Powerful panel needs public credibility

The panel that can ask voters to change the Florida Constitution holds its ninth public hearing today in Tampa. The much more important meeting, however, will happen several hours earlier.

Before the hearing in Tampa, an eightmember committee of the 37-member Constitution Revision Commission will debate rules for how the group will consider and approve proposed constitutional amendments. The committee will present the rules to the full commission for adoption next month.

You read that right. The commission has been meeting since March without knowing how it will decide which state constitutional amendments to put before voters in November 2018.

The commission’s early actions, meanwhile, have raised suspicions that insider politics are at work, despite Chairman Carlos Beruff ’s comment last week that the public hearings are “the most important part of our process.”

With that sentiment in mind, a coalition of 15 groups this week sent a letter to the rules committee suggesting changes to the proposed rules. If the committee includes the changes and the full commission agrees, the commission will gain credibility.

One idea would make the commission’s work more transparent. The draft proposal would let two commissioners discuss proposed amendments behind closed doors. They’d only have to let the public know if a third member joined them.

This is a terrible idea, one that violates the spirit of the Sunshine Law, which forbids two members of a public body from secretly discussing matters on which they will vote. It could create games of telephone tag — or daisy chain decision-making — where members privately twist arms one at a time. If members believe something they hear in private might be essential in influencing their vote, the public deserves to hear the information, too.

On a related point, the draft rules state, “All records of the commission shall be accessible to the public unless otherwise exempted by law.” The letter correctly asks for the definition of “accessible.” Records should be open to the public. Period.

Like the Florida Legislature, the commission will get many proposals from the public and individual members. Also like the Legislature, the commission will divide itself into committees, each dealing with amendments that apply to certain parts of the Florida Constitution.

Unlike the Legislature, however, those committees should not have the power to kill a proposal. Current rules would allow that.

The coalition’s letter points out that the last time this commission — convened every 20 years — met, committee recommendations were advisory, not binding. A small number of commissioners might object to a proposal, but the full commission should decide whether it reaches the ballot.

Similarly, the draft current rules would allow committee chairmen to stifle public debate. As in 1997-98, a chairman would have “all authority necessary to ensure the orderly operation of the committee. . .” But this time, a chairman could do so by “recognizing or not recognizing non-member presenters,” otherwise known as members of the public. The coalition correctly argues, “The only reason to exclude members of the public should be for public disturbance or disorderly conduct,” as was the case 20 years ago.

It will be tempting for some commissioners to ignore the coalition’s recommendations. This is the first commission to be dominated by Republican appointees, and the coalition includes groups often seen as aligned with Democrats — such as the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida Education Association and Planned Parenthood.

The coalition’s ideas, however, are nonpartisan. Commission members should want their process to be as open and credible as possible. Any amendment they propose would need 60 percent of the vote to become law. We saw last year with the defeat of a utility-backed solar amendment that the public doesn’t like sham, specialinterest amendments.

As in 1997-98, the proposed rules require 22 of the commission’s 37 members to place an amendment on the ballot. That basically matches the 60 percent threshold needed to get an amendment through the Florida Senate and the Florida House.

This time, though, rules about procedure especially matter. Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, appointed 18 commission members. And both said they wanted appointees who would push amendments that advance pet policy goals.

Some might be proposals that couldn’t pass the Legislature. For example, Negron criticized the lawsuit that forced the Legislature to redraw congressional and state Senate maps. The League of Women Voters was a plaintiff. A bill to make such lawsuits harder failed this year in the Legislature. One of Negron’s appointees is former Senate President Don Gaetz, who in 2012 oversaw the drawing of those illegal maps.

Beruff said average Floridians are “the ones we’re going to affect for the rest of their lives for the next 20 years, or their children’s lives.” He’s right.

The commission’s rules should favor the public, not the political insiders.

If members believe something they hear in private might be essential in influencing their vote, the public deserves to hear the information, too.