Constitutional conflict, election indigestion, and help us crowd-source the budget

This week marks the midway point of the 60-day legislative session. You taking this seriously? How about a good laugh tonight at the Sometimes Annual Capitol Press Skits? Members of the media will swallow their pride and take the stage for an evening that will either make Capitol denizens chuckle, or ruin their evening. Legislators will also attempt humor with video cameos. And it’s all for a good cause: scholarships for journalists. If you’re in Tallahassee, you can still get tickets here.

Constitutional conflict: While the first half of the session has been tame, almost mellow, there have been surprises — such as the controversy over school vouchers that in fact is nothing short of a constitutional conflict.

After the Orlando Sentinel revealed that Florida’s private school voucher program was funding schools that discriminated against LGBTQ students and parents, a handful of corporations pulled their donations to the scholarship program, unleashing a flurry of hand-wringing and fence-mending in Tallahassee and beyond.

The controversy underscored an issue long simmering under the surface of the voucher debate: Is it acceptable to use taxpayer dollars to fund private programs that violate someone’s civil rights when it is done in the name of religious freedom?

On Friday, Fifth Third Bank, reversed course and said it would continue to support the program because it had been “assured that students and their families make the decision as to which schools best fit” their needs. However, the sticky constitutional question remains.

Restricting transgender youth: Meanwhile, a bill to punish Florida doctors that provide minors with hormone therapy or to perform sex reassignment surgery had a lively debate in a House committee, but appears dead for the session.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Election indigestion? Last week’s Iowa Caucus debacle had to give some Florida elected officials a knot in their stomachs. It was a wake-up call, and a reminder that the more we depend on technology, the more it can fail. We will never forget the Butterfly Ballot, the 537-vote margin, and the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the 2000 president election.

So how dependent is Florida on untested technology? A bill rolling through the Legislature with bi-partisan approval has us asking that question. HB 1005/SB 1312 would allow counties to expedite recounts - like the ones that characterized the U.S. Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner’s races in 2018 - by purchasing proprietary software available only from a single vendor.

The Brennan Center for Justice warns “it would result in an end-run around certification processes for voting systems in the state.” The House staff analysis notes it “may result in a positive fiscal impact to private sector companies” – and adds that “only one machine has been authorized to conduct independent automated audits in the state.”

What does this mean for security, and election best practices that discourages dependence on a single technology? As Secretary of State Laurel Lee has been telling audiences, the threat of hackers undermining our elections results is very real and perception is reality. If voters don’t trust the system, they won’t trust the results.

Suppression or process? It’s only natural that this election cycle we’ll hear Democrats in Florida complain about voter suppression and Republicans defend their policy decisions in the name of process integrity. So we’ll be watching how a change made last year performs during early voting this primary season. The law requires college campuses to have a minimum amount of non-permitted parking in order to serve as an voting center.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams was in Miami last week talking about how that provision is intended to deter college students from voting.

Citizen yes, vote no: Another way to suppress the vote is to keep people from becoming naturalized citizens. As the Herald’s Lauraro Grinspan explains, the number of permanent residents in Florida whose case is pending approval at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is 62,079 — a 75% increase over five years ago. That’s more than the margins of the 2018 recounts.

A solution without a problem? Sen. Jeff Brandes dodged a bullet last week and amended his bill to remove language that opponents say would have created new hurdles for colleges students to vote, but in doing so he decided to take aim at a phantom problem. A last-minute amendment would ban cities and counties from doing what the St. Petersburg City Council did in 2017: abolishing super PACs and prohibiting spending by foreign-influenced corporations in city elections.

Immigration spin or win? This week the controversial immigration bill to require private employers to use the federal government’s E-Verify system gets its first committee hearing in the Senate. Because the original version of the bill has been rejected by both House Speaker José Oliva and Senate President Bill Galvano, and because it was an election promise of Gov. Ron DeSantis, we are watching for some political spin that calls it a win. Speculation is that Sen. Tom Lee’s bill will be amended to put into law what is already in practice through executive order: a mandate that applies only to the hiring of state government workers.

Keys congrestion: How does a legislator open the door to more development on the hurricane-prone and environmentally-fragile Florida Keys? You slip an amendment into a House bill that extends hurricane evacuation time on the archipelago from 24 hours to 30 hours. Read more about the plan by Rep. Bob Rommel, a Republican restaurant owner from Naples, appears dead for the session.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Florida’s judicial fraternity: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed 56 judges during his first year in office, more than half of them women and nearly 40% of them minorities. But they’re identical in one respect: They all share the same strict judicial philosophy. Good read from Tampa Bay Times’ Lawrence Mower here.

Budgeting: It’s that time of the year when statehouse journalists earn their already-low pay. Many of us are spending evenings and weekends reading boring budget details as we scour the massive appropriations bills set to be approved this week in both the House and Senate. The two chambers are gearing up to reconcile their differences in a conference committee. We’re looking for surprises, pet projects, cozy deals and obvious conflicts.

If you’d like to help us crowd-source the scrutiny, drop me, Mary Ellen Klas, a note at: meklas@miamiherald.com.

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