with lawmakers and others at an event at 12:30 on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee.
Crist called lawmakers in for a special session last year to pass a similar amendment to put on the November 2010 ballot, but they snubbed him. The legislature met briefly and adjourned without doing anything after Crist abandoned the GOP and became an independent to avoid a Republican primary in the U.S. Senate race, which he eventually lost to Marco Rubio.
Before leaving office in January, Sink struggled to get BP claims czar Ken Feinberg to improve his claims process after tens of thousands of Panhandle residents, and hundreds of Floridians throughout the state, complained about problems with his Gulf Coast Claims Facility.
That system remains troubled as Feinberg is set to begin making final payments to more than 500,000 applicants for damages caused by the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Yesterday, senators discussed creating a state system for victims of BP’s massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to expedite the claims system.
Next Friday, Feinberg will appear before a House committee at the behest of House Speaker Dean Cannon. Hundreds of Panhandle officials and residents are expected to show up. Complaints about Feinberg’s payments from the $20 billion fund set up by BP include delays, an inability to find out where claims are in the process, and inconsistencies in who gets paid and how much.
A federal judge recently ruled that Feinberg is not independent of BP, as he contends, and ordered him to quit saying that he is.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is so fed up with Feinberg’s erratic claims system that on Monday he asked a federal judge to take it over “to facilitate the timely and just processing of claims.”
Advocates for poor and low-wage workers filed a lawsuit against the state for failing to raise the minimum wage to reflect inflation as required by the Florida constitution.
Lawyers for the New York-based National Employment Law Project and Florida Legal Services filed the lawsuit on behalf of roughly 188,000 minimum wage workers in Florida.
The agency should have raised the current $7.31 hourly minimum rage by six cents, the lawsuit argues.
In 2004, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment automatically raising the minimum wage each year to reflect the increase in the cost of living.
The Florida Liberty Alliance – a coalition of tea party activists – is pushing Senate President Mike Haridopolos to pass a law similar to Virginia’s that would exempt Floridians from the federal health care law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a fine.
The group wants Haridopolos and the Florida Legislature to pass something similar to Virginia’s “Health Care Freedom Act” and make it one of the first things they do when they convene in March.
Haridopolos has already sponsored a constitutional amendment by the same name that would allow Florida to opt out of the health care law, now under scrutiny by a federal judge in Pensacola.
But the alliance doesn’t want to wait until the 2012 election when the proposal would go on the ballot.
“We respectfully ask that all expeditious measure be taken to introduce legislation to create Florida law, as was crafted so well in Virginia, to secure these protections by statute for Floridians as one of the very first legislative initiatives in the new session,” wrote a group of tea party activists in a letter to Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, released today.
“We believe that if Governor Scott, as one of his first acts on taking office, were to sign such legislation into law, the citizens of Florida would see that our elected Representatives not only take their oath of office to protect the Constitution seriously, but it would send a very strong message to Washington and the entire nation,” the letter goes on.
A federal judge in Virginia last week overturned the “individual mandate” portion of the law requiring that individuals and families have health insurance coverage or pay a fine. That case is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Politicians are foxes guarding the hen house or bank robbers protecting the banks when it comes to drawing their own districts, a new ad by the backers of Amendments 5 and 6 accuses.
Opponents of the measures are fighting back – they’ve enlisted the help of former NAACP president and civil rights icon Benjamin Chavis to boost their argument that the proposals would make it harder for minorities to get elected.
Supporters of Fair Districts, the group that collected the petitions to put the amendments on the ballot and is running the ad, include the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and national groups – including ACORN – that traditionally back Democrats who’ve pumped millions of dollars into Fair Districts’ campaign fund.
But the amendments are pitting minority leaders against one another and Democrats. (more…)
A proposed constitutional amendment that would water down class size limits will remain on the ballot, the Florida Supreme Court ruled today.
Lawmakers placed the measure, Amendment 8, on the ballot to give school districts more flexibility meeting the constitutional restrictions on class sizes approved by voters in 2002. The proposal would keep class size limits at the school average level rather than require each class to comply with the limits.
The Florida teachers’ union argued that the measure is really intended to decrease the amount of money lawmakers must spend on public education.
The Florida Supreme Court today threw out three proposed constitutional amendments placed on the November ballot by lawmakers.
The court tossed an amendment that would have watered down two other amendments put on the ballot by citizens’ petition dealing with redistricting, another designed to give tax breaks to first-time home-buyers and a third passed by lawmakers opposed to federal health care reforms.
