WEEKLY ROUNDUP – NOT SO LAZY DAYS OF SUMMER
By BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
After the merciful end of the special session and the months-long process of legislating, it looked like this week would be the beginning of the normal quiet days of summer in Tallahassee. Sporadic news might break out, like the almost-daily rain storms that drench the city most afternoons, but it would be more a slow drizzle than a downpour.
Not quite.
On the first week without lawmakers in town or about to return for quite some time, the Capitol and its denizens managed to stay busy. Gov. Rick Scott took to the state budget like the villain in a slasher film, slicing almost half a billion dollars from the spending plan and setting off waves of anger in the state Senate. In two cases that could have had far-reaching ramifications in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage and a key provision in Obamacare. Even the lawyers handling matters closer to home had plenty to do, dealing with everything from hospital funding to land-buying programs.
The summer will eventually take hold, and the capital city will almost certainly return to its midyear slumber. But the relief would wait for another week, at least.
FLORIDA CHAINSAW MASSACRE
Scott’s willingness to use his veto pen has waxed and waned over his years as governor. In 2011, his first year in office, he boasted of striking $615 million from the spending plan, but that was inflated by getting rid of $305 million of largely imaginary spending that would be supported by selling state lands — a scheme that even backers didn’t believe would produced anywhere close to the promised funds.
Last year, facing re-election and needing lawmakers’ support for his priorities, Scott had a particularly light touch, trimming just $68.9 million from a roughly $77 billion budget.
This year was more like 2011, and then some. The governor slashed away with gusto, removing 450 lines totaling almost $461.4 million from the spending plan for the budget that begins next month. Everything from pay increases for state firefighters to the orange and grapefruit juice tourists can pick up at visitors centers were cut. The once $78.7 billion budget shrunk to $78.2 billion.
“I went through the budget looking at every project saying, ‘What’s a statewide priority? Can I get a good return on investment? Has it gone through a state process?'” Scott told reporters.
Regardless of that official explanation, others saw an unstated game of hardball playing out. Almost every one of Scott’s legislative priorities were reduced in size during both the regular session that ended in May and the special session that ran through most of June, and the governor was sidelined on some of the other major debates.
A plan to increase hospital spending to offset a loss in federal funds — a fix Scott opposed — was put in the budget and written in a way that made it virtually impossible for the governor to veto. And a Medicaid expansion alternative that Scott fiercely opposed passed the Senate despite the governor’s threat to use his veto against supporters. The plan eventually died in the House.
“He promised that he would punish the constituents of those legislators who disagreed with him, and he kept his promise,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.
Not everyone was critical. House Appropriations Chairman Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, applauded Scott for looking out for taxpayers and trying to impose some accountability in the budget process.
“In the totality of it, I think he did a great job of recognizing we’re not dealing with Monopoly money,” Corcoran said.
Others were left wistfully recalling the 2014-vintage Scott.
“What a difference a year makes,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon. “I wish I could’ve been the appropriations chair in an election year.”
FROM ‘SCOTUSCARE’ TO ‘UNIQUE FULFILLMENT’
Like many other states, Florida was keeping an eye on the U.S. Supreme Court this week as justices rolled out some of the most important decisions of their soon-to-end 2014-15 term. Two in particular could have shaken things up — a ruling on insurance premium subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, and a decision on whether same-sex marriage was a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
In both cases, the decision went the way of no change. But that meant more in one case than in the other.
In a 6-3 ruling issued Thursday, the court upheld the tax credits at the heart of the Affordable Care Act’s federal exchange, preserving health insurance for more than 1 million Floridians but providing no larger solutions to the national or statewide divisions on the law.
In a case that hinged on what Congress meant by making tax credits for insurance available to people using “an exchange established by the state,” a majority of justices found that credits could be given to people who purchase coverage through an exchange — like Florida’s — set up by the federal government because the state doesn’t operate one.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said other parts of the law made it clear that federal exchanges were supposed to function largely like marketplaces run by states.
