by Carl Hiaasen
"Sometimes it's a close call," Dr. Hans conceded.
Beer and pizza for everyone, Mr. Governor
June 5, 1987
The Mole People finally adjourned in Tallahassee, emerging squinty-eyed into the sunshine where they are now posing, partying and nearly wrenching their arms patting themselves on the back.
Having committed their largest deeds behind closed doors, the legislators of the great state of Florida would now like you to know what a valiant effort they've made on your behalf.
They passed the biggest tax increase in state history, set up a lottery, and agreed to spend millions more on prisons, indigent health care and water cleanup.
They also passed laws that will legally put handguns into the fists of more drunks, half-wits and fruitcakes than ever before. Despite so-called "safeguards," the Legislature will have no more success keeping licensed pistols from lunatics than it does keeping bad drivers off the highways.
In other ways it was a progressive session because—like them or not—new taxes are the only way to start paying for Florida's explosive growth. The scary part is that the average voter has practically no say in how these revenues will be spent, or who'll get their paws on the money.
Years ago Florida passed its famous Sunshine Laws, ostensibly to take the business of government out of the cloakrooms and corridors. At the time a reform-minded Legislature boldly voted that all meetings of public bodies be held in the open—except, naturally, those of the Legislature itself.
The law that makes it illegal for members of a city council or a school board or a county commission to meet secretly doesn't apply to your faithful representatives in Tallahassee, who this year had their way with $18.7 billion of your money.
How did they do it? We're not exactly sure, since they wouldn't let us in.
True, floor sessions and regular committee meeting are wide open to the press and public, but the real lawmaking doesn't happen there. It happens in private.
Take the controversial new sales tax on services, for instance. It wasn't negotiated on the floor in view of the gallery. It was drafted over beer and pizza at the Tallahassee townhouse of Bob Coker, a lobbyist for a Big Sugar firm. Among those joining the House and Senate leaders in the late-night festivities were key aides to Gov. Bob Martinez.
You remember Bob Martinez, that fellow who campaigned vigorously on a promise of no secret meetings? Remember his indignant TV ads, showing arrogant cracker legislators slamming the door in the public's face? Apparently the governor is not so indignant now.
For a brief moment this session a few senators rebelled. They proposed an amendment that would have required legislators to meet in the open at all times, even when jawboning with the governor.
You can imagine the rapture with which this idea was greeted. Senate Rules Chairman Dempsey Barren and Senate President John Vogt (the King and Crown Prince of the Mole People) snuffed the Sunshine amendment as quickly as possible.
Later Sen. Larry Plummer of South Miami pointedly offered a new version that would have opened all governmental sessions, including "midnight meetings over pepperoni pizza or anything else."
This, too, was flattened by Vogt's gavel.
Think about what it means. These are people who work for you, and whose salaries you pay—yet they won't let you watch what they're doing. It's like having the Maytag repairman lock you out of your own house until he's finished fiddling with your appliances.
Admittedly, cutting deals is a part of the legislative process that's easier done in a tunnel than on TV But if nothing sleazy is going on, then what's the harm in letting the public see?
Martinez says gee whiz, he'd just love to open all the meetings, really he would—but those darn legislators just won't go along.
It sounds like the governor's eyes have already adjusted to the dark.
Foul odors get worse in legislature
December 12, 1990
The Legislature is like a dead skunk. No matter how bad you think it's going to stink, it stinks even worse.
Few stomachs remain unturned after this week's Herald series about pet projects that give away millions of taxpayer dollars. Although everybody was aware that this stuff goes on, many people had no idea that the pilfering is so flagrant.
It's hard to decide which is more outrageous—the way the money was blown, or the lame excuses now being made by those who blew it. Some of my favorites:
• Lottery funds, designated for education, were used to send a bunch of state legislators to Israel as part of an "agricultural research project." Among those who took the free trip were Sen. Gwen Margolis (representing those rolling farmlands of North Miami), and Rep. JackTobin of Margate, where almost all the supermarkets do sell fresh produce.
