The House Rules Committee gave Attorney General Bill McCollum’ “boost” this morning by allowing him to add individuals in the state’s lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s administration over federal health care reforms.

McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor, doesn’t necessarily need a new law to give him that power, Chairman Bill Galvano said, but would let the courts know that the state supports McCollum’s efforts.

“However, at best it can bolster it. At worst, it’s window dressing,” Galvano, R-Bradenton, said.

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general in other states have joined McCollum’s lawsuit, which in Florida has fueled a partisan fight echoed in the committee this morning.

” I don’t think we should be in the business of passing laws that aren’t necessary,” argued Rep. Jim Waldman, a Coconut Creek Democrat who is a lawyer.

“The law that’s not necessary is the unconstitutional mandate requiring Floridians to buy health care coverage and if not fining them,” retorted House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach.

The bill passed along partisan lines, with Ron Saunders of Key West the only Democrat voting with Republicans. Democrats had stopped McCollum’s measure from being tacked onto a different bill last week but GOP House leaders revived the bill at McCollum’s request.

Deputy Attorney General Joe Jacquot said McCollum’s office does not believe they need the statutory authorization but that it would bolster the lawsuit’s standing in the courts. McCollum’s office is seeking a Senate vehicle for the proposal.

Attorney General Bill McCollum‘s attempt at turning a (non-controversial) life insurance bill into a vehicle to boost his (controversial) lawsuit against the federal government over health care reforms backfired last week.

But Republican House leaders are breathing new life into a measure giving the GOP candidate for governor the power to represent Floridians, individually or en masse.

Democrats protested that McCollum’s amendment – tacked onto the life insurance bill in a series of surprise amendments that confused even Republican House General Government Policy Council Chairman Baxter Troutman – wasn’t germane to the original bill.

House Speaker Larry Cretul’s staff and the Democrats agreed to strip the original bill of the McCollum language and instead are introducing it at a stand-alone bill at today’s Rules Committee meeting.

House rules require that amendments be germane to the bills on which they are attached. Often subjective, rulings on germanity frequently threaten credulity.

But a legislative lawyer’s diagram of the germanity rule and its relationship to the bill in question (HB 885) as an explanation to a lawmaker who questioned the process seemingly made the germanity issue clear. As mud.

House and Senate Democratic leaders want the state auditor general to investigate Attorney General Bill McCollum after he filed a lawsuit challenging the federal health care reforms approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Democrats accuse McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor, of using his office as the state’s chief legal eagle to promote his candidacy for governor.

“When a state official can deploy not only the vast resources of his office, but hire outside counsel at taxpayer expense to try and block millions of Floridians from finally getting access to health care, it’s time to stop and demand some accountability,” Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said at a press conference this afternoon. “When the same state official, who happens to be a Republican, leads the charge on a national Republican mission to use health care reform as a rally cry in the upcoming elections, it’s time this legislature stops and asks how much in taxpayer money is being diverted from critical issues to advance a political agenda.”

The Dems complained that McCollum should be protecting consumers by going after pill mills and mortgage foreclosures and instead is using state funds to appeal to conservative Republican voters with the lawsuit.

“This is…for the rank political ambitions of the candidate,” Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said. Gelber is running for attorney general in a Democratic primary against Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres.

(more…)