Sen. Ronda Storms’ bill that would make it harder for doctors to put foster kids on mind-altering drugs passed another milestone in the Senate today, but its future is bleak.

The Senate Health Regulation Committee unanimously approved Storms’ measure (SB 1808) and sent it on its way to its final committee this afternoon. But the House has yet to hear a similar proposal and, with the 2012 session midpoint approaching, appears unlikely to budge.

“The House is killing it,” Storms, R-Valrico, said. “It’s a source of extraordinary frustration and a disservice to the children of Florida.”

Storms’ launched her psychotropic drug crusade after the 2009 death of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers, a Broward County foster child who hanged himself while under the influence of several psychiatric drugs. Storms’ bill includes many of the recommendations given by a Department of Children and Families workgroup in the aftermath of Myers’ death.

A 2008 Congressional report found that children in foster care in Florida were far more likely to be on mind-altering drugs than children in the general population. With 12 percent of the state’s foster children 17 and younger on at least one psychotropic medication, a drop of 10 percent three years ago, DCF officials say they have improved protocols for monitoring foster kids’ prescription drug use.

Everglades lovers should probably chill out over the lack of funding for river of grass clean-up in the Senate budget.

Senate budget chief JD Alexander said this morning he’s “seriously considering” matching the House’s $35 million line-item for Everglades restoration. Gov. Rick Scott tucked away $40 million for the clean-up, and the money will almost certainly show up late in negotiations between the two chambers over their spending plans.

“We’re looking at it. We’re trying to figure out if we can afford it this year,” Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said, adding that he’s supported that and the Florida Forever land-buying program for his 14 years in the legislature soon coming to an end. “So it’s something I’d love to see us be able to do.
I would hope we’d be able to eventually get there…If we can do something it won’t be a lot, but we’d certainly like to provide some funding for preservation of Florida’s ecological needs.”

Alexander said he doesn’t foresee much trouble reconciling the two spending plans. The Senate’s proposal includes deeper health and human services, more spending on schools and road projects and dips into state universities’ reserves.

“There aren’t a lot of differences. It should be fairly easy to get to something we both can agree to,” Alexander said.

Yellow school buses could be emblazoned with ads promoting sneakers, power drinks or television shows under a proposal making its way through the Florida legislature.

The House Education Committee gave the thumbs-up to the proposal, already in place in 15 other states, that could raise up to $100 million statewide for cash-strapped school districts struggling to cover transportation costs for students, according to bill co-sponsor Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton.

The proposal (HB 19) would give school boards the ability to contract for ads on school buses but would ban advertisements for pari-mutuel or Internet gambling or political or religious promotions.

Half of the money generated by the ads would have to be spent on transportation costs and 10 percent would go for drivers education classes if the districts offer them.

“Obviously the state of Florida, we’re in a tough spot,” Slosberg told the panel before the 14-3 vote in favor of his measure. “There’s no money. So what do we do? Do we let the kids walk to school? Do we lay off teachers? This is a creative way to raise revenue and not increase our taxes and not increase our fees.”

But critics of the measure questioned whether children, especially kindergartners, already bombarded by advertisements should be subjected to even more propaganda with the tacit endorsement of their school.

Rep. Michael Bileca, R-Miami, said the bill gave him an “uneasy feeling” although schools already have advertisements in place on football fields or in gymnasiums.

“It has to do with this concept of endorsement,” Bileca, who voted against the measure, said. “It’s the idea that a trusted source…is saying that this is ok.”

The Florida PTA opposes the measure.

Two advertisements up to two by six feet in size could be posted on the buses, which some opponents said could create a distraction for drivers and endanger students’ safety.

“We’re dealing with children, three, four five years old,” Rep. Luis Garcia, D-Miami, objected. “That’s an early age to be bombarded with advertisements…I don’t think it’s fair.”

Slosberg, whose daughter died in an automobile accident, bristled at safety concerns.

“My daughter died in a car crash. I’d be the last guy in the world to want to endanger anyone’s life, especially our children, by putting advertising on our buses,” Slosberg said. “If I thought that…I would never have brought this bill forward.”

A push in the Florida House to do away with physical education in middle schools will be a heavy lift across the hall.

A House committee on Tuesday approved a measure (HB 4057) by a 9-6 vote that would strike the requirements that middle school students take P.E. The American Heart Association is trying to beat back the proposal, saying that more than 30 percent of Florida children are obese and more than 62 percent of all Floridians are fat.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos hadn’t heard about the bill when we asked him this afternoon what he thought about doing away with PE in public schools.

