Florida editorial roundup

Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:

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Feb. 7

SunSentinel on funding for legal aid for Florida residents:

This past week, Gov. Rick Scott unveiled his budget proposal for the year that begins July 1. We recounted some, but not all, of the highlights and lowlights in this space on Saturday.

Here’s another lowlight: While the governor’s proposal called for spending $83.5 billion, a record amount, he couldn’t spare a dime for legal assistance for Floridians who can’t afford to hire lawyers in civil court, where noncriminal cases are handled.

This is disappointing but not surprising. Scott has not only left out civil legal assistance in his previous budget proposals, he has vetoed a series of modest allocations of up to $2 million that the Legislature included in its budgets.

But a recent study makes a convincing case for the Legislature to include funding again in this category - and for the governor to break with his pattern and sign off on it.

Commissioned by The Florida Bar Foundation, the study concluded that every dollar spent on civil legal aid for lower-income Floridians yields more than $7 in benefits. As Bar Foundation President Matthew Brenner said, “Equal justice under law is not only a basic underpinning of our democracy; it’s also good economic policy.”

In short, it’s a better deal for taxpayers to invest at the front end to help fellow Floridians solve problems in civil court, instead of paying more to deal with the consequences to the state’s economy of unsolved problems at the back end. This same logic would apply - and should appeal - to other potential legal aid contributors, including the business community and nonprofits. Here’s how the math works:

Civil legal assistance helps lower-income residents secure the benefits to which they are entitled. This includes federal benefits for veterans as well as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. It includes state benefits such as unemployment compensation. And it includes disputed wages and unpaid child support, too. When Floridians get back more of the dollars they’re owed, they spend them and support local businesses and jobs.

Legal assistance also reduces the financial burden on government agencies, businesses and nonprofits by helping more Floridians avoid foreclosures, evictions, domestic violence and other personal and family crises. And when people can work through their legal problems and stabilize their lives, they’re more likely to be assets for their families, their employers and their communities.

For those who might be skeptical of the recent study, previous ones in Florida and other states have found comparable or even higher returns for every dollar spent on civil legal assistance.

Legal aid is not a middle-class entitlement in Florida. State residents making more than 125 percent of the poverty level are ineligible for help.

Florida is one of only a few states that don’t annually provide state funding for this need. The federal government and some local governments in Florida contribute. So do the Bar Foundation and private donors. Still, overall funding in Florida in 2015 fell to $83 million, its lowest level in a decade. That was enough to cover only about 20 percent of the need that year.

Chief Justice Jorge Labarga of the Florida Supreme Court has made expanding access to civil justice in the state one of his top priorities. He has appointed a commission to consider multiple strategies - not just increased funding, but also more efficient ways, such as better utilizing technology, to meet the need for legal services. This is a sensible approach. There is no silver-bullet solution for a problem this big, and this complicated. But money matters.

Labarga has not pleaded for more funding from the governor or legislators. Now that the Bar Foundation’s study has been released, he shouldn’t have to.

Scott often cites the return on investment when evaluating state spending. If he applies that standard to civil legal assistance, he’ll urge legislators to fill this gap in his budget.

Online:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com

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Feb. 6

Tampa Bay Times on Florida’s public records law:

The annual assault on Florida’s public records law begins anew today in the Legislature. A bill that would make it more difficult to collect legal fees from public agencies that illegally withhold records is a serious threat to open government and should be rejected at its first committee stop. Lawmakers should defeat this cynical attempt to weaken the only means citizens have of forcing government to give them the documents they are entitled to examine.

Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, is back with the same terrible idea he had last year. Now lawyers who win public records cases are entitled to be paid their legal fees by the custodian of the records. Steube’s legislation, SB 80, would change the law from saying the courts “shall” award legal fees when they find government illegally withheld public records to they “may” award legal fees. That change would make a big difference, and it would make citizens far less likely to hire a lawyer and go to court to enforce their right to public records if they know they might be responsible for the legal fees even if they win.

