The Political Whore

By Jim Johnson
PoHo Contributor

Jim Johnson is the creator of The State of Sunshine blog.

Today is the 35th day of the 2009 Legislative session.

Monday is a light day in the House, but a bit busier in the Senate. Here are a few bills worthy of interest:

Florida House of Representatives

The Rules & Calendar Council will hear House Joint Resolution 919 by Rep. Will Weatherford. This bill proposes an amendment to the Florida Constitution to change the class size requirements:

• For prekindergarten through grade 3, the maximum number of students that could be assigned to each teacher in an individual classroom is raised from 18 to 21, but the school level average cannot exceed 18 students.
• For grades 4 through 8, the maximum number of students that could be assigned to each teacher in an individual classroom is raised from 22 to 27, but the school level average cannot exceed 22 students.
• For grades 9 through 12, the calculation method is limited to the average number of students at the school level, which cannot exceed 25 students.

The same council will hear House Joint Resolution 7057, a committee bill by Military & Local Affairs Policy Committee — This is another proposed amendment to reduce the limit on annual increases in assessments of non-homestead property from a 10 percent increase per year to 5 percent. (The 10% cap was introduced by Amendment 1 in 2008.)

Florida Senate

The Commerce Committee will hear Senate Bill 2626 by Sen. Mike Haridopolos. The bill will make a significant number of changes to Florida’s telecommunications laws. The bill, which has more than 50 Republican and Democrat co-sponsors, creates the “Consumer Choice and Protection Act.” It allows telephone companies (Verizon, BellSouth, Embarq, etc) to operate most of their services outside of regulation — mainly to provide competition with unregulated cable, wireless and VoIP companies. Florida residents with only basic service would still have the protection of regulations; but add any non-basic service (call-waiting, caller-id, voice mail, etc), and the company is freed from most regulations.

The Higher Education Committee will hear Senate Bill 2682 by Sen. Ken Pruitt. The bill implements some of the recommendations of the Florida College System Task Force and the State College Pilot Project. The biggest change requires community college graduates to get priority over out-of-state applicants for transfer into Florida’s state universities. (Community colleges can also change their name to “State College” if they are accredited for granting baccalaureate degrees.)

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear Senate Bill 448 by Sen. Nan Rich, which makes bestiality a crime. Apparently, despite the efforts of prosecutors in the State of Florida, persons who are caught in the act of sexual intercourse with an animal cannot generally be charged with or convicted of a sex-related crime — only animal cruelty.

Posted in The Legislature | Leave a comment