(Recap and analysis of the week in state government)
By BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
As the Independence Day holiday approached this week, many of the fireworks surrounding Florida politics were in the courtroom, where a sweeping state law on abortion came under a judge’s harsh scrutiny.
Aside from that and the usual handful of statements about American freedom and the like, most of state government was relatively quiet. Gov. Rick Scott and Enterprise Florida hacked away at that state agency, blaming job reductions and other trims on the Legislature’s refusal to set aside $250 million for economic development incentives. And legislative Democrats forced a poll on whether to hold a special session on gun legislation following the deadly massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. (Spoiler alert: It won’t happen.)
Otherwise, the news void that often descends in the days before barbecues and sparklers remained in place, a final calm before the conventions in July and the sprint to the fall elections that follow. The literal fireworks will be set off on Monday, but the metaphorical ones will continue to light up the state long after that.
‘OWN TIME AND DIME’
At the beginning of the week, the clearest thing about the Florida impact of a U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting how far states could go in restricting abortion was that it was unclear. And while that was still being debated as the week closed, a federal judge put the most controversial elements in the state’s new law about abortion on hold.
Hours before the law was set to take effect, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction barring the state from refusing to provide funding to abortion providers for other medical services or from dramatically increasing its inspections of abortion records.
The decision, issued late Thursday, was largely a victory for Planned Parenthood affiliates who had fought the law, approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott earlier this year.
“As a result of today’s decision, thousands of people across Florida have the peace of mind that comes with knowing they can access essential reproductive health care, such as cancer screenings, birth control, and well-woman exams. This ruling also sends an unmistakable message to politicians to quit playing politics with women’s health,” said Lillian A. Tamayo, president of Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida.
In his 25-page ruling, Hinkle noted that there has been a long-held prohibition against using public funds to pay for abortions.
But the Florida law goes further and “refuses to fund services that are wholly unrelated to abortions,” Hinkle wrote of the part of the law that would block public funds from going to abortion providers.
“The provision does this based not on any objection to how the funds are being spent — on things like testing for sexually transmitted disease or dropout prevention — and not based on any objection to the quality of the services being provided, but solely because the recipients of the funds choose to provide abortions separate and apart from any public funding — as the Supreme Court has put it, on their ‘own time and dime,'” he wrote.
Hinkle didn’t grant the affiliates’ request to keep the state from using a revised definition of the first trimester of a pregnancy, but he warned the state to “take note” that his decision was based on its attorneys’ representation that the new definition of first trimester was no different than that which has been used for decades.
Supporters of the bill were outraged. State Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Lakeland Republican who sponsored the 2016 law, blasted Hinkle’s ruling as “a clear infringement on both the Legislature’s constitutional authority to appropriate taxpayer dollars, and our responsibility to properly regulate medical facilities.”
“Under our constitution, it is the people’s elected representatives, not appointed federal judges, who are tasked with making decisions about what entities should be receiving limited taxpayer dollars,” Stargel said in a statement. “The people of Florida have consistently elected legislative and executive leaders who oppose the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion and today’s ruling is yet another example of the pro-abortion movement utilizing the courtroom to fight battles it cannot win at the ballot box.”
Hinkle’s opinion didn’t lean heavily on the earlier decision by the Supreme Court, which voted 5-3 to void a Texas law that justices said went too far in limiting access to the procedure. But advocates for legalized abortion said they hoped the high court’s ruling would give them a way to fight continuing efforts from social conservatives to restrict abortion.
“We’ve seen an increase every year in the number of bills filed, but also in the extremist content of their nature,” said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. “So we’ve seen these attacks escalate, and we fully anticipate that we’ll have to continue this fight.”
A SMALLER ENTERPRISE
The lingering fallout of a battle between Scott and the Legislature over funding for economic development incentives will be felt by nearly a dozen employees at Enterprise Florida, as the board of directors voted this week to ax 26 positions at the agency — which will translate to 11 people losing their jobs.
The Enterprise Florida Board of Directors voted Friday to accept a committee recommendation, made earlier in the week, to eliminate the positions and also tighten up on its office space. The jobs cuts will be minimized by not filling 15 positions that will open up because of retirements and resignations.
The main driver behind the decision was the Legislature’s refusal to back Scott’s call for $250 million that EFI could have used to lure economic development projects to Florida. Instead, the $82 billion state budget that went into effect Friday contains $23.7 million for the agency.
Following that rejection — one of the biggest defeats Scott suffered in the 2016 legislative session — the governor called for a review of the agency.
“All of us would have loved the Legislature to fully fund Enterprise Florida, but they didn’t,” he said this week.
The job cuts aren’t the only changes the board decided to make. Enterprise Florida will reduce office-space leases in Miami, Tallahassee and Orlando while closing outposts in China and South Africa. Operations in Canada will be trimmed, and the contract with the state’s office in Japan will be renegotiated.
Some initiatives that used to fall under Enterprise Florida, meanwhile, will be shifted to the control of the Department of Economic Opportunity.
POLL POSITION
The likelihood of any crackdown on gun sales in Florida following the June 12 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was never very high, but Florida Democrats will make Republicans vote on firearm restrictions in another way, by taking a poll on whether to hold a special session on the topic.
The minority party had little trouble rounding up enough members to force the poll — that only requires a fifth of the Legislature — but faces an almost impossible task in getting enough GOP lawmakers to vote over the next week to travel back to Tallahassee for a special meeting, especially in an election year.
In all, 46 House and Senate members requested the poll, representing a vast majority of the Democrats in the Legislature. But a similar effort to revise the state’s self-defense laws following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 fell flat. It will take another 50 signatures, including dozens of Republicans, to call the session.
“The key is we’ve requested at the very least (that) we review reforms we all support, such as banning people … who are on the terrorist FBI watch list” from buying guns, said state Sen. Darren Soto, an Orlando Democrat who is running for a Central Florida congressional seat.
The push for the special session comes in the wake of the massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub, during which a gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others before he was killed by police. The attack is the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history.
Republican leaders left little doubt about where they stood. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli issued a statement Tuesday encouraging each member to “follow their conscience,” while quickly saying he won’t vote for a session “motivated by partisan politics.”
“I know I speak for representatives of both parties when I say that if there was a meaningful, constitutional, and implementable state law to prevent future terrorist attacks, we would certainly pass it,” said Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island. “I strongly support a ban on terrorists’ ability to purchase firearms. Since the list is maintained at the federal level, the state cannot pass an effective or constitutional law implementing such a ban.”
STORY OF THE WEEK: A federal judge blocked a sweeping new Florida law on abortion just hours before it was set to take effect. The decision came days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a key ruling on how far states can go in restricting the procedure.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “That last drought we had — if we get just half of that, this bay may never be able to rebuild itself.” —Shannon Hartsfield, president of the Franklin County Seafood Workers’ Association, on conditions at Apalachicola Bay. Florida blames water consumption in Georgia for lowering flows to the bay, which has impacted the region’s seafood industry.
