Editorial Roundup: Florida
Palm Beach Post. September 27, 2023.
Editorial: Florida Legislature must assert itself as an equal branch of state government
It was an unexpected breath of fresh air coming from an unlikely source. It’s been some time since a presumptive speaker of the Florida House so notably talked up the chamber, particularly in an era where one-party rule has become one-man rule under Gov. Ron DeSantis. But, here was Florida’s new speaker designate doing just that.
“Legislative power should be the first branch of government,” state Rep. Daniel Perez, R-Miami, told his colleagues shortly after they selected him to lead the House in 2025. It was the remark that followed that raised eyebrows further: “The problem with wielding the power of government like a hammer is that people start looking like nails.”
The comments raised eyebrows among political observers who wondered if Perez had just signaled a break with DeSantis. “It’s not a message to the Governor,” he said after his earlier remarks. “The Governor is a dear friend. Part of the reason the state of Florida is the state of Florida is the governor. Granted, the Legislature, in my opinion, is the most important part of the success of the state of Florida. But the state can’t work alone.”
Perez, a 36 year-old attorney who chairs the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council and was responsible for moving the bill that created the Office of Election Crimes and Security through the House, is likely to remain a DeSantis loyalist. However, his hint that the Florida Legislature should be more than a rubber stamp is, well, encouraging.
A more independent Legislature in recent sessions would have conceived more laws to help Floridians address real problems, rather than bolstering the political planks and talking points of a flailing presidential campaign. The state’s new laws that prohibit classroom discussions on sexual orientation or end the need for permits for concealed firearms may resonate with the Governor’s ongoing crusade against the “libs” and the “Woke.” But, that won’t matter if the Legislature doesn’t re-assert itself upon DeSantis’ likely return to Florida.
There are a bevy of “glitch” bills, to correct, fix or tweak current laws, that state lawmakers should consider before meeting next month in Tallahassee to prepare for the upcoming session.
Take SB 1718, the state’s controversial immigration law. It has left contractors, farmers and hoteliers scrambling to find workers among Florida’s undocumented residents who have either left the state or avoided working here. Caught flatfooted, Republican lawmakers tried to ease fears by explaining away the bill’s restrictions as “politics.” The rhetoric didn’t work, because the law had a real impact, not a rhetorical one. It’ll take a change in the law to bring back nervous workers.
Election integrity is another political, culture-war initiative that needs a change. Thanks to the Legislature’s efforts to make DeSantis look good as a candidate in places like Iowa and South Carolina, elections supervisors in Florida are now forced to ask their county commissioners for more money to meet the law’s new requirements to run next year’s elections. There’s also the money spent on what is essentially the Governor’s dubious elections police. It shouldn’t take a backbone to get legislators to spend some of that money on local elections supervisors’ legitimate needs.
Here’s an issue that has Perez’ attention: “If I were king for a day and I had three wishes, I would tell you that one, two and three would be to fix property insurance,” he told Politico. The Legislature’s recent efforts to curb litigation against insurers and help them with reinsurance costs are unlikely to help insurance customers anytime soon with soaring premiums and policy cancellations.
Finding ways to strengthen, SB 7052, this year’s last-minute attempt at insurance consumer protection, should be a priority. After years of helping the industry, there’s no excuse for lawmakers to leave policyholders in the lurch. Perez, even as an ally in Gov. DeSantis, warned insurers as Hurricane Idalia approached: “We’re gonna be watching. We want to make people whole who pay for this service. And I think that they deserve to have their claims honored.”
As speaker-designate, Perez’ influence grows between now and 2025, when he assumes the speakership. If he wants to make a difference, he should immediately set out to live up to his promise to rebuild the Legislature’s role as an equal branch of Florida government.
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South Florida Sun Sentinel. September 29, 2023.
Editorial: In death case, Florida court dismisses evolving standards
A legal concept known as evolving standards of decency has gained wide acceptance. But the Florida Supreme Court wants no part of it.
The court unanimously refused to stay the scheduled Oct. 3 execution of Michael Duane Zack III or grant him a new sentencing hearing. The majority opinion explicitly wrote off his argument that fetal alcohol syndrome should count as a mental infirmity under previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions prohibiting executions of mentally disabled people.
In that precedent, from Virginia, the nation’s high court cited evolving standards of decency, a standard it first recognized in 1958.
The Zack opinion, by Florida Justice Renatha Francis, reiterated the court’s earlier position — on a different issue — that it can’t recognize any exception to the death penalty that the U.S. Supreme Court has not already established.
Zack “improperly sought to have a new fundamental constitutional right recognized,” Francis wrote.
He is awaiting execution for the 1996 murder of a woman he met at a Pensacola bar, and he was also convicted of a second murder in Okaloosa County.