Margolis apparently was too busy tending her crops to respond to inquiries about the Israel trip, while Tobin insisted that the lottery couldn't have paid for the whole thing. It did.
• Last year, the Legislature gave $1 million to fund an "amateur" athletic facility. Instead, the money was sent to the Ladies Professional Golf Association. This year, lawmakers spent another $2 million for a new road to the LPGA's headquarters in Daytona Beach.
Now legislators say the word "amateur" was "inadvertently" added to the funding proposal. They say the grant was meant for the city of Daytona Beach, which needed the funds to help the LPGA move there. Now isn't that better? Three million bucks of "economic development" money for needy professional golfers—who said government doesn't have a heart!
• Metro Commissioner Sherman Winn campaigned for a $400,000 state grant to something called the American International Exhibition for Travel, a firm that staged tourism-promotion shows. By eerie coincidence, Winn's son Steve just happened to be the Tallahassee lobbyist for that company—and got $52,000 for his work. Months later, the owner of American International disappeared, and so did the state's $400,000.
Sherman Winn now prefers not to discuss the matter. Explained an aide: "He doesn't want to be implicated with something he had nothing to do with."
Guess what, Sherm. You're implicated.
• The Beacon Council, guiding light of Dade's business community, hired two lobbyists to pry $150,000 in grant money from the state Legislature. After the funding arrived, the Beacon Council kicked back $15,000 to the lobbyists. The state comptroller's office said that's an improper use of taxpayers' dollars.
The kicker: It was lottery money.
• Rep. Luis Rojas of Hialeah weaseled $100,000 for the Hialeah Latin Chamber of Commerce to fund a "productivity improvement center." The chamber used the dough to hire Rojas' former legislative aide, Carlos Manrique.
Rojas insists that the state money spawned new commerce in Hialeah, and he's right: His buddy Manrique later went into business with a company owner he'd met through the grant program. Hey, if you can't help your friends, who can you help?
• Wooed by lobbyists, the Legislature gave the Greater Miami Opera almost $1 million. Later, some of the lawmakers who voted for the money asked the opera for free tickets.
One of those, Rep. Susan Guber, says—and this is priceless—it's important for her to attend the shows to make sure taxpayer dollars are being put to good use. Bravo!
To her credit, Guber is one of the few legislators who wants to change things so that "turkey" items aren't so easily sneaked into the appropriations bill. There's not a moment to waste, either—Florida is in worse fiscal shape than most had predicted.The crisis is forcing $270 million in emergency cuts next month. Education, social services and law enforcement will suffer.
If the new governor is searching for a popular agenda, he doesn't need to go far. All he's got to do is put his nose in the air and take a whiff of this year's budget.
Junkets show politics isn't a thankless job
May 1,1991
Whoever said politics is a thankless job ought to read the latest report from the Leon County grand jury.
It describes how some state legislators have accepted
free vacations provided by lobbyists from major utilities, auto dealers, the hotel industry, Big Agriculture and insurance firms. In many cases, the trips were not reported as gifts, although the law requires it.
Not surprisingly, the globe-trotting tourists have been reticent to share the highlights of their travels—not even a postcard for the voters back home. In fact, it's almost as if lawmakers wanted to keep it a secret. It's almost as if they were ashamed.
The juiciest details came from the lobbyists themselves, summoned before the grand jury. Much of the testimony focused on hunting trips, a popular escape from Tallahassee's pressures.
Judging from what the lobbyists said, lawmakers find hunting much more enjoyable when they don't have to pay for it themselves. Shooting a high-flying mallard requires total concentration, and who can concentrate when you're worrying about some danged hotel bill?
Friendly special interests arranged for legislators to go on free hunting expeditions to El Campo and Corpus Christi, Texas; Monterrey and Ciudad Victoria, Mexico; Norwood, Colo.; Casper and Thermopolis, Wyo.; the Blue Ridge Hunting Lodge in LaPine, Ala.; the Riverview Plantation, Foxfire Hunting Preserve and Quail Ridge, all in Georgia.