“Who said that? Who filed that one? I love P.E.!” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said.

The bill doesn’t have a Senate sponsor, and, judging by the president’s comments, may not get one.

“That’s not on my to-do list at this point. My wife’s a doctor and I was a high school and college athlete. I believe P.E.’s a good thing,” he said.

The Palm Beach County Commission has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Florida House and the Florida Senate today over a gun law that that went into effect on Oct. 1. Local officials who violate the law could be removed from office and face a $5,000 fine.

The sanctions “are simply a form of political bullying that serves no governmental purpose” and have a “chilling effect,” the lawsuit reads.

The commission’s lawsuit complains that the new law, sponsored by Sen. Joe Negron, is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers because it gives the governor the ability to remove local officials from office and strips local officials of immunity from lawsuits.

Under current law, the governor is only allowed to suspend local officials and the Florida Senate has the power to remove them or reinstate them.

“Threatened removal of individual commissioners in a matter that is consistent with the terms of the Florida Constitution is political overreaching and political bullying that serves no legitimate governmental purpose,” Amy Taylor Petrick, an attorney for the county, wrote in the lawsuit filed in the Palm Beach County Circuit Court today.

The lawsuit asks the court to find that the law is unconstitutional, stop the governor from being able to remove local officials from office and order that they can’t be fined for breaking the law.

Negron said the penalties are necessary because city and county commissioners have ignored a law that gives the legislature the discretion to regulate gun laws.

After the law went into effect, municipalities, counties and state agencies were forced to scrap hundreds of measures dealing with firearms and could no longer bar people from being guns into government buildings, including the state Capitol.

“Political disputes should be resolved in the elected government arena rather than in courtrooms. So we’ll see where it goes from here,” said Negron, who had not seen the lawsuit Tuesday evening.

Negron, R-Stuart, said he does not intend to file a bill to repeal the law during the legislative session that begins next month.

“I would consider that just as I have to follow federal law and I have to follow county laws and city laws when I’m in their counties and cities, they should follow the preemption of the state law then nobody has anything to worry about,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

Spokeswomen for Bondi and House Speaker Dean Cannon said their lawyers are reviewing the lawsuit.

National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer, who pushed the bill, called the lawsuit un-American.

“They’re using taxpayer dollars to try to keep from being punished for violating the law? That’s exactly the American way, is it?” she said.

Rep. Jeff Clemens, a Lake Worth Democrat, has filed a bill that would ban banks from charging customers for using debit cards.

The bill (HB 375) doesn’t have a Senate sponsor and the GOP-dominated legislature is unlikely to pass the measure. Clemens filed his bill on Monday, capitalizing on recent protests by Occupy Wall Street supporters, who held rallies throughout the world this weekend, including in Lake Worth.

“The banks sold us all on the idea of a cashless society, and now that we’ve bought into their promise of free, easy access to our own money, they want to charge us for it,” Clemens, who served as Lake Worth mayor before coming to Tallahassee, said in a statement. “Anyone with a sense of decency should be outraged.”

Clemens’ proposal makes it unlawful “to charge or impose a dormancy fee, and inactivity fee or charge, or a service fee with respect to the use or holding of a debit card by a consumer.”

Wells Fargo and Bank of America, the first banks to announce monthly fees for debit cards, are raking in huge profits, according to Clemens. Bank of America has paid no federal income tax for the past two years, claiming losses in its federal filings and is planning to eliminate 30,000 jobs. Wells Fargo netted more than $7.5 billion in profits during the first half of this year, Clemens said.

Federal laws govern banking regulations but Clemens said a recent U.S. Supreme Court that gave the New York attorney general oversight over some federally chartered financial institutions.

Representative Clemens has also started a Facebook page entitled G.R.E.E.D. (Get Rid of Excessive Expenses for Debitcards) that he hopes will serve as a sort of rallying point for those who are outraged and a clearinghouse for banking horror stories.

Clemens said he also started a Facebook page called “Get Rid of Excessive Expenses for Debitcards,” or G.R.E.E.D. to “serve as a rallying point for those who are outraged and a clearinghouse for banking horror stories,” according to the release.

Lawmakers approved a $69.7 billion spending plan and quietly ended the 2011 legislative session at 3:35 a.m. without any pomp and circumstance.

