Does state have ‘broken’ Legislature?

Florida has one of the shortest legislative sessions, despite being third-largest in nation

Every year, Florida lawmakers wrap up their regular session after 60 days, and Capitol reporters write about all the bills they rushed through in the final week or hours, even as others died on the vine.

The legislators, many of whom are independently wealthy, can serve for only eight years in each chamber due to a referendum approved in 1992. That leads to yet another Florida legislative tradition — political parties choosing the House Speaker, Senate President and other leaders years in advance.

Critics ask why Florida’s Legislature operates the way it does. It has one of the nation’s shortest sessions despite being the thirdlargest state, and some of the strictest term limits.

“Tallahassee is broken,” said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. “Session is too quick, term limits are too short and lawmakers are paid too little.”

Bob Graham, a Democrat who served as Florida governor from 1979 to 1987, called for “a full consideration of the legislative structure and process in Florida.”

Other lawmakers and experts say the status quo isn’t going anywhere, either because they believe the process is working as intended or that voters have no appetite for such reforms or for politicians adding years to their time in Tallahassee.

“It’s not going to change,” said Dick Batchelor, a Democratic consultant and former state representative. “The people are not going to support additional time in office. And the price we pay in exchange for that is more turnover of elected officials and an exponential increase in the influence of lobbyists and staff.”

‘Mad Dash to Sine Die’

The last few days in April saw amendments added to bills that made it more difficult to get citizen initiatives on the ballot and to allow former felons register to vote. Another bill created three new controversial toll roads.

The bill came as lawmakers faced the ticking clock of “sine die,” the term for the day the Legislature adjourns. There is no requirement that they meet again for the rest of the year.

Special sessions are generally rare, and the result is what Smith calls “a mad dash to sine die, with bills rushed through without being read and vetted by the public.”

“Certainly having more time to be able to vet legislation, hear from the public and make informed votes would be a good thing,” Smith said.

The brevity of the session makes Florida an outlier among large states — save for Texas, where its legislature meets only every other year.

California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and Massachusetts have what the National Conference of State Legislatures call “full-time” or “full-time lite” legislatures, where the job of being a legislator is a member’s yearround job.

More than 84% of a legislator’s time in those states is spent at their elected job, according to the NCSL. Florida is considered a “hybrid” legislature, where time and pay are much less than at full-time bodies.

“Being a legislator doesn’t just mean attending legislative sessions and voting on proposed laws,” said NCSL policy specialist Selena Saucedo. “State legislators also spend large amounts of time assisting constituents, studying state issues during the interim and campaigning for election. Any assessment of the time requirements of the job should include all of these elements of legislative life.”

But even some of the hybrid states, such as New Jersey, have year-round sessions in which the legislature never fully adjourns.

While the Florida session itself is short, beginning in March in odd years and January in even years, committee hearings do begin several months beforehand — including as soon as September for the 2020 session that will open on Jan. 14.

Veteran state Sen. David Simmons, R-Longwood, said a short session “has its benefits and its burdens.”

“The whirlwind time works to weed out bad legislation — and some good legislation,” Simmons acknowledged. But it “results in an assurance that we continue to not fall into the trap that exists in D.C. And the perpetual time periods [other] legislatures have to sometimes do a lot less than we’ve done in Florida.”

Batchelor, though, had a more cynical view — that many voters don’t want the government to do too much.

“Every day of session costs the taxpayers $50,000,” Batchelor said.

Part-time pay

Another side effect of a 60-day session is low salaries for lawmakers.

The average pay in 2014 for the 10 full-time legislatures in the U.S. was more than $82,000, the NCSL reports. In Florida, though, the average salary for legislators in 2019 is less than $30,000. (Some in leadership get extra compensation.)

“People need to understand, state legislators are not members of Congress, we don’t make six figures, they don’t pay a living wage,” Smith said. “It leads to rich people running for office who can afford to go without a salary … and discourages working class people from running for office.”

The average net worth of a Sunshine State senator is about $5.5 million, the Florida Phoenix calculated. The average worth of a state House member is about $1.5 million.