For lawmakers who preferred fish over fowl, lobbyists lined up angling excursions to the wilds of Colorado, Alaska and Nice, France. Not to be outdone, a few nonsporting types in the Legislature took pleasure jaunts to Paris—and Zurich, Monte Carlo, Vail, LakeTahoe, New Orleans, Breckenridge, Treasure Cay and St. Tropez.
When the scandal first broke, some lawmakers insisted they did nothing wrong because a free trip isn't really a "gift." The grand jury found this argument just as ludicrous as everyone else did. The law, it said, is "plain and unambiguous." A free plane ticket must be reported as a contribution.
The tone of the grand jury's findings was one of barely concealed disgust. And it wasn't only the trips, but the other shameless mooching:
"Several legislators routinely solicited free plane charters/rentals from certain lobbyists solely for personal use."
The report went on: "During a legislative session it is possible for legislators to be furnished breakfast, lunch and dinner by lobbyists while still drawing per diem." No! Who would do such a thing? The grand jurors called for a tougher law that would make it a crime to take anything worth more than $50. Predictably, that's way too radical for this Legislature. A bill imposing a $50 limit on gifts will probably pass this session, but violators won't face criminal charges.
The strongest deterrent to a freeloading politician is the threat of public exposure, and here the grand jury missed the boat. In what seems an act of misguided mercy, the names of the peripatetic lawmakers were deliberately withheld from the report.
Voters then were left to guess, for instance, which sneaky weasel took a free trip and then tried to conceal the fact by paying with his own credit card. Later the legislator approached the lobbyist and demanded full reimbursement for the junket—in cash.
Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs knows the identities of the alleged perpetrators, and is considering prosecution. Most of the crimes would be misdemeanors, and the penalties would be laughably light.
Nonetheless, a trial would be useful to document the snug relationships between powerful lobbyists and elected officials. Next time the insurance industry flies your local senator to a Paris vacation, you shouldn't have to read about it in a grand jury report.
You deserve a slide show.
Senate remap effort on road to disaster
April 2, 1992
One way to save Florida tons of money, and loads of embarrassment, would be to abolish the Senate.
No one would miss these bunglers, who are stinking up Tallahassee with their rotten, self-serving politics. While the state rapidly goes broke, senators remain pathologically obsessed with redistricting. Translation: saving their own sorry butts.
Republicans want more Republican districts, Democrats want to cling to what they've got. The logjam has paralyzed government. On Tuesday, the Senate froze 20-20 on a vote to adjourn. That's how bad things are.
Voters aren't the only ones to be nauseated. Last week, a panel of federal judges intervened to snatch redistricting powers from the Legislature. Barring a last-minute miracle at the Capitol, boundaries for new legislative and congressional districts will be drawn by a nonpartisan expert, and ratified by the judges in late May.
That's the best news Floridians could get. It's painfully clear that politicians can't be trusted with such important matters.
To appreciate the Senate's miserably irresponsible performance, look no farther than its president, Gwen Margolis, a Democrat from North Dade.
Margolis is full of ambition. She wants to run for Congress in one of two new districts that will be mostly Hispanic. At the same time, she doesn't want to give up her power base in North Dade and Miami Beach. So what does she do? She tailors a new congressional district to fit her desired demographics.
To an untrained eye, the proposed boundaries look like the etchings of a mapmaker on heavy pharmaceuticals. In reality, it's a masterpiece of diabolical gerrymandering.
The Margolis Magical Mystery Tour starts in South Beach and steam-rolls up the coast to Hallandale. There it shrinks weirdly to a one-block-wide corridor, sneaks up to Dania, darts back down to Pembroke Park, hopscotches west to Miramar, slithers south to Hialeah, then angles sharply toward Sweetwater. From there the boundary meanders east, grazing Little Havana and parts of Over town on its journey back to the Miami River.
