The measure seeks to amend the state Constitution in 2006 to define marriage as a union between "only one man and one woman" and provides that no other kind of marriage or legal union is equivalent to marriage. It was filed Wednesday with the state elections division. ...

State records show the measure was filed by a political committee called Florida4Marriage.org. A news release also used the name Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage. Orlando lawyer John Stemberger, director of the conservative Christian group Florida Family Focus, is listed as chairman.

Stemberger gained visibility last year during the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. A supporter of Mel Martinez, Stemberger was at the center of an attack mail piece against Martinez's chief rival, former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum. Stemberger condemned McCollum's record of supporting hate crimes legislation.

After winning, Martinez said he regretted the attacks on McCollum, a conservative who opposes gay marriage.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Florida's ban on adoption by homosexuals, a handful of legislators will ask their colleagues whether they really believe that having no parents is better than being raised by gay people.

That's the essence of a bill (HB 633) filed by Rep. Sheri McInvale, D-Orlando. It provides that, notwithstanding any other law, judges will consider the best interests of children when deciding whether to let foster parents adopt them.

McInvale enlisted a conservative co-sponsor, Tampa Republican Faye Culp, to give the idea a fighting chance in the GOP-run House and Senate.

First-term Sen. Nan Rich of Weston is taking a slightly different approach in the Senate. Her bill, not filed yet, provides a two-part test for judges to grant adoptions if the child views the petitioning adults as his or her "parental figures" and if placing the kid permanently is better than continuing foster care.

The women all agree that repealing the law against adoption is politically impossible. Coming off an election in which voters approved marriage definitions in 11 states, and considering that the president wants a constitutional amendment to "defend" marriage, they can't expect state House and Senate members to toss out a law that has just been approved by the nation's highest court.

Besides, there's no political downside to voting against gays.

You might wonder why a few legislative leaders are proposing a law to force lobbyists to disclose their fees and tell us more about who they are wining and dining.

It is not a popular move in Tallahassee and is likely to be quietly killed by the very lobbyists it seeks to regulate. Lobbyists always seem to have their way with state government.

passed the growth act 20 years ago, the law was hailed as a much-needed antidote to local governments gone wild over development. During the 1970s and 1980s, many local governments had approved far more development than they were prepared to handle.

new plan, which still is taking shape and will be considered during the upcoming legislative session, should not surprise anyone who has followed Gov. Jeb Bush's views on growth management. Since he first ran for election, Bush has championed giving more control to local governments.

environmentalists and growth-management advocates fear that Bush's fix may make matters worse. Many of them still are wary of the governor, who just two years ago wanted to abolish the Department of Community Affairs, merging most of its growth-management functions into the Secretary of State's Office.

Now, some of those critics say giving more control to local and regional agencies could benefit developers, who often wield a lot of influence with city and county commissions.

Dedge case goes beyond the fate of one 43-year-old man. It speaks to a common fear that an innocent person can be arrested, convicted and imprisoned at the hands of an uncaring state. By passing strong laws to protect the innocent and comfort the wrongly convicted, state leaders advance justice for all.

The income from the military insurance that Army widow Delores Wright's husband purchased for her has been cut from $1,800 to about $340 a month to offset most of the benefits she also receives from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Panama City Beach woman was one of about 15 military widows who met Friday with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to offer encouragement for his legislation that would end the survivor benefit offset for about 53,000 spouses of military retirees who died from service-connected causes.

If history is a guide, Gov. Bush and the Legislature are not going to fulfill their constitutional obligation to pay for lower class size.

Giuliani 34
McCain 29
Bush 12
Frist 6
Other 7
All/any 1
None 4
No opinion 7

Based on 533 Republicans or Republican leaners and 491 Republicans or Republican leaners who are registered to vote. For results based on these samples, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points.

Senate President Tom Lee is pushing legislation to require lobbyists to disclose how much they are paid to influence the laws the Florida Legislature passes.

Florida is the largest state in the nation that does not require lobbyists to report the money they get from clients. Twenty-eight states and the U.S. Congress require such disclosure.

"I didn't come here to be beholden to anyone."

