Kick Ass (22 page)

The strongest deterrent to a freeloading politician is the threat of public exposure, and here the grand jury missed the boat. In what seems an act of misguided mercy, the names of the peripatetic lawmakers were deliberately withheld from the report.

Voters then were left to guess, for instance, which sneaky weasel took a free trip and then tried to conceal the fact by paying with his own credit card. Later the legislator approached the lobbyist and demanded full reimbursement for the junketin cash.

Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs knows the identities of the alleged perpetrators, and is considering prosecution. Most of the crimes would be misdemeanors, and the penalties would be laughably light.

Nonetheless, a trial would be useful to document the snug relationships between powerful lobbyists and elected officials. Next time the insurance industry flies your local senator to a Paris vacation, you shouldn’t have to read about it in a grand jury report.

You deserve a slide show.

Senate remap effort on road to disaster

April 2, 1992

One way to save Florida tons of money, and loads of embarrassment, would be to abolish the Senate.

No one would miss these bunglers, who are stinking up Tallahassee with their rotten, self-serving politics. While the state rapidly goes broke, senators remain pathologically obsessed with redistricting. Translation: saving their own sorry butts.

Republicans want more Republican districts, Democrats want to cling to what they’ve got. The logjam has paralyzed government. On Tuesday, the Senate froze 20-20 on a vote to adjourn. That’s how bad things are.

Voters aren’t the only ones to be nauseated. Last week, a panel of federal judges intervened to snatch redistricting powers from the Legislature. Barring a last-minute miracle at the Capitol, boundaries for new legislative and congressional districts will be drawn by a nonpartisan expert, and ratified by the judges in late May.

That’s the best news Floridians could get. It’s painfully clear that politicians can’t be trusted with such important matters.

To appreciate the Senate’s miserably irresponsible performance, look no farther than its president, Gwen Margolis, a Democrat from North Dade.

Margolis is full of ambition. She wants to run for Congress in one of two new districts that will be mostly Hispanic. At the same time, she doesn’t want to give up her power base in North Dade and Miami Beach. So what does she do? She tailors a new congressional district to fit her desired demographics.

To an untrained eye, the proposed boundaries look like the etchings of a mapmaker on heavy pharmaceuticals. In reality, it’s a masterpiece of diabolical gerrymandering.

The Margolis Magical Mystery Tour starts in South Beach and steamrolls up the coast to Hallandale. There it shrinks weirdly to a one-block-wide corridor, sneaks up to Dania, darts back down to Pembroke Park, hopscotches west to Miramar, slithers south to Hialeah, then angles sharply toward Sweetwater. From there the boundary meanders east, grazing Little Havana and parts of Over town on its journey back to the Miami River.

Nobody said the road to Congress was easy, but this is ridiculous. Some of Margolis’ colleagues don’t like the map, and now it’s a bargaining point: Republicans won’t approve the new congressional boundaries unless she approves more GOP seats in the Legislature. The Senate has fought to an impasse.

Seeking compromise, seven Democrats recently endorsed a congressional map drawn by Common Cause, a citizens’ lobby. Margolis rejected the plan because it put her in the same district with Dante Fascell, who’s not about to surrender his seat.

Margolis isn’t the only one playing games. Members of both parties are consumed by fear that redistricting will put them out of office, or stack them against a formidable opponent. They all want a clear, breezy path to reelection.

If only they’d spend half as much time, energy and imagination trying to fix the budget. Instead it’s the raw, greedy politics of self-preservation.

While the Senate snivels and stalls, our schools run out of money. New prisons remain unopened. Hospitals cut back vital services to the poor. It’s a disgrace, but neither Margolis nor the others seem the least bit ashamed.

With the feds drawing up the new districts, she probably won’t be getting that free ride to Congress in November. That means her amazing psychedelic map will go to waste. Perhaps voters can think of a suitable place for her to put it.

State lobbyists may be pulled out of shadows

February 18, 1993

Some of the most powerful people in Florida are also the most anonymous, and they want to keep it that way.

