A state Legislature facing the biggest budget gap in decades used its overwhelming Republican majority to pass a broad slate of bills that will touch the lives of every Floridian who votes, buys insurance and receives public education, Medicaid and state retirement benefits.
Lawmakers approved a shrunken $69.7 billion budget, closing a $3.8 billion gap and delivered tax cuts sought by newly elected Gov. Rick Scott – though only a fraction of what he wanted.
While not achieving everything on their to-do list, including immigration reform and revamping the state Supreme Court, leaders declared victory and were cruising toward an on-time finish Friday, until proceedings broke down over what Senate President Mike Haridopolos called "silly games."
The problems pushed both chambers past their midnight deadline and rattled Haridopolos, who is running for U.S. Senate and needed a successful legislative session to propel him into his campaign.
But when they finally finished, House Speaker Dean Cannon said the session's accomplishments -- budget and tax cuts, Medicaid overhaul and pension reform and new pill mill restrictions -- outweighed the last-minute snafu.
Waiting for the traditional "sine die" ceremony that takes place in the Capitol rotunda – the phrase is Latin for adjournment "without a day" to return, and is usually marked by a feel-good ceremony between the two chambers and the governor -- Scott gave up and left the Capitol around midnight. He'd declared victory earlier, however, in a statement saying, "It's time to celebrate a job well done."
But there were no celebrations for environmentalists and unions.
"If making it harder to vote, gutting public schools, (imposing) salary cuts for first responders and paving paradise were what Floridians wanted, Gov. Scott and this Legislature deserve a standing ovation," said the liberal group Progress Florida.
The reality of whether the session was a success will be seen across the state in the coming months and years – or, perhaps in the case of a major growth management retreat, decades.
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Within months, public employee paychecks will be 3 percent lower as workers start kicking into their pension accounts. Businesses will see their corporate and unemployment taxes drop a bit. And people going to the polls next year will find new voting restrictions, including a ban on people changing their address on Election Day if they've moved from another county.
The elephant in the room as the Legislature convened on March 8 was a gaping hole in the state budget. Florida's revenue stream is dominated by collections of the state sales tax and fees on real estate transactions.
When consumers cut back on spending and stop buying and building houses, that spigot is slowed. Economists told lawmakers they would have roughly $3.8 billion less than expected to spend for fiscal 2011-12, which starts July 1.
One of the centerpieces of the GOP agenda was a massive overhaul of the Medicaid health care system. The $20 billion program – roughly a third of the state budget, although it includes federal funds – has been a legislative albatross for years.
Currently, the government-backed insurer of the poor and disabled operates as a pay-as-you-go system. Under legislation passed on the final day of the session, most Medicaid recipients will be placed in managed-care arrangements such as health maintenance organizations, provider service networks or specialty plans for specific medical conditions.
Republicans also plugged the budget hole with plans to privatize south and central Florida state prisons and the health care provided within them.
Scott initially sought to skim 5 percent off the paychecks of public employees who participate in the Florida Retirement System. The Legislature went with 3 percent. The retirement system covers not only state workers, but schoolteachers, police and firefighters, and many other employees of local governments around the state.
It was a good session for the business lobby. Lawmakers trimmed roughly half the state's small businesses from the rolls of those paying corporate income taxes, and cut unemployment benefits and in turn the taxes businesses pay for the benefits.
Legislation also passed to limit the time to file hurricane-related claims and allow insurers to pay only part of a claim up-front. Insurers will also be allowed to raise rates up 15 percent to cover the cost of backup reinsurance.
Insurers failed, however, in their efforts to get out of having to provide sinkhole coverage. Also, a proposed 25 percent rate hike for Citizens Property Insurance Corp. died.
The session provided nothing but headaches for environmentalists. The state budget zeroed out a popular land conservation fund and cut funding for the cleanup of the Everglades.
Lawmakers eliminated state oversight of growth management, the main check against sprawl and wilderness clear-cutting since 1985, and passed a bill easing permitting of water-related projects that Audubon chief Eric Draper called "probably the worst bill I've seen in my environmental career."
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Despite the moribund economy and Scott's mantra of jobs, jobs and more jobs, the lawmakers found plenty of time to address conservative social issues such as religion, such as gun rights and abortion.
They passed bills to discourage doctors from asking patients about gun ownership and to forbid local officials from enacting gun laws that are more restrictive than the state's.
And several pieces of legislation will make it harder for women to have an abortion, from requiring ultrasounds to a ballot measure seeking to prohibit the use of public funding for any abortion or for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion.
"This is a part of the social fabric," Haridopolos said of the pro-life and pro-gun measures. "A lot of people run on social issues. So we did give those folks some time."
Political wonks argue that such issues drive conservatives to the polls, and in that vein, the hard-right majority in the Legislature seemed to have one eye on the 2012 election in many of its actions.
Bills make it harder for groups such as the League of Women Voters to register people to vote, and make it more difficult to vote after an address change. Democrats argued that would disenfranchise many college-age voters, who traditionally lean to the left.
Also on the political front, House Speaker Cannon, a Republican from Winter Park, stunned the legal community with a sudden plan to reorganize the state Supreme Court into two branches, one to handle civil matters, the other, criminal.
Democrats hollered "court-packing," since the measure would have increased the panel from seven justices to 10 – the three new ones being appointed by the conservative Scott.
A watered-down court tweak was passed, giving lawmakers more authority over the court's rulemaking and appointments, but the dramatic reorganization was removed from the bill.
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Among the major pieces of unfinished business was a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Scott had campaigned on the issue, and the House passed a tough bill that gave police more authority to check a person's immigration status and required employers to check the federal E-verify database on new hires.
But when the Senate, led on the immigration issue by budget chief JD Alexander, a Lake Wales Republican and grower, passed a bill without the private employer mandate, the measure effectively died. There wasn't enough time to reconcile the vastly different House and Senate versions.
For weeks, immigrants had filled the halls of the Capitol singing and chanting to discourage legislation, but they had a powerful ally in the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which also discouraged a crackdown that would cut into a needed low-skill labor force.
In a surprise defeat, the Senate killed efforts to deregulate several professions, members of which, particularly interior designers, didn't want to see standards dropped.
The lawmakers didn't do it only because the designers and others didn't want it. They did it because they hadn't been given the time to review the measure – a complaint heard from both House and Senate members many times as the session came to a close.
Several times in the final weeks, Republican fought Republican as the House and Senate tried to reconcile their differences.
They battled one last time on Friday before finally passing a budget nearly four hours past deadline.
Cannon brushed it off at the end, saying it was to be expected in a year that saw the biggest budget cuts in modern history.
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