“People always ask, ‘Should I run for office?’” Smith said. “But many working people can’t ask their boss for four months off to go to Tallahassee to be a lawmaker.”

But Smith knows those salary figures aren’t about to change any time soon.

“I would say lawmakers advocating for a raise is not a popular stance,” Smith said.

Collateral damage

Experts and lawmakers agree that eight-year term limits, imposed by voters in a 1992 referendum, have had the biggest effect on how Tallahassee operates.

Dubbed “Eight is Enough” by its supporters, the proposal got on the ballot after Phil Handy, a Winter Park entrepreneur, launched a drive that gathered more than 530,000 petition signatures.

The Orlando Sentinel editorial board opposed the idea at the time, saying it “takes away the basic right of voters to choose their representatives.”

But the measure passed overwhelmingly, with almost 77% of the vote.

“The main complaint of the Legislature before term limits was those people who had been in office for decades and had grown arrogant and just assumed they’d be elected,” said Ben Wilcox, research director for the watchdog group Integrity Florida. “And while there were legislators like that, there were legislators who had served a long time and were considered statesmen, people with the benefit of perspective and experience.”

Now, Smith said, “experienced public servants are pushed out too soon and replaced by inexperienced freshmen who rely on lobbyists and party leadership to know how to vote.”

Lobbyists were compensated to the tune of almost $135 million in Tallahassee in 2018, a number that is almost surely low because lobbying firms only need to report the median figure of the total range of money being spent.

More than 500 clients hired lobbyists to petition lawmakers on the state budget this year, according to the Tampa Bay Times, and prominent Tallahassee firms such as GrayRobinson, Capital City Consulting, and Smith Bryan & Myers work on behalf of scores of clients every year to lobby lawmakers who have been in town far less than they have.

As a consequence, Graham said, “legislators are less like those in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, where the legislators [themselves] were the source of knowledge. They knew the history, the background, the rationale for state policy.”

Now, Graham said, term limits “have increased the influence of lobbyists and leadership. I don’t think there’s been a period in modern Florida political history when the leadership of the House and Senate have exercised the degree of control that is the case today.”

The “collateral damage” of term limits, Batchelor said, is an increasing churn in leadership even as it becomes more important.

“Leadership has exponentially more influence,” Batchelor said. “But they pay for it. … You want to announce for [a leadership position]? Fine. You want to demonstrate leadership abilities? Fine. But you must demonstrate the ability to raise funds. You have to get money for legislators if you want them to commit to you for speaker.”

Rather than wait until a new legislature is elected to choose new leadership as outgoing leaders are forced to retire, lawmakers in each party choose them sometimes years in advance.

In June, Republicans chose state Rep. Daniel Perez, a freshman representative elected in 2018, to be House speaker beginning with the 2024 elections – more than five years ahead.

To gain support, “everybody has a ‘leadership fund,’” Batchelor said of affiliated political action committees, or PACs. “They’re opportunities for lobbyists to really influence legislators beyond the [$1,000] limit.”

Current GOP Speaker Jose Oliva’s PAC, called Conservative Principles for Florida, raised more than $3.2 million and has doled out maximum $1,000 contributions to more than 70 GOP campaigns since 2014 – and numerous $500 donations from before the limit was doubled in 2013.

If there’s anything he could change in Tallahassee, Batchelor said, “it would be to do away with leadership funds. They’re a real bane to the whole process.”

But state Rep. Rene Plasencia, R-Orlando, said while lobbyists and leadership are more powerful, “it also gives staff much more of a priority. The new chair of a committee, it may not be something he’s an expert in – but his staff is. Serve 16 to 20 years [on a staff], and all of a sudden you’ve become an expert.”

Plasencia still thinks term limits should be in place, “but you need it to maybe be more than eight years, maybe 12 to 16 years.”

Simmons said he supports the current eight-year limits, but added, “it would have worked at 10 years or 12 years. I can’t see it ever more than 12 years.”

But, he concluded, he ultimately backs what voters decided in 1992.

“I’d really like to see somebody try.”