They aren’t elected to public office, they hold no position in government and their only loyalty is to the clients who sign their paychecks. Yet they probably have more impact on Florida’s future than do all the state’s voters.

They’re the lobbyists who swarm Tallahassee each year like fragrant, blow-dried locusts. They are thick and they are fast, and nothing escapes their attention. They know how the machinery of lawmaking works, and how to lubricate it in their own interest. You don’t know them by name, but most legislators do.

In an age of so-called open government, lobbyists thrive in one of the last dark crevices of privacy. Gov. Lawton Chiles is trying to shine a light in there, and the reaction, as one might expect, is furious and insectile. In an ethics package proposed this month, the governor has asked the Legislature to make lobbyists disclose their incomes, their expenditures and all political donations. He also wants to ban contingency fees, and campaign contributions made during legislative sessions.

Many states have adopted such regulations, but they stand scant chance of survival here. While some lobbyists support reforms, many will resist forcefully. They’ve got a good deal, and they know it.

” Full disclosure. Put yourself in a lobbyist’s position. If you’re taking a hundred grand to shill for the tobacco industry, you wouldn’t want the whole world to know, would you? It’s so embarrassing that your kids would probably disown you. Confidentiality is preferable because it preserves one’s pride and respectability.

” Contingency fees. Some lobbyists get paid only if they succeed in their mission to get a bill passed, or to get one killed. The lobbyist who secures a fat grant for his client often grabs his or her cut out of the booty, meaning the taxpayer’s pocket.

Last year, an appellate court in Dade County ruled that lobbyists can’t take contingency fees or bonuses out of public appropriations. Chiles wants a law that says the same thing. Lobbyists who work on a bounty are screaming bloody murder.

” Campaign contributions. The way it stands, lobbyists can give money to a legislator’s campaign at any timeeven as that legislator prepares to vote on their pet project.

It’s nothing more than legalized bribery. Lobbyists use political donations to lean on lawmakers, and lawmakers use their vote to solicit donations. Both sides get what they want, so there’s no incentive to pass a law against it.

“A shakedown,” says Bill Jones of Common Cause, the citizen’s lobby. He and others are disgusted by the freewheeling bazaar. “I don’t think it would hurt to adopt the governor’s [reforms],” adds lawyer Steve Uhlfelder, who lobbies for private clients as well as for the American Heart Association, from which he takes no fee.

The job of lobbyist is as old as the republic, and it’s not inherently wicked or sneaky. Almost everybody with a stake in the law has lobbyists at work in Tallahasseenot just wealthy phosphate barons and liquor distributors and utility companies, but teachers and conservation groups and the handicapped.

And don’t forget the press; we’ve got our own hired guns prowling the Capitol. When Gov. Bob Martinez included an advertising tariff in his special-services tax, media lobbyists hollered and hectored. (The tax, you’ll remember, was squashed.)

No act of mortal man will interrupt the intimate waltz between lobbyists and legislators, but at least Chiles’ plan would bring the dance out of the shadows and into the sunshine, where we can all watch.

Pass your law? First, pass me the stone crabs

March 21, 1996

Mooching free food and booze is an old tradition of Florida legislators, and efforts to curb the annual gluttony in Tallahassee usually fall short.

This year, Senate President Jim Scott wants a rule prohibiting members from accepting free meals and liquor from paid lobbyists.

As expected, the proposal isn’t sitting well with the restaurateurs who host the backroom bacchanalia, or with the special-interest groups who pay for it.

Scott and other legislators say reforms are necessary to improve the image of the Legislature, which is still regarded by many Floridians as a springtime gathering of slackers, pickpockets and whores.

Defenders of the old way say they’re insulted at the insinuation that their vote can be bought for a steak supper and a bottle of wine. Even really fine wine.

They contend that socializing is important to the contentious process of lawmaking, and that a private dinner is sometimes the best way to hear one side of a controversy.

Nobody is suggesting that legislators stop eating with lobbyists, only that they pay for their own meals and cocktails. It’s hardly a radical notion, but you should hear the griping.

Perhaps serving the public’s needs requires such intense concentration that politicians can’t afford any distractions, such as worrying about picking up the check.