“But state and federal exchanges would differ in a fundamental way if tax credits were available only on state exchanges — one type of exchange would help make insurance more affordable by providing billions of dollars to the states’ citizens; the other type of exchange would not,” Roberts wrote.
He was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
In a sharply-worded dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia accused the court of twisting provisions of the law to preserve the Affordable Care Act. Scalia also dissented in a 2012 case that upheld the constitutionality of the act.
“Today’s opinion changes the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act. That, alas, is not a novelty…We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Another sharp clash came in the court’s consideration of same-sex marriage. In that case, decided 5-4, the court found that gay couples could not be denied the right to marry. The ruling removed lingering doubts surrounding a Florida case in which a federal judge struck down the state’s voter-approved ban on gay unions.
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”
In both cases, those on the losing side vowed to fight on. Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger, the force behind the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, said the battle is far from over.
“Regardless of how it appears, today’s decision is not the final word on marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court has been wrong before, as in the case of Dredd Scott when the court attempted to declare that black people were not persons. The court was also wrong in Roe vs. Wade when it effectively declared that unborn children were not persons. Once again, the court is wrong today in its attempt to force all 50 states and all U.S. citizens to legally declare that marriage is something other than the union of one man and one woman,” Stemberger said in a statement.
NEW LIP STICKS, AND OTHER COURT FIGHTS
As Scott was cutting away at the state budget, the fight that had almost derailed it was coming to an end. After months of wrangling about the issue, a top federal official Tuesday outlined a deal to continue Florida’s Low Income Pool health-funding program for two years.
Federal official Vikki Wachino sent a letter to state Medicaid director Justin Senior that said an agreement “in principle” has been reached about the size of the program and how money will be divvied up among hospitals and other health providers.
Many of the details reflect preliminary information released last month and used by lawmakers in drawing up a state budget that signed by Scott. Those details include $1 billion in so-called LIP funding for the fiscal year that starts July 1 and a drop in funding to $608 million for the fiscal year that starts in July 2016.
The Low Income Pool, which has totaled $2.2 billion during the current fiscal year, sends additional money to hospitals and other providers to help cover the costs of treating uninsured and poor patients. The program had been scheduled to expire June 30, touching off political and legal battles.
The “great victory” prompted Scott to drop a lawsuit over the LIP funding. But another budget-related court fight loomed.
Supporters of a voter-approved constitutional amendment on land conservation funding filed a lawsuit Monday claiming state lawmakers misappropriated more than $300 million of the money voters wanted for environmental land management and acquisition.
Also, supporters of the ballot initiative want a court to declare exactly what lawmakers can and can’t do with the Amendment 1 money.
The lawsuit, filed in Leon County circuit court, contends that in using the money for expenses such as staff operations and salaries, the Legislature “defied the constitutional mandate” in spending less than half of the money for the purposes intended by voters.
Gardiner, who said in a statement that he was limiting his comments until he could further review the lawsuit, supported the Legislature’s Amendment 1 spending plan.
“The budget the Senate unanimously passed on Friday not only meets, but by every measure exceeds the requirements of Amendment 1, including the use of general revenue to add to ‘doc stamp’ funds set aside by the amendment to further fund important environmental initiatives clearly spelled out in the ballot language,” Gardiner said in a statement.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Gov. Rick Scott signed the state budget, but only after vetoing $461.4 million in local projects and other spending.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Do we want to celebrate and sanction a symbol on public property that reminds us of hatred, slavery and division? Do we want to pass down a feeling of complacency with the status quo on this issue to my children and your children? I love the South and know we are better than this.”—Daniel Uhlfelder, a Walton County lawyer lobbying for the removal of a Confederate flag flying in front of the courthouse in DeFuniak Springs. The flag has come under fire across the nation in recent weeks after a man suspected of harboring white supremacist views allegedly killed nine black church-goers in South Carolina.