Legislature declares victory after badly failing Floridians | Editorial
At the behest of lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis Floridia lost ground on abortion, guns, school vouchers, LGBTQ freedom, open government and more.
By ORLANDO SENTINEL AND SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARDS | insight@orlandosentinel.com |
May 7, 2023 at 5:27 a.m.
It’s over.
The best that can be said about Friday’s finish of the 2023 legislative session is that it has ended.
Senators and representatives packed up and headed home, where most can no longer do more damage to Florida citizens. But the misery will continue as Gov. Ron DeSantis gleefully signs into law the many harmful, hateful or wrongheaded decisions made by his fellow Republicans over the past nine weeks.
Floridians, their kids and grandchildren will feel the effects for a long time. The ramifications are grave. But such are the consequences in a state that no longer has a competitive two-party system at the state level, and where far too many lawmakers unquestioningly rubber stamp a far-right agenda fashioned mostly by an authoritarian, ambitious and secretive governor.
Less safe and less free
Floridians will be less safe. Women will be less free.
Legislators approved a near-total ban on abortion after six weeks, when many women don’t even know they are pregnant (SB 300).It’s now legal in Florida to carry a loaded and concealed gun with no permit or training (HB 543).
Lawmakers approved a universal taxpayer-funded school voucher program (HB 1) that will wreak havoc on a public school system that for too long has been chronically underfunded by both parties.
They made it easier to impose the death penalty than any state in the U.S. and allowed for the death penalty to be imposed on child rapists when the victim is under age 12 (HB 1297). The law won wide approval from members of both parties and will look good in a political mailer but is of dubious constitutionality. The 19 Democrats who voted no showed courage, because some will surely be vilified as “soft on crime” in the next election.
A lot less sunshine
This was a terrible session for weakening Florida’s “sunshine” laws, as legislators draped a dangerous and senselessly retroactive cloak of secrecy over official travel by the governor and other top state officials. They made claims of supposed threats against DeSantis that have not been substantiated. The governor goes everywhere closely surrounded by a half-dozen FDLE agents.
Lawmakers also handed the law-and-order governor an expanded Florida State Guard, a state militia under his personal control.
In a mean-spirited attack against public sector workers, they gutted union protections for teachers, 911 dispatchers and other front-line employees.
They did nothing to provide meaningful relief for property insurance policyholders and instead made it harder for them to sue companies that refuse to pay claims.
For the third year in a row, they attacked democracy by further weakening state election laws. They made it so financially risky for third-party organizations to register voters that many threaten to stop the practice — the Republicans’ objective all along.
They imposed new regulations on use of bathrooms and pronouns and imposed a ludicrous crackdown on drag shows — acts of oppression that stifle artistic expression, criminalize gender-affirming care and encourage more bullying and discrimination against already-marginalized groups.
What they got right
Did lawmakers do anything right over the past 60 days? Yes.
They passed a record-high $117 billion budget with nearly universal bipartisan harmony, which was unusual enough in itself in Tallahassee’s hyper-partisan bubble, but Democrats praised Republicans for even-handedness and the budget came together without the trench warfare that tarnished previous sessions.
The budget has 5% pay increases for rank-and-file state workers, salary hikes for assistant public defenders, assistant state attorneys and correctional officers, $1,000 bonuses for police officers, more money to acquire environmentally sensitive lands and other initiatives.
With so much money floating around, they could easily have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But they refused, preserving Florida’s status as an outlier state that neglects the well-being of its residents. Only nine other states refuse to expand Medicaid.
Showing more bipartisan cooperation, they voted to expand eligibility under Florida KidCare and Healthy Kids, which will help more than 40,000 children obtain affordable coverage. More positives: a stronger law to combat human sex trafficking, in response to the Sun Sentinel series Innocence Sold, and later start times for Florida middle and high schools.
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, took a welcome stand for public safety. After the House voted 69 to 36 to repeal a key provision of the post-Parkland gun law and allow immature and troubled 18-year-olds to buy rifles and long guns, Passidomo refused to consider it in the Senate, and it died. There’s nothing to celebrate here except the rarity of a Republican leader breaking with her own party for a change.
“I voted for the Parkland bill,” said Passidomo, who visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas days after the massacre five years ago. “It was a horrific day. I will not change my position.”
A changed Capitol, for the worse
Sun Sentinel opinion writers have watched every session for the past 35 years, and this must be said: Florida no longer has a traditional bipartisan Legislature where people of good intentions and different beliefs come together and work cooperatively to improve the state.
The political agenda and outcome is all preordained. Citizens who openly challenge the system risk being arrested, as 14 were this week in the Capitol.