Instead, the 60-day session ended with Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon publicly rebuking each other over with Haridopolos accusing Cannon of playing “silly games” and Cannon claiming to “take the high road” by rejecting a controversial Senate tax break.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, called his members back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up a tax-break proposal that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Haridopolos apologized for asking them to return about an hour after he sent them home and instructed them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

Shortly before Haridopolos recalled the Senate, Cannon gaveled down the House without passing two claims bills that were Haridopolos priorities. Eric Brody was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon was slated to get less than $1 million after being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades for a crime he didn’t commit.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
Gov. Rick Scott left the building around midnight as the legislative session devolved into chaos. Scott had been scheduled to participate in the ceremonial white hanky drop but instead went home to bed because he had a busy schedule this weekend, his spokesman Brian Burgess said.

The House approved the budget shortly before 2 a.m., about two-and-a-half hours after the Senate and following some very hard feelings between the two chambers.

The House then took up the disputed tax break bill (CS/SB 7203).

But the House remained angered by the Senate’s killing a pair of professional deregulation bills earlier in the night — with House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, saying that move broke an agreement between the two chambers.

“In light of the Senate’s inability to meet that obligation, I’ve decided that our chamber would take the high road…and send it all to the Senate tonight, and leave no ambiguity,” Cannon said.

The House took up the tax-break bill, voted to remove the Jacksonville track provision, repackaged the measure as HB 143 and sent it back to the Senate. With the budget behind them, and the tax-break package structured to their liking, Cannon and House members adjourned at 2:07 a.m., Saturday.

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UPDATE: Senate’s going home until 10 a.m. Senate President Mike Haridopolos said he hopes they’ll get the tax cut bill by then. The tax cut measure (SB 7203) includes a component that would allow a Jacksonville greyhound track to get arcade-style slot machines. A track in Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district is seeking the video slots.

Gov. Rick Scott has left the building as the legislative session devolved into chaos around midnight.

Forget the traditional sine die white hanky drop where the governor, House Speaker and Senate President ceremonially signal the successful completion of another session. Not going to happen.

Instead, the Senate extended session until 6 p.m. tomorrow, miffed that the House had ignored a handful of bills considered crucial, including a $12 million by the Broward Sheriffs Office to Eric Brody who was injured by a Broward deputy 13 years ago.

Around 12:15 a.m., Senate President Mike Haridopolos advised his members to stick around in informal recess until 1 a.m. If he and House Speaker Dean Cannon can’t reach an agreement on what bills to take up by then, Haridopolos said he’ll call it a night.

“I will try not to keep us too late,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said.

Earlier in the evening, the Senate revolted against the chamber’s GOP leadership by voting down a measure deregulating less than a half dozen professions, including interior designers. The House is now holding up an economic development bill with a tax credit and a sales tax holiday the Senate was hoping to finalize tonight.

It seems an unfortunate end to the governor’s first session. Scott’s spokesman Brian Burgess said his boss is disappointed there wasn’t a simultaneous finale but “very, very pleased” that “90 percent of what we wanted went through.”

Scott had to get to bed because “he’s got a very aggressive schedule over the next few days,” Burgess said.

With less than 12 hours to go, lawmakers are now close to sealing a deal further cracking down on pill mills.

The final deal will include a ban on doctors dispensing powerful narcotics with no exemption for workers’ compensation physicians, no cap on the amount of doses pharmacies can dispense – a major sticking point for Sen. Mike Fasano, shepherding the bill in the Senate. It does include Attorney General Pam Bondi’s proposed language stiffening penalties against rogue pain management clinics and doctors. It will also ban pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the private foundation that pays for the state’s prescription drug database.

Limiting the amount of highly addictive pain drugs that get on the street has become a priority of Gov. Rick Scott, who testified before Congress on the issue last month touting his plan to track the drugs from the wholesaler to the pharmacy to the doctor. Scott had to give up on capping the dosage amounts after cancer hospitals and hospices complained the limits would keep them from being able to treat patients in chronic pain.

Procedurally, the Senate will take up the House’s bill (HB 7095), put the compromise language on it, and send it back to the House for a final vote before 10:16 p.m. That’s the earliest lawmakers can vote on the budget, the only thing they’re constitutionally required to do during the 60-day legislative session, and they are expected to call it quits shortly after. Gov. Rick Scott plans to join House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos for the traditional sine die hankie drop.

