Even as Florida Democrats pushed Monday for wide-ranging action, House Republicans continued to signal that this week’s special session could end with a thud – and within minutes of its opening.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor, said she planned to meet Tuesday with Panhandle property appraisers and businesses to call for adding tax-reductions and other proposals to the session agenda. More than 20 bills also have been added to the two proposed joint resolutions that include the thrust of Gov. Charlie Crist’s push for a November ballot measure banning offshore oil-drilling.
But the House, which has vigorously opposed Crist’s call for the four-day special session, is showing no signs that it plans to do anything Tuesday other than meet its constitutional duty by gaveling into session – then swiftly adjourning.
“Nobody’s called me into the huddle and said the signals had changed,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, chairman of that chamber’s Select Committee on Florida’s Economy, which does plan to meet Tuesday afternoon.
“But it sounds like both the House and Senate will go into session about noon. After that, it sounds like the House may go home,” Gaetz said.
The Senate is preparing a tentative calendar for the special session week that anticipates Gaetz’s committee reviewing a host of spill-related issues Tuesday with the goal of preparing legislation for a likely second special session in September. The proposed constitutional amendment would be taken up by at least one Senate committee Wednesday, with a floor vote planned for Thursday.
Senate leaders, though, acknowledge they don’t plan to act if the House calls it quits early. And a House calendar for the week only showed the session set to begin at noon Tuesday. The following three days are blank, with a session scheduled only “at the call of the speaker.”
Gaetz and most legislative Republicans criticized Crist’s decision to call lawmakers into session this week to put on the ballot a proposed constitutional ban on oil-drilling within state waters. Crist faces an Aug. 4 deadline to get the measure before voters in November, but an even greater political Everest facing the governor is that the measure needs approval from three-fifths of the House and Senate.
Outnumbered Democrats support the amendment. But with overwhelming Republican majorities in the House and Senate united in opposition, the measure appears effectively dead on arrival.
House Republican leaders also look intent on shutting down the session swiftly, further swatting back Crist who has alienated most in the GOP since breaking with the party in April to run for U.S. Senate as an independent.
Polls show a plurality of Floridians support a ban on drilling – reversing the public stance of early April when surveys showed a majority of voters supported seeking to extract oil from within state waters extending 10 miles offshore. The Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 – followed by Crist’s break with the Florida Republican Party nine days later – has profoundly changed state politics.
On Monday, environmentalists tried to increase the pressure on lawmakers by releasing a poll showing that 71 percent of Floridians want a chance to vote on the drilling ban. The survey, which interviewed registered voters July 15-17, also showed that 36 percent of respondents said they were more likely to re-elect a legislator supporting the ballot measure banning drilling, with 30 percent less likely and 33 percent unsure.
“This is not a partisan issue,” said Manley Fuller, director of the Florida Wildlife Federation, one of five environmental organizations that commissioned by the poll by ISSI of Washington, D.C. “All Floridians, regardless of political affiliation, are harmed by oil spills.”
Politics, though, seems to course through this week’s special session. House and Senate Republicans, most of whom support Senate Republican contender Marco Rubio, the former House speaker who also opposes a drilling ban, deride Crist saying he has called the session chiefly to spur his Senate campaign. Florida law, in place more than 20 years, already bans near-shore drilling, though House Republicans pushed to lift the moratorium during the past two legislative sessions.
Rep. Ron Saunders, D-Key West, said the same Republican leaders who insist the ban is unnecessary also endorsed a 2008 constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage – although such unions were already barred under state law.
“The Republican Party of Florida spent $300,000 just two years ago putting on the ballot something that is already prohibited under state law,” Saunders said of the state party’s backing of the ballot initiative pushed by the conservative Florida Family Policy Council. “These same leaders are saying no to a constitutional ban on drilling. Should we believe what they said two years ago, or what they’re saying now?”
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, also chided House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, and Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, saying that since opening Florida waters to oil-drilling was considered each of the past two sessions, voters should get a chance to say whether they now want a drilling ban.
Nelson also said a constitutional ban could help keep rigs away from Florida, even in federal waters of the Gulf.
“The economic and environmental ravages from the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the strong message that could be sent to Washington should be enough to convince a responsible legislature to act,” Nelson said.
By John Kennedy
The News Service of Florida
