Lawmakers

are where we are.”

House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, whose members overwhelmingly rejected a last-minute bid by the Senate to extend the session until Tuesday in hopes of a deal, shrugged off a question about why the two Republican-led chambers are so divided.

The breakdown Friday echoed the close of the two-month regular session, when the House quit three days early in a move the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional. A special session in June was needed to complete a state budget.

“Regardless of your party affiliation, you’re here to fight for what you believe in,” said Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island. “I don’t think people anticipate that you’re going to come here … and rubber-stamp what another person is doing, whether they’re in your party or not.”

But House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach blamed GOP leaders for the upheaval.

“You’re seeing the Republican Party of Florida unraveling,” Pafford said. He called the clash between GOP leaders in the House and Senate “Republican on Republican violence.”

The price for taxpayers of the 12-day failed session hasn’t been totaled. But last year’s two-day special session to draw maps cost the public an average $74,482 a day. At that daily rate, this session would cost nearly $900,000.

After beginning the session on Aug. 10 with a staff-drawn “base” map designed to repair problems the court found with boundaries approved last year, the Senate this week enacted changes to its proposal that the House wouldn’t accept. The changes were first introduced in a Senate committee meeting Monday and adopted by the chamber on Wednesday.

The House appeared willing to stick with the base map. But after the Senate began what some House members called “tinkering,” the House came back with its own plan Thursday that erased changes senators had said were critical.

It all blew up during a Friday morning huddle between Senate Redistricting Chair Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, and his House counterpart, Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Miami.

After Oliva showed no interest in going along with district changes in Hillsborough County pushed by Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, and backed by the Senate, Galvano abruptly walked out of the meeting.

Oliva kept speaking as Galvano headed to the door.

“Up until now, these meetings were held in a very courteous fashion and what you see here probably should concern all of you and certainly anybody out in the public about the functions of their government,” Oliva said.

During the meeting, Oliva had acknowledged, “It certainly sounds like we are no closer than we were yesterday.”

Oliva warned that the Senate congressional map made questionable changes in Hillsborough, Sarasota and Manatee counties that sent ripples across Central Florida.

Lee promoted the change in his home Hillsborough County to avoid having its eastern reaches divided among three congressional districts — as the staff “base” map and later the House proposal did.

But Oliva said the Senate’s approach wasn’t “consistent,” because its map also redesigned District 10, held by U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando, to make it less compact.

Instead of being fully contained in Orange County, Webster’s district would include a portion of Lake County in the Senate plan, which Oliva warned could be viewed by a court as unconstitutional.

Justices last month ruled that in approving congressional boundaries, lawmakers had violated anti-gerrymandering standards placed by voters in the state constitution in 2010.

The congressional plan had been challenged on these grounds by the Florida League of Women Voters and other voters’ groups. The Senate last month also reached a settlement with these groups on a similar challenge to its own boundaries.

Lawmakers will be back in special session in October to work on state Senate districts. While the current deadlock between the House and Senate doesn’t bode well for that work, leaders said they thought any hard feelings would ease by then.

Under a lower court guideline, lawmakers were expected to have a congressional map completed by Tuesday. With that not done, it was unclear Friday when that court or Supreme Court justices might step in and do the map-making.

Also unclear Friday was the effect of the session’s collapse on Palm Beach County’s congressional districts. All four of the districts would have changed by some version of the maps considered by the House or Senate.

Districts 22 and 21, held by U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, and Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, were specifically cited by justices as unconstitutional. The justices suggested shifting them from their current vertical shapes spanning Broward and Palm Beach counties to a horizontal design.

Under that proposed change, Deutch’s District 21 would be moved completely within Palm Beach County; Frankel’s District 22 would be anchored in Broward but also include Boca Raton and Highland Beach.

The court did not recommend changes for Rep. Alcee Hastings’ District 20 or Rep. Patrick Murphy’s District 18. Both are Democrats.