An elections overhaul likely to wind up in court that would cut nearly in half the number of days for early voting and impose tougher restrictions on groups registering voters is headed to Gov. Rick Scott.

The GOP-dominated legislature easily pushed through the elections revamp over the objections of Democrats who argued the bill will make it harder for Floridians to vote and get their ballots counted.

The 157-page elections measure will reduce the number of days available for early voting from 14 to 8 but keep the same number of hours – 96 – and allow supervisors of elections to extend weekend hours.

Palm Beach County elections supervisor Susan Bucher estimated the early voting changes would cost her office more than $941 million to secure additional polling places, equipment and salaries.

The overhaul make it tougher for like the League of Women Voters, labor unions and the NAACP to sign up prospective voters by requiring them to register with the state, give voter registration forms to elections supervisors within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines, among other things.
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Florida lawmakers are poised to make the state’s parental notification of abortion laws stricter, making it more difficult for a minor to get a judges’ approval for the procedure.

By a 20-19 vote today, the Florida Senate rejected an amendment that would have kept the current law allowing minors to get a waiver from a judge anywhere in the appellate circuit in which she lives. The bill (SB 1770, HB 1247) instead would limit girls seeking the waiver to the circuit court.

That’s problematic for minors who live in rural communities or small counties whose family members are likely neighbors of or on close terms with courthouse workers or observers, argued Democrats and some Republicans, putting her confidentiality at risk. Many of the young women seeking the judicial permission for the abortions are victims of rape or incest, they said.

“I’m sorry that some people in here don’t understand that there are families where if a young woman goes to them she could be beaten or even killed because of…incest or rape,” said Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston. “We should not be doing anything to place further barriers in front of these young women…There is no need to change this.”

But Sen. Alan Hays, who sponsored the bill, said that young women have plenty of opportunity to see a judge in their own community and should not be allowed to judge-shop.

“I find it preposterous that a young lady…might be put in a vehicle and transported all the way from Escambia County to Duval County just so she can get an abortion without her parents knowing about it,” Hays, R-Umatilla, said.

Abortion rights advocates contend that the measure, already approved by the House and expected to be passed by the Senate tomorrow, would make Florida’s parental notification laws the strictest in the nation.

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With no debate, the Florida Senate quickly and quietly approved an immigration measure, keeping alive for now the issue the GOP-dominated legislature is unlikely to ultimately agree on.

The Senate measure, finalized yesterday after an emotional floor debate, would require work force boards to use E-Verify to check the immigration status of potential workers before referring them to employers and prohibit undocumented residents from receiving state or federal benefits. It would also allow nonviolent criminals to serve shorter sentences if they agree to be deported. And it would require law enforcement officers to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain immigration status after someone has been arrested and detained.

The Senate approved the bill (SB 2040) by a 23-16 vote as dozens of immigrants and their children sat in the public gallery overlooking the chamber. The immigrants, a continuous presence in the Capitol who have stepped up pressure on lawmakers to abandon the issue over the past two weeks, left singing a song about freedom.

Despite the Senate’s action today, chances of the two chambers reaching agreement on the thorny issue remain close to nil.

House GOP leaders said they do not believe they have the votes to take up the Senate’s much weaker version of their proposal (HB 7089) that would require businesses to use E-Verify and give sheriffs, deputies and police officers the authority to ask for immigration documentation when they are pursuing a criminal investigation.

The Florida Senate may “the most conservative Senate ever,” as President Mike Haridopolos boasted at the onset of the legislative session.

But it’s apparently not conservative enough to pass House Speaker Dean Cannon’s sweeping overhaul of the Supreme Court that would, among other things, split the court in two.

As the clock winds down until lawmakers sine die on Friday, the Senate plan today is to remove at least that part of the proposed constitutional amendment, keep the provision allowing the legislature to have control over the court’s rules and send it back to the House for another vote.

“Our members have felt pretty strongly about splitting up the Supreme Court,” Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said. “What you’re going to see is an option sent back to the House.”

Senate GOP leaders (who have a 28-12 majority) won’t say out loud that they don’t have the 24 votes needed to pass the proposed constitutional amendment.

But Gardiner, whose job is to count votes and corral the GOP caucus, conceded the speaker’s priority measure wouldn’t pass as is.