There is a terrible disregard for public records in state government and in too many county courthouses and city halls. Florida taxpayers paid $1.3 million in attorney fees in 2015 to end open government lawsuits involving Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet. One involved the governor’s ouster of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement commissioner, and the other involved private email accounts that Scott and his staff used to hide public business from the public. In more recent months, public records about spending at Visit Florida, the state’s tourism arm, have resulted in the resignation of the organization’s leader and a move by lawmakers to abolish the agency. In Pinellas County, a Tampa Bay Times review of thousands of records led to last week’s retirement of the executive director of the county’s construction licensing board and calls for an overhaul of that operation.

The Florida League of Cities continues to complain of isolated examples where local governments feel overwhelmed by public records lawsuits they contend are motivated by generating legal fees rather than concern about the public’s business. Indeed, there are reports of some abuses by a very small handful of bad actors. But Steube’s bill takes a sledgehammer to the public records law and would have a chilling effect on the right of all citizens to access public records.

There are better ways to address any abuses. First, the courts and the Florida Bar have the ability take action. A Jacksonville circuit judge ruled against the plaintiff in a public records lawsuit in 2015 and noted he had 17 pending public records lawsuits in Duval County and received money whenever they were settled. That situation, the judge wrote, was probably “an improper fee-splitting arrangement” with a lawyer, and last month a Florida Bar committee found probable cause that the lawyer in that case committed an ethics violation.

Second, a compromise bill agreed to by the Florida League of Cities and filed again this year is better than Steube’s approach. The compromise, which passed the Senate last year and died in the House, requires agencies that violate the public records law to pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees unless the court finds the records request “was made primarily to harass the agency or cause a violation of this chapter.”

The Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee that will consider Steube’s bill today includes two Tampa Bay senators: Bill Galvano, R-Sarasota, and Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg. They should help kill this attack on the constitutional right to public records before it goes any further.

Online:

https://www.tampabay.com

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Feb. 7

The (Sarasota) Herald-Tribune on legislation on gambling in Florida:

Legislation on gambling in Florida tends to be as broad and wide-ranging as the topic itself, in all its many forms.

For instance, state Sen. Bill Galvano, a Republican from Bradenton, has filed Senate Bill 8, which he describes as a “comprehensive, statewide approach to reforming current gaming laws.” The 120-page bill would: allow the sale of Florida Lottery tickets at point-of-sale terminals, including gasoline pumps; expand blackjack in South Florida; officially authorize fantasy sports leagues regulated by a newly created “Office of Amusement”; expand the availability of slot machines; enable the owners of pari-mutuel tracks to drop increasingly unpopular dog and horse racing but maintain their card rooms.

SB 8 also contains provisions for the Legislature to approve a gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe, subject to some modifications.

Galvano is one of the Senate’s most respected leaders and is expected to be the chamber’s president next year; as a result, he has significant clout. But previous broad-based bills have failed in the Legislature and, already, House Speaker Richard Corcoran has signaled concerns about SB 8 - stating that his chamber intends to limit, not expand, gambling.

If the House and Senate reach a stalemate again this year, we urge legislators to pursue one provision of Galvano’s legislation as a single-subject bill that would affect greyhound and horse racing.

Florida currently requires permitted pari-mutuels to offer animal racing if they conduct card games with cash prizes on premises. The Sarasota Kennel Club, for instance, must conduct greyhound races in order to operate a poker room and hold tournaments.

Galvano’s bill wisely “decouples” the racing requirement from the operation of card rooms that have cash pots. After all, the total statewide handle - the amount bet at Florida pari-mutuels that feature dog racing - has dropped precipitously due to a combination of factors: concerns about the treatment of race animals, cultural changes and competition from other forms of gambling. Taxes and fees paid to the state have fallen similarly.

Despite their place in Florida’s heritage, dog and horse tracks are becoming losing propositions in our state. Yet the dogs and horses are still running, in large part to keep the card-room operators dealing. Neither the state’s racing industry nor animal-rights groups support the track-card room mandate, so what’s the point?

