The Political Whore

By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor
Kriseman is blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.

There is certainly no shortage of blogworthy material in Tallahassee these days. The indictment of our former speaker, Rep. Ray Sansom, has been greeted by mostly silence in the Capitol, with even my Democratic colleagues preferring to focus on the business at hand rather than score easy political points. I had thought the strong language contained in the grand jury’s indictment and the damning assessment of our legislative process would temper the culture of secrecy, but that hasn’t been the case. Participation in the budget process has been restricted to just a few Republicans, a late-filed amendment to allow oil drilling in the Gulf just a few miles off our shores was heard with almost no notice given to the amendment’s likely opponents, and a broader energy package is expected to come before the full House without prior committee or council vetting.

There’s more.

Secret ballots in the work place are under attack. Insurance companies have again been deregulated. Attempts were made to interfere with our voting rights. Despite years of leadership’s failure to fully fund public education, the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship (aka school vouchers) has been expanded to send more of our tax dollars to private schools, where the children receiving those vouchers are not being held to the same accountability standards as our public schoolchildren.

All of this has been good for the sale of newspapers but bad for Floridians.

Finally, despite seven weeks of session and five months of committee meetings, we may cross the finish line without a budget agreement approved by both chambers, our only real requirement under state law.

And the beat goes on.

(Photo credit: Florida House of Representatives/Mark Foley)

Posted in The Legislature | Leave a comment