“You never count out votes until you sine die but I do think there’s a strong sense amongst our members about the Supreme Court piece,” Gardiner said.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson used the years-long covert operation that culminated last night in the death of the country’s No. 1 enemy to slam a GOP-backed elections overhaul the Senate is slated to vote on today.

“We have cut off the head of the snake,” said Nelson, joined in the Capitol by a host of fellow Democrats, voters rights groups and civil rights advocates at a previously-scheduled press conference about the elections package.

After congratulating President Barack Obama and the White House administration for killing Osama bin Laden, Nelson paralleled the fight for democracy overseas to Democrats’ fight against the elections package.

“Now in an effort of 10 years, ever since Sept. 11, 2001, protecting our democracy, protecting us from those that would do harm and who provide this protection because our democracy is unique, we find ourselves gathered in our Capitol city of this state again here to protect our democracy,” he said. “Now we are here for another reason of protecting our democracy and that is to keep the right to vote. Don’t make it harder to vote. Don’t make it harder to register to vote and don’t make it harder to try to count your vote. And that’s what we have in front of the legislature right now.”

Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, the bill’s sponsor, file a 154-page strike-all amendment bringing his plan (SB 2086) more in line with the House proposal (HB 1355), already approved by a partisan vote. Democrats object Republicans crafted both bills to suppress voter turnout in the 2012 election.

Among the most contentious components of the bills are rigorous new standards on third-party voter registration groups that helped drive Democratic turnout in 2008.

Swing state Florida, and the 29 electoral votes it will have in 2012, is considered by many a must-win for President Obama next year, intensifying the partisan divide over the bill’s changes to early voting, third-party registrations and provisional ballots.

The measure would force voters who have moved from one county to another to cast a provisional ballot on election day if they have not already changed their voter registration.

Nelson said that could have a chilling impact on the very men and women who helped bring bin Laden down.

“What about the armed services member overseas whose name has been changed because they got married?” Nelson said, adding that 55 percent of provisional ballots cast in the 2008 presidential election were not counted. “This is a personal attack on the people of Florida.”

Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth also used the national news to drum up opposition to the elections revamp.

“When you take so many nations on the globe, this planet Earth and compare them to the us, the big difference is that we respect the rule of law,” Butterworth, a Democrat, said.

Butterworth predicted the bill would be challenged in court if it becomes law and may not pass the U.S. Department of Justice pre-clearance requirements.

As budget talks on health and human services appropriations stalled, the Senate is moving forward with its Medicaid overhaul. Senate GOP leaders have not scheduled the immigration bill for Saturday, although only two hours of notice are required to add it to the agenda.

The Senate will take up its proposal (SB 1972) on Saturday along with dozens of local bills and Senate confirmations of Gov. Rick Scott’s appointees. But no word yet on whether the chamber will address immigration reform, still in flux as Senate Budget Chief J.D. Alexander, now shepherding the bill (SB 2040), weighs his options.

The House and Senate are both looking to put most of the state’s 2.9 million Medicaid patients into HMO-style plans. But differences abound between the two approaches. The Senate would divide the state into 19 regions, based on state court circuits; the House proposes eight.

The chambers are far apart on immigration reform as well. The House’s Arizona-style plan is on hold as the Senate considers a more moderate approach.
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The Senate passed two amended House abortion bills, sending back slightly watered-down versions of a proposed constitutional amendment and a bill barring some private insurers companies from providing abortion coverage.

Yesterday, the House approved a half-dozen anti-abortion measures after nearly five hours of debate.

The Senate spent less than 20 minutes discussing the two measures Thursday morning.

The first (HB 97) would bar insurance policies purchased in whole or in part from the new health care exchanges from offering abortion coverage. The Senate added additional exceptions to the measure that already includes exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother to include the health of the mother.

The second (HJR 1179) would ask voters whether the state constitution should bar public money from being used to pay for abortions. That measure, too, was amended to include exceptions for the mother’s health.

“I resent the fact that now wer’e further eroding a woman’s right to do what she wants to do with her body,” objected Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, who voted against the measure.

But Sen. Anitere Flores, the bill’s sponsor, said that curbing abortions was one of the reasons she ran for office.

“This is an issue that for some of us was the reason we came to Tallahassee, to help…the lives of the unborn,” Flores, R-Miami, said.

With NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer sitting in the front row of the public gallery, the Florida Senate easily approved three bills loosening gun laws, including a measure banning doctors from asking their patients about gun ownership.

Two other measures are now headed to Gov. Rick Scott, an NRA member and gun owner who has said he would sign them into law.