We recognize that legislators seek to collect and use the bargaining chips available to craft bills, reach compromises and approve laws. However, at some point, the dogged pursuit of comprehensive legislation should not prevent the Legislature from taking a simple, sensible step that enjoys widespread support.

To that end, if a grand bargain is not within reach during the 60-day annual session that begins March 7, we hope the Legislature will consider and pass a straightforward decoupling bill, eliminating the mandated link between cash-card games and animal racing.

Concerns about the treatment and safety of racing greyhounds abound. Racing-related deaths in Florida are well documented. Media have published evidence that dogs were drugged - with cocaine, in extreme examples. And there have long been questions about the conditions under which dogs are kept and “retired.” Advocates of animals have not even been able to convince Florida lawmakers and regulators to embrace mandatory reporting of injuries to greyhounds. (Many of the same, or similar, concerns about dogs apply to horses.)

Requiring track owners to conduct greyhound or horse racing that the public - gamblers and non-gamblers alike - no longer supports doesn’t make sense. Eliminating the state mandate would acknowledge well-established trends in gaming, and help greyhounds and horses avoid fates they don’t deserve.

Online:

https://www.heraldtribune.com

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Feb. 3

The Daytona Beach News-Journal on voting rights ban for Florida’s felons:

Florida is one of only three states that takes away voting rights permanently.

One out of every 10 voting-age American citizens in Florida are locked out of the ballot box due to a felony conviction. These disenfranchised Floridians are disproportionately black and male - as a recent Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigation revealed, the same group targeted by racially unequal sentencing and harsh drug laws. But more than 1 million white Floridians are impacted as well.

And for most of those whose voting rights have been taken away, the loss is permanent. Florida’s rights-restoration procedure is too difficult, its outcome too uncertain, for many of them to attempt it, even if the felony convictions happened decades ago.

Nearly every other state in the nation has recognized the cruelty and folly of stripping fundamental rights from people who have paid their debt to society. Florida is one of only three states that takes away voting rights permanently and requires an official act of clemency to get them back. And it may be alone in the nation in actually ramping up the restrictions. During his term as governor, Charlie Crist worked to make rights-restoration easier for former felons, and his initiatives worked.

But Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi undid those reforms almost as soon as they took office - setting new rules that were even tougher than those established by Crist’s predecessor Jeb Bush. Under the current guidelines, anyone with a felony conviction must wait a minimum of five years after they have completed all prison time and probation (including restitution) before even starting the process. One arrest, even for a misdemeanor that doesn’t result in formal charges, restarts that clock. The current rules place a bulky burden of documentation on the applicant, and there are no guarantees; each application must be approved by the governor and Cabinet, which meets only four times a year to hear petitions.

The numbers show the impact of the rule-tightening. During Crist’s four years in office, more than 155,000 had their rights restored; in the six years under Scott, around 2,000 have successfully won back the ability to vote. The number of people who even try has dropped dramatically.

In March, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a proposed constitutional amendment that will put Florida in line with the rest of the nation. Under that plan, put forward by Floridians for a Fair Democracy, felons’ voting rights would be automatically restored once incarceration and probation (which includes any restitution) are completed. Those convicted of murder or “sexual felonies” would be excluded (but could still seek to regain rights through the more laborious clemency process).

It’s simple and rational, something most Florida voters should be able to support, and nobody has filed to oppose it. But it still faces an uphill battle. Supporters have enough signatures (close to 70,000) to trigger the court’s review, but will need more than 600,000 additional signatures to make the 2018 ballot.

There’s a better solution, and it’s in the hands of Florida’s elected Legislature. Putting these reforms into law would eliminate the need for a constitutional amendment. State Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, has filed a bill similar to the proposed amendment. The Legislature should pass it.

Putting Florida in line with the rest of the nation on voting rights doesn’t make lawmakers soft on crime. Rather, it ratifies the primary goal of the state’s criminal justice system, which is to levy fair and proportional punishment against lawbreakers while showing them a way to regain standing as contributing members of society. That’s the right message to send: That redemption is possible, and civic participation is valued, for all Floridians.

Online:

https://www.news-journalonline.com