Nobody said the road to Congress was easy, but this is ridiculous. Some of Margolis' colleagues don't like the map, and now it's a bargaining point: Republicans won't approve the new congressional boundaries unless she approves more GOP seats in the Legislature. The Senate has fought to an impasse.
Seeking compromise, seven Democrats recently endorsed a congressional map drawn by Common Cause, a citizens' lobby. Margolis rejected the plan because it put her in the same district with Dante Fascell, who's not about to surrender his seat.
Margolis isn't the only one playing games. Members of both parties are consumed by fear that redistricting will put them out of office, or stack them against a formidable opponent. They all want a clear, breezy path to re-election.
If only they'd spend half as much time, energy and imagination trying to fix the budget. Instead it's the raw, greedy politics of self-preservation.
While the Senate snivels and stalls, our schools run out of money. New prisons remain unopened. Hospitals cut back vital services to the poor. It's a disgrace, but neither Margolis nor the others seem the least bit ashamed.
With the feds drawing up the new districts, she probably won't be getting that free ride to Congress in November. That means her amazing psychedelic map will go to waste. Perhaps voters can think of a suitable place for her to put it.
State lobbyists may be pulled out of shadows
February 18, 1993
Some of the most powerful people in Florida are also the most anonymous, and they want to keep it that way.
They aren't elected to public office, they hold no position in government and their only loyalty is to the clients who sign their paychecks. Yet they probably have more impact on Florida's future than do all the state's voters.
They're the lobbyists who swarm Tallahassee each year like fragrant, blow-dried locusts. They are thick and they are fast, and nothing escapes their attention. They know how the machinery of lawmaking works, and how to lubricate it in their own interest. You don't know them by name, but most legislators do.
In an age of so-called open government, lobbyists thrive in one of the last dark crevices of privacy. Gov. Lawton Chiles is trying to shine a light in there, and the reaction, as one might expect, is furious and insectile. In an ethics package proposed this month, the governor has asked the Legislature to make lobbyists disclose their incomes, their expenditures and all political donations. He also wants to ban contingency fees, and campaign contributions made during legis
lative sessions.
Many states have adopted such regulations, but they stand scant chance of survival here. While some lobbyists support reforms, many will resist forcefully. They've got a good deal, and they know it.
• Full disclosure. Put yourself in a lobbyist's position. If you're taking a hundred grand to shill for the tobacco industry, you wouldn't want the whole world to know, would you? It's so embarrassing that your kids would probably disown you. Confidentiality is preferable because it preserves one's pride and respectability.
• Contingency fees. Some lobbyists get paid only if they succeed in their mission to get a bill passed, or to get one killed. The lobbyist who secures a fat grant for his client often grabs his or her cut out of the booty, meaning the taxpayer's pocket.
Last year, an appellate court in Dade County ruled that lobbyists can't take contingency fees or bonuses out of public appropriations. Chiles wants a law that says the same thing. Lobbyists who work on a bounty are screaming bloody murder.
• Campaign contributions. The way it stands, lobbyists can give money to a legislator's campaign at any time—even as that legislator prepares to vote on their pet project.
It's nothing more than legalized bribery. Lobbyists use political donations to lean on lawmakers, and lawmakers use their vote to solicit donations. Both sides get what they want, so there's no incentive to pass a law against it.
"A shakedown," says Bill Jones of Common Cause, the citizen's lobby. He and others are disgusted by the freewheeling bazaar. "I don't think it would hurt to adopt the governor's [reforms]," adds lawyer Steve Uhlfelder, who lobbies for private clients as well as for the American Heart Association, from which he takes no fee.
The job of lobbyist is as old as the republic, and it's not inherently wicked or sneaky. Almost everybody with a stake in the law has lobbyists at work in Tallahassee—not just wealthy phosphate barons and liquor distributors and utility companies, but teachers and conservation groups and the handicapped.