Francis acknowledged that the “medical consensus for evaluating FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) as an intellectual disability was widely recognized as early as 2018 or 2019,” but she held that Zack raised it too late.
The decision also rejected his claim that evolving standards of decency should prohibit his execution because the jury that recommended it was not unanimous.
The court overturns itself
That was not surprising. The court itself, which had required unanimity in a 2017 decision, overturned its own precedent after a new conservative majority took control. The Legislature took the reversal as an invitation to allow an execution if as few as seven of 12 jurors recommend it. The court has yet to rule on that.
The Zack decision was the first opinion Francis authored since she was appointed last year. The court normally issues death case decisions per curiam — that is, by the court, without an acknowledged author. Zack’s appeal was her first opportunity to show Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s been executing people at the rate of one a month, that he got what he hoped for when he appointed her.
She did, however, ignore Attorney General Ashley Moody’s bizarre request to use the Zack case as a precedent for rejecting all future applications for stays of execution.
The court also rejected a kindred appeal from Floyd William Damren, a 72-year-old death row inmate claiming that autism spectrum disorders should be recognized as a mental disability. In a stunning rationalization, the court held that his attorneys, who were not medical doctors, should have recognized the symptoms in time to avoid procedural deadlines for raising the issue.
A fair interpretation of evolving standards of decency would outlaw the death penalty under most, if not all, cases. Its supporters have long since ceased pretending that it is a deterrent. Only 27 states, most in the South and West, the federal government and the military still allow it. Seven states have repealed it since 2009, most recently Virginia, after carrying out the second most executions since 1973.
U.S. Supreme Court justices cited “evolving standards” 16 times in a combination of 1972 opinions that briefly abolished the death penalty nationwide, and again in subsequent cases prohibiting the death sentence for rape, for minors and for the intellectually disabled.
Courts like Florida’s have needed to invent a myriad of procedural technicalities, as in the Damren case, to continue upholding death sentences. The risk of executing an innocent person is high, as reflected in the fact that 192 present or former death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. Florida leads all other states on that list with 30.
Another compelling reason is the refusal of some governors, notably DeSantis and every Florida governor since 1983, to exercise their clemency powers by commuting death sentences to life in prison. From 1925 through 1964, 10 governors spared 55 inmates while sending 195 others to their deaths. After executions resumed, Gov. Bob Graham commuted six, but all except one of Florida’s 104 executions have occurred since then.
Afraid of clemency
It is difficult to comprehend that there were no circumstances worthy of mercy in 104 successive cases. The problem is that Florida’s governors have become afraid of clemency or indifferent to it, refusing nearly always to explain why.
If DeSantis believes that the courts never make fatal mistakes, he is delusional. If he doesn’t care, that’s worse.
Nationwide, apart from 225 mass commutations in three states, governors have spared only 88 people since 1973, while executing more than 1,500, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Zack, 54, also struck out in a federal court over DeSantis’ refusal to commute his sentence. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that Zack, not the governor’s office, was responsible for updating any information from his 2014 clemency application, which did not raise the fetal alcohol syndrome issue.
Federal courts never second-guess clemency denials.
Throughout history, executive clemency has been the final opportunity to avert injustice or needless cruelty. It is unacceptable for it to fall into disuse, and is a blot on a society that allows that to happen.
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Miami Herald. October 2, 2023.
Editorial: DeSantis loves to tout Florida’s growth. But it may be making our insurance crisis worse
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brags about how many people are pouring into Florida. But all that growth isn’t necessarily a good thing.
That’s the conclusion of a report by a major global re-insurance company that draws links between the state’s soaring home insurance costs and the explosion of new residents, especially along the coast.
Do we even need a report to tell us that? It’s just common sense.
The more we build along coastlines, the more homes (and people) we put in harm’s way during a hurricane. Climate change isn’t helping, either: Warmer ocean waters, which are linked to stronger and wetter hurricanes, may increase the problem even more, the report by Swiss Re notes in a recent story by the Miami Herald. Plus, rebuilding older homes after a hurricane so they conform to new storm-resistant standards can be extremely costly, especially when that includes elevating a home several feet.
Gains slipping away
Those stronger building codes, imposed since 2002, have made homes better able to withstand storms, but the gains made in handling the wind and rain are being undermined by more people living in Florida, the report said.
And that, the report said, is a problem: “Reducing vulnerability by strengthening building codes . . . has been insufficient since the 1970s to compensate for expected losses from accompanying population-driven property value growth.”
There are some who say it’s incorrect to blame the ridiculously high home insurance premiums in Florida on population growth, saying that old housing is more to blame. Much of Florida’s housing stock is older. In the area that sustained a lot of damage during Hurricane Ian last year, about 69% of properties were built before 2000. Ian was the state’s most expensive storm so far, with a price tag of about $109 billion in damage.