The Supreme Court found that all three legislative proposals were misleading and struck them from the ballot.
The court also today refused to remove two proposed amendments put on the ballot by citizens’ initiative that would revamp the way congressional and legislative districts are drawn.
All constitutional amendments require 60 percent approval by voters to pass.
A Leon County circuit judge has removed Amendment 9 from the November ballot, saying the measure designed to keep the federal health care overhaul from taking effect in Florida is misleading.
Background here on the amendment written in the spring by Republican state lawmakers.
The Florida teachers’ union filed a lawsuit today to keep a constitutional amendment watering down class size restrictions off the ballot in November.
The GOP-dominated legislature put Amendment 8 on the ballot to allow school districts flexibility with constitutionally-mandated class size restrictions voters approved in 2002.
The class sizes have been eased in over time and this year are set to go from school-level averages to individual classroom pupil/teacher limits.
The proposed amendment, if approved by voters in November, would keep the averages at the school level.
But Ron Meyer, the lawyer representing the Florida Education Association and who filed the lawsuit this morning, contends that the amendment is really about stiffing taxpayers by not adequately funding education as the state constitution requires.
Lawmakers failed to put $354 million needed to comply with the class sizes into the budget this year, Meyer said.
The ballot title and summary don’t tell voters that the real aim of the amendment is to cut back on education spending, he accused.
“The failure of the legislature to be honest with parents – to tell them that Amendment 8 cuts funding to public schools which will result in crowded classrooms once again – is what makes this lawsuit necessary,” Meyer said in a press release.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat running for governor, said she supports the amendment because it gives flexibility to school districts.
Independent Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he will force state lawmakers back to the Capitol this month to write a constitutional amendment for the November statewide ballot to ban oil drilling in state waters.
Crist, who supported drilling in state waters last year, made his announcement the same day the first poll in nearly two months showed him trailing Republican Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate race.
It also came amid reports that BP could plug the Gulf of Mexico gusher by the end of the month, a development that could dislodge the environmental disaster from its spot atop state and national news broadcasts.
Crist acknowledged timing was crucial, but said he was most concerned about the Aug. 4 deadline to put questions on the statewide ballot.
“If we don’t get this done soon, we may never get it done,” Crist said. “It is time sensitive.”
“The Obama/Crist response to the oil spill has been a total failure and Florida families and businesses are suffering because of it. This special session is nothing more than a political sideshow that will do nothing to help Panhandle businesses, keep oil off our beaches, or prevent future spills. In fact, Charlie Crist seeks to ban something that is already illegal under state law. We don’t need more photo ops and finger pointing. We need leadership.
“Every available clean-up skimmer in the world should be along our Gulf coast right now. After two months, there is no reason we don’t have containment boom and barriers protecting every vulnerable beach. We need strong leadership that will challenge government to do more before it’s too late. Instead, Charlie Crist seems more focused on releasing birds than releasing skimmers.
“We all agree that the Gulf oil spill is a tremendous tragedy that must never be repeated. But drilling is going to happen off our coast whether it’s done by America, China and Cuba, which just last week announced plans to drill 60 miles off the Florida Keys. We still need safer and smarter offshore energy exploration to end our addiction to foreign oil.”
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate:
“What took the Governor so long? On the 80th day of the Gulf oil spill, Governor Crist finally got around to calling a special session to block drilling off Florida beaches. It shouldn’t have come to this. Where was he before the spill? I’ve fought my entire life against Big Oil and against drilling off our beaches — even when it was unpopular to do so. We need leaders who aren’t afraid to tackle tough issues, not politicians who wait to act until it’s politically expedient.”
“I feel a compelling duty to protect Florida,” Gov. Charlie Crist said at a press conference moments ago.
Crist said he will call lawmakers back from July 20-23 to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban drilling in state waters. There is an Aug. 4 deadline to put questions on the ballot.
There will be no other issues in the special session.
Crist said he expects Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, to sponsor the resolution in the Senate. But he has received opposition from Republican legislators the House, where leaders have opposed a special session. They note state law already bans drilling in state waters and accuse Crist of political grandstanding.
Crist said he has tried to reach out to House Speaker Larry Cretul and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, both Republicans who have been openly critical of Crist’s previous suggestions for a special session.
“Politics has nothing to do with this,” Crist said. “This has everything to do with doing what’s right for a place that I love.”
“I know that it’s already barred statutorily. But I also know that just a year ago they tried to change that statute and drill holes three miles off the coast of Florida.”
Of course, Crist supported that bill “just a year ago,” too.
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