The “open carry” bill (HB 45), watered down yesterday, would protect concealed weapons permit owners from being prosecuted if their guns are accidentally exposed. Proponents of the measure say that current law could subject the inadvertent display of weapons to being charged with a felony.

The third (HB 155) would punish local officials with a fine for passing gun laws stricter than the state’s, already prohibited under state law.

Law enforcement officials opposed the open carry bill, saying it would make their jobs more dangerous.

And barring health care providers from asking safety questions about the presence of weapons in the household could endanger the lives of children and have a chilling effect on the doctor-patient relationship, pediatricians have argued.

Firearm injury is the leading cause of death for children and teens, said Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston.

“Adolescents know about firearms. Children know about firearms and they know where they are. This Republican Party is a party of less government and this is the party that brings us more government intrusion that encroaches into the privacy of a doctor’s office and the doctor-patient relationship,” she said.

But Sen. Alan Hays, a retired dentist, said “it’s none of my business what kind of weapons if any” patients have in their homes.

“If it’s medically necessary you may inquire but otherwise stay out of the private business of your patient,” said Hays, R-Umatilla. The bill passed by a 27-10 vote.

Voting mostly along party lines, the Florida House approved five measures that would make it more difficult for women to get abortions.

The chamber spent nearly five hours debating the measures that will require women to have an ultrasound before getting an abortion, make it more difficult for minor girls to get a judicial bypass for the procedure without parents’ consent, impose strict regulations on abortion clinics and ban some private insurers from providing abortion coverage.

“For many people this is a moral issue, this is a life and death issue,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, former executive director of the Florida Christian Coalition.

Republicans admitted the bills are aimed at reducing the number of abortions in Florida.

“What are scared of? Are we scared of women discovering that there actually is a heartbeat? Are we so terrified that a woman may look at this and discover that she really does believe in life and allow her to make a choice to preserve life rather than living the rest of her life knowing she terminated life?” Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa, said about HB 1127 that would require ultrasounds before abortions.

“Stop putting ideological blinders on. Stop believing that the sky is green. There are so many different scenarios.
Why are we so afraid that a woman can’t make the between her, herself, her doctor, her god and her family? That’s what’s offensive,” said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando.

The Florida House will vote on six anti-abortion measures today, prompting the chamber’s Democratic women to hold a press conference in opposition to the bills.

The GOP-dominated legislature is considering 18 anti-abortion measures this session, part of a trend by legislatures throughout the country.

Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, said she is the mother of three grown children by her own choice.

“It was not a choice that was imposed upon me by the government,” Thompson said. “After several minutes of heavy breathing by the man, the woman has nine months to carry.”

Freshman Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, said she gave birth to her daughter when she was just 16 years old and a junior in high school.

“It was a decision between myself, my family and my God,” Cruz said. “That should remain a decision between a woman and her God, not a woman and her government.”

The bills include proposals to require women to have an ultrasound and listen to a description of the fetus before having the procedure (HB 1127), similar to one vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist last year; that would make it harder for teens to get a judge to allow them to have an abortion without their parents’ approval (HB 1247); that would bar private insurance companies from providing abortion coverage (HB 97); and that would impose restrictions on abortion providers critics say would shut down nearly every clinic in Florida.

By a 116-1, the Florida House approved its plan to crack down on rogue doctors and rein in prescription drug abuse.

The measure keeps the state’s drug database and most current regulation of pain clinics and but bars doctors from dispensing narcotics from their offices, something the Florida Medical Association opposes. The plan (HB 7095) also sets new permitting requirements for pharmacies and limits the amount of highly addictive pain medications pharmacies can give out.

The measure received bipartisan support, including from lawmakers who testified about how addiction problems have personally affected their families.

“I stand here as one of those that’s involved with a family member” addicted to OxyContin, Rep. Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City, said. “I will tell you it’s devastating on everyone who comes in contact with it. I’ve had many sleepless nights on this issue.
My wife and I have cried together, prayed together. There may be a couple things in this bill we don’t like. There always is. But this bill will do great, great things to protect our young kids…I know there’s other members in here who’ve had to deal with this…It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible.”

The plan has the support of both Gov. Rick Scott, who originally opposed the drug database and wanted lawmakers to repeal it, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Senate’s version of the pill mill legislation (SB 818) does not include the ban on doctor dispensing or the new pharmacy regulations.