Or perhaps they just love free food.

Unless you’ve spent time in Tallahassee during the legislative session, you cannot possibly envision what goes on during the off-hoursparties, receptions, banquets, barbecues, hoedowns, hayrides, you name it.

For lobbyists seeking an audience with lawmakers, the theory is time-proven: If you give it away free, they will come.

A well-crafted position paper is fine and dandy, but nothing catches a recalcitrant senator’s eye faster than a gleaming platter of jumbo stone-crab claws.

And, since every vote can be crucial, every legislator finds himself treated like a star. On a given night, it’s possible to eat your way into a deep coma, courtesy of the citrus lobby or the phosphate lobby or the schoolteacher union’s lobbyor anybody else who’s throwing a bash.

Little wonder that many lawmakers are glad the state capital is Tallahassee, far from the eyes of their constituents.

In politics, appearance is paramount. And gorging at the trough of high-paid lobbyists gives the appearance of gross impropriety, if not gross stupidity.

That’s why Scott wants his colleagues to stop taking free food and drinks. The measure comes up for a vote this week, but already it has been weakened by significant exceptions.

For instance, the free-food ban won’t apply if the senator is at a “special event” with 250 or more people. He or she will also be free to pig out at campaign fund-raising wingdings that are paid for by lobbyists.

Supporters say the new rule is still important because it eliminates extravagant wooing of legislators by individual lobbyists. Others say hungry senators won’t have trouble finding loopholes.

Meanwhile, the state House shows little interest in cracking down on the annual Tallahassee foodfest. Its members remain free to eat, drink and be merryand put it on somebody else’s tab.

Lawmakers who indulge will deny that they let it affect their votes. Yet if that’s true, why do lobbyists keep paying for all that free food and booze, year after year?

Obviously the influence brokers believe they’re getting something valuable in return, beyond the sparkling company of so many legislators.

And they would know better than anyone.

Dave who? Please say it isn’t so

April 16, 1998

It’s definitely something in the water. First there was Mayor Loco, now we’ve got Publisher Loco.

David Lawrence Jr., the head honcho of this newspaper, is considering a run for the governorship of Florida. Seriously.

Lawrence has never held public office. He has no fund-raising organization, and thus no funds. Most voters in Florida don’t have a clue who he is. And the primaries are only five months away.

But that’s our Mr. Lawrence, optimist to a fault. Since he’s the Big Cheese around the newsroom, I ought to be circumspect about this bizarre situation. So here goes:

Dave, have you completely lost your marbles?

Not long ago, a San Francisco newspaper executive went off and married the actress Sharon Stone. That makes sense, at least on one basic level. But politics?

True, one doesn’t get to be a big-city publisher without honing some political skills. But outmuscling a rival in the corporate boardroom isn’t the same as running for governor.

Lawrence is a smart, decent, compassionate fellow who cares about Florida and believes fervently in the innate goodness of mankind. Tallahassee would eat him alive. It would be dreadful to watch.

How did this gonzo notion ever take root in his head? It came from the Democrats, of course. Fearing a November steamrolling by Jeb Bush and the GOP, Buddy MacKay, the Democratic gubernatorial front-runner, recently asked Lawrence (a registered independent) to consider joining the ticket as lieutenant governor.

At the time Lawrence apparently was still in possession of his faculties, because he said no. Later he was approached by a fat-cat Democratic donor urging him to make a maverick run for the top spot. On Saturday he will meet with prominent party leaders to discuss his prospects.

Earth to Dave: There are no prospects. Nada. You can’t possibly win.

The Jebster has never held elected office, either, but he’s already raised $6.3 million. Also, he’s been running for governor since puberty, so everybody in Florida knows his name. Same for Buddy MacKay, longtime legislator and currently lieutenant governor.

Lawrence is a heavy-hitter among the state’s power elite, but few voters outside Miami know his name. Nor is his connection to the Herald likely to boost his chances; in fact, it’ll hurt him. Good or bad, journalists don’t win popularity contestsnor should they aspire to.