In its current form, hopefully temporarily, it has evolved into a partisan political arm of DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
The vastly outnumbered Democrats, led by their caucus leaders, Sen. Lauren Book, D-Davie, and Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, fought valiantly most of the time against impossible odds. We implore Democrats to stick together and to hold Republicans more accountable.
People increasingly talk about leaving this state because of policies that show outright contempt for women, the LGBTQ community and others. The former Miami Heat basketball star Dwyane Wade, a Hall of Famer and one of the most popular pro athletes in South Florida history, who has a transgender daughter, disclosed that he moved his family to California because they no longer feel accepted in Florida.
As events drew to a close Friday, a celebratory House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, called it “a session like no other.”
That’s true — but for all the wrong reasons.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
Jakuniku-kyoushoku. “It’s the year 2022, and the population has risen to a third of a billion for the United States. Pollution, catastrophic climate change and blind greed-based taxation has caused severe shortages of food, water and housing nationwide while the military budget grows beyond the ability of the nation. Only the wealthy can afford health care. The environment is oppressively hot and humid thanks to the out-of-control greenhouse effect. Corporate America has taken on the role of feeding most of the nation’s population with tasteless processed foods, over-preserved and under scrutinized, while nutritional and safety factors are the new cost of repeatedly underfunded government overwatch programs and an overworked populace repeatedly asked to sacrifice more and more so the wealthiest may receive favorable tax breaks. The Soylent Corporation produces their wonder food called Soylent Green…” (edited quote of Soylent Green film summary, 1973).
My father kept Popular Mechanics magazines from the 1950’s and 1960’s that tell me I should be flying my car by now. Shortly after I was born American men were walking on the moon, stepping out of the nation’s boundaries as explorers and architects of a new future. During that time, a generation fought against itself – one side imagining the heights we could go if we only dreamed, if we only loved one-another, if we only gave more than lip service to the idea of freedom, while others suffered a nightmare of bullets in jungles they didn’t know existed but a short time before. Men of Peace, men of hope, men like John Lennon died to bullets, and it seemed like the generation had made its choice. The fall of Jimmy Carter, the rise of Trickle-Down politics and Glory of Greed, Iran/Contra-gate, a new war in the land of sand and oil, and a new rising NRA became the Siren’s Song spelling the end to the hope of Lennon and King. 
the stars…I never look at them anymore’. Have we lost the hope that seemed to infect America when I was young, when cars were shaped after rocket ships and kids would look to the stars and dream of following in Buzz Aldren’s steps? It is no wonder to me why people long for the world to be like it was in the ‘60’s. Life was simpler back then, provided you weren’t drafted, a woman, a minority or poor. Marjory Taylor Greene has called for a new America, a new Civil War, a new Hitlerian dystopia where we must declare our votes. She wants to void criminal charges for a national secrets leak because it was originated by someone who was white, Christian and anti-war. Lauren Bobert says that babies are being murdered after birth for the convenience of a late abortionist. Our most recent president is in court for Rape, Tax Fraud, and his followers are going to Jail for Sedition and Violence in efforts to Overthrow the Government, but that’s all “fake news”. Fox News pays $787,500,000 to avoid justice, Governor DeSantis kidnaps destitute families and declares gay people to no longer exist in Florida, and “Good Guys with Guns” stood by and watched babies be shot. Across The Land of the Free, men are being accused of horrible crimes for telling stories to children and their parents in public libraries. The religious right has declared the liar, the glutton, adulterer, the jealous, the proud, the lazy and the wrath filled to be saintly.
capacity beyond a cautionary one is surely pure comedy. She is surely not the cause of our troubles, only the parasite that feeds on our weakened flesh. She is a result of a country that gains their beliefs from news anchors and pundits, like rags flapping in a breeze that the ill-considered salute unquestioningly. I understand; I’m a Chicago Cubs fan, and I could respond to any challenge with “We’ll get them next year”. Then one year they somehow kept winning and the joke became real. 
I was raised that it is the obligation of every man to those who follow behind to make a world better than he found it so that his children may live their life without war, famine, disease, poverty. But suddenly there was a black man in the White House and the era of fear and denial was upon us. Now we are strangled by guns, anger, lies and false reality. The preeminent focus is not what is best for our youth, our country, but what will regain the lost power of the ’50’s for those longing for a world gone by.
What happened to my neighbor? What happened to those Sunday School lessons? Have we lost already the promise of our fathers, the charge of those who came before? We are meant to be a country of builders. I feel anger and despair in those around me as they are denied their reality, denied their choice, denied their identity. 
