Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
DeSantis flexes veto muscle wisely. But what took so long?
Gov. Ron DeSantis did the right thing by vetoing two contentious bills the Legislature passed in March. But the timing was strange. It should not have taken threeand-a-half months for him to decide their fate. That was more time than it took the Legislature to consider them.
We’ll get into that. First, the vetoes.
One bill (SB 1796) overhauled the alimony laws in drastic ways, leaving too little discretion to judges. DeSantis correctly observed that its retroactive application overrode existing contracts, which could be unconstitutional. That was his sole objection, leaving lawmakers in the dark as to what else in the controversial bill he might allow or oppose next time — and this perennial issue will surely be back.
The other (SB 620) was the Legislature’s grossest assault yet on home rule. Reportedly lobbied by so-called puppy mills that oppose more regulation of pet stores, it would have entitled all businesses to sue for lost profits they attribute to local ordinances. We editorialized in favor of a veto in mid-May.
The law would have crippled governments closest to the people for the sake of lobbies closer to the Legislature. DeSantis said he vetoed it because it was overly broad and ambiguous. True.
An unprovoked attack
But he leveled an unprovoked attack on local governments, saying they “overstep their authority and unreasonably burden businesses through policies that range from the merely misguided to the politically motivated.” He referred to “bizarre and draconian measures adopted by some local governments during COVID-19.”
A better approach, he wrote, would be “targeted pre-emption legislation when local governments act in a way that frustrates state policy and/or undermines the rights of Floridians.”
In other words, he was telling the lobbies to try again. With this veto, DeSantis wisely stopped a torrent of costly nuisance lawsuits against local taxpayers, but he’s still no friend of cities and counties.
There was more partisan propaganda in his highly questionable veto of a bill (SB 1382) to enhance the Department of Revenue’s authority in dealing with businesses suspected of withholding sales, beverage and tobacco taxes. He objected that the bill would burden small businesses “in a year when the Biden administration’s policies have led to record inflation and economic turmoil. “
Had DeSantis signed any of those veto messages before a special session in May, the Legislature would have had an opportunity to override them. Such long delays are poor policy and bad precedent.
Process takes too long
The short explanation is that the House speaker and Senate president didn’t get around to signing the bills until June 17. That’s a routine duty required by the Constitution before legislation is sent to the governor. After a session ends, he has 15 days to act, but the Constitution does not set a deadline for the presiding officer signatures.
Past governors have orchestrated the flow of legislation. DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, has not replied to our e-mail asking whether that’s still happening.
Limited delays are reasonable. Living by so-called Parkinson’s law — that work expands to fill the time available — the Legislature puts off completing most of its work until the final days. If passed bills went downstairs to the governor all at once, it would be overwhelming.
As it was, DeSantis had 37 bills on his desk last Friday, most of them noncontroversial. He signed 32 and vetoed five.
Earlier, there was another conspicuously long lapse between passage of the $112 billion budget bill on April 14 and DeSantis’s decision to approve all but $3.1 billion in spending. He acted June 2, the same day legislative leaders signed the budget.
That delay stretched over the May special session on property insurance, at which DeSantis also demanded and got his congressional gerrymander and legislation to punish his corporate critics at Disney World by repealing their special taxing district.
By holding onto the budget and its billions of dollars in legislators’ pet programs, the leaders gave DeSantis a cudgel of line-item veto power to get what he wanted from the special session. He rewarded those leaders by vetoing a series of their pet programs.
Without any deadline, a presiding officer could hold a bill indefinitely, effectively killing it unless the courts intervened. Someone could contrive to hold a bill past the next election.
Manipulating delivery dates invites shenanigans. The longer that a controversial measure is in limbo, the greater the pressure on interested parties to contribute to a governor’s PAC or to the fund-raising committees run by key lawmakers.
Amending the Constitution is complicated, and it shouldn’t be necessary to end the intrigue over when bills go to the governor. The legislative leaders work for the people, not for him. They should sign bills as they are enacted, or very soon after. It’s not as if the governor will be surprised by what’s in them.