Politicians, meanwhile, have long been pointing the finger at fraudulent insurance lawsuits. They say bad-faith lawsuits are a significant driver of premium increases amid an unstable insurance market that relies heavily on state-backed Citizens Property Insurance — the so-called insurer of last resort. It now has more than 1.3 million policies.
But regular people still haven’t gotten any relief in the costs of premiums. Florida lawmakers have met repeatedly in Tallahassee to address the insurance crisis but, afterward, they keep saying we have wait — a year? two? — to see the laws that they passed curb the problem.
Downside of ‘free’
Maybe the laws will, help — eventually. Old housing stock no doubt does contribute to the problem, as well. But we’re pretty sure the population growth in Florida is a factor, too. It’s just one that our leaders don’t want to confront, because that leads to a discussion of where to draw the line on growth. And that runs counter to the DeSantis narrative of Florida as the “free state.”
Insurance costs may force the issue.
As Vivian Young, communications director for the smart-growth group 1,000 Friends of Florida, told the Herald: “I think the state is reaching a tipping point and there’s going to have to be a really serious conversation about where it’s appropriate to develop, where we should be redeveloping and whether we should live in certain areas at all. . . . Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
Companies base their rates on risk in an area. Building codes are one way to reduce risk — and costs. But Young is right: Re-thinking whether to allow re-building in exceedingly high risk areas could help. It might even help a lot.
At the very least, we need to be talking about that.
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Orlando Sentinel. September 28, 2023.
Editorial: Remembering a lioness: Lucy Morgan spent a half-century exposing the truth
Lucy Morgan knew, better than most, how deceptive appearances can be. How the humdrum facade of a South Florida mortgage company could be a front for massive fraud and corruption. How a seemingly casual dinner at a
Tallahassee restaurant could signal a seismic shift in the state’s political landscape. How the public persona of a respected lawman could cloak a vicious predator from view.
She devoted her adult life to stripping away those illusions, with nary a warning to those who mistakenly took Morgan herself at face value. Early in her career, when women were rare in journalism’s ranks and mostly confined to society pages and arts news, she fearlessly tackled stories that many of her male colleagues passed by — and stuck with them even when she was attacked or threatened. Decades later, after she’d amassed a deserved reputation as a giant of Florida journalism and even announced her retirement, she could still beguile public officials and savvy businessmen into spilling their guts with a wide smile and a well-timed joke — and then dismantle their lies with dogged determination.
Along the way, she befriended governors and scoundrels; claimed every journalism prize worth winning including a Pulitzer; and mentored dozens of young reporters who followed in her footsteps at some of the nation’s most well-known publications. Philadelphia Inquirer editor Charlotte Sutton recalled eating dinner with Morgan at a Tallahassee restaurant. Morgan spotted people she recognized, went to talk with them and came back with another scoop: Lawton Chiles was planning a run for Florida governor.
And now she is gone. Morgan, who spent most of her career at the Tampa Bay Times, died last week at the age of 82.
“She had the total respect of her fellow journalists for sure, but I think she had the respect of the politicians that she interacted with,” former Gov. Jeb Bush told Tallahassee radio station WFSU. “Because they knew that she had incredible tenacity and high integrity and that’s it — she was fierce. If you got into her line of sight, her line of fire, it wouldn’t be a pretty ending.”
Bush speaks from experience. More than once, he’d see her in one of his press conferences with a pile of innocuous-looking knitting on her lap — and then be pierced by one sharply worded needle of a question. Yet he counts her as a friend. That’s how it was with Morgan; many of the politicians she deflated on a regular basis still held her in high esteem.
A few, of course, did not.
Among them:
Two sheriffs, one in Pasco County who became the target of her 1995 Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into widespread corruption and another who ended up in federal prison after Morgan investigated rumors he was forcing employees and jail inmates into sexual favors.
A North Carolina businessman whose activity, in 2007, seemed suspicious to Morgan. Even though she was on her first attempt at retirement, she couldn’t help but follow up. In 2014, he and his associates were sentenced to long prison terms after being convicted of nearly $50 million in mortgage fraud.
The judges and politicians caught lavishing tens of millions of dollars on a judicial “Taj Mahal” of an appellate courthouse in Tallahassee
And so many more.
But it is a far greater tribute that many of the politicians she’d skewered on a regular basis spoke with genuine affection and a sense of loss after hearing of her death.
Earlier this year, after the death of former Daytona Beach lawmaker Sam Bell, Morgan wrote a column for the Phoenix lamenting that Florida was “losing its lions.” Bush continued that theme this week, dubbing her a lioness whose legacy would live on.
It’s right and fitting that she will be publicly mourned Friday in one of her favorite hunting grounds, the floor of the Florida House.
But her dedication should also be remembered in a renewed quest for decency, transparency and honesty at all levels of government. It would be the most fitting legacy for a woman whose boundless curiosity and passion for justice made this state a better place for half a century.
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