For six years, U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. [a Republican from Fort Lauderdale who chaired the House Social Security subcommittee for six years] has sponsored a bill to add personal investment accounts to Social Security without cutting promised benefits. ...

Shaw's plan, however, is different from Bush's. Unlike Bush's proposal, which would carve individual accounts out of the 12.4 percent payroll tax, Shaw's bill would use the general fund to pay for personal accounts on top of the payroll tax. ...

The plan would be financed by drawing money from the federal fund, which Shaw noted would increase the federal debt by about $3.2 trillion over the next 30 years. But he said all proposals to create individual investment accounts would increase the debt as Social Security made the transition from one system to another.

"is not a credible plan to strengthen Social Security and should not distract people from the major benefit cuts and borrowing inherent in President Bush's guidelines for privatization. Mr. Shaw's proposal involves massive borrowing and uncertainties that make solving the Social Security shortfall completely dependent on the stock market."

In what may be the boldest crime of omission in recent state government history, the Department of Management Services ignored and dissolved a state law involving a $92 million contract it apparently didn't much like.

Now DMS and contractor Accenture are in a world of trouble with lawmakers, whose breath was no doubt taken away by the effrontery of taking $570,000 budgeted by the Legislature for a natural-gas project in 2001 and spending it instead on a consultant to monitor MyFloridaMarketplace.

Perhaps it was a brilliant strategic move to decide the money would be better spent monitoring the state's procurement system. But it was politically as inept as it gets.

Crumbling roads, crowded schools and chronic deficits should take precedent over another round of tax cuts, Senate President Tom Lee said Thursday.

State Rep. Dennis Ross has taken the initial step toward running for the Republican nomination for chief financial officer.

The Lakeland attorney becomes the second legislator hoping to replace present Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, who is expected to shortly announce his intentions to seek the GOP nomination for governor.

State Sen. Charlie Clary, 54, an architect, announced his intentions two years ago to seek the post.

An audit expected to be released today blasts the Department of Management Services for letting a contractor control a private bank account containing state fees, for dissolving a budgeted program and shifting the money to pay a consultant and for a host of other problems in its $92million online procurement system.

a voucher "accountability" bill dramatically less stringent than the one filed by former Senate President Jim King to crack down on abuses in the programs.

King, the legislature's main proponent for a bill last year when he sat as a presiding officer, saw it die in the final days of an acrimonious legislative session. He vowed then to push the bill again this year to avert "a disaster waiting to happen."

But as he did last year, King faces the opposition of state education officials appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, who are instead pushing a proposal with features favored by the de facto manager of the corporate income tax voucher program and some of the private schools that rely on vouchers for much of their business.

King's bill would ban vouchers for home school "consultants" who are getting state money for helping parents home-school their disabled children, but ["Jeb!"'s] measure would allow the practice to continue.

Starting on a sour note, lawmakers holding the first congressional review of the 2004 vote were upset by the absence of top election officials from Ohio and Florida, states with many balloting complaints.

The chairman of the House Administration Committee said he would hold hearings away from Washington and continue to seek testimony from Ohio's secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, and Florida's Glenda Hood.

"I am disappointed that they are not here," said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. "We can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide."

plan to get private insurers to take on Medicaid patients and share in the costs of their care is receiving some skeptical second opinions from Democrats in the Florida Legislature.

But rather than blasting the governor's proposal to privatize Medicaid as a heartless move against the state's vulnerable population, Democrats are carving out a new political strategy for protecting the $14.7 billion health program.

Several South Florida legislators cautioned Tuesday that Bush's plan is such a strong dose of medicine for Medicaid that it will raise taxes on the middle class. They also argued that his proposal empowers health maintenance organizations while weakening the Legislature.

Florida lawmakers are considering legislation that would give voters a chance to keep their legislators for up to 12 years, instead of the eight-year limit now in place.

"It's very difficult to learn the process," Bense said, noting that many lawmakers have other careers. "I'm not implying that our members -- please don't read this into it -- don't know what's going on" It's very difficult to learn the process," Bense said, noting that many lawmakers have other careers. "I'm not implying that our members -- please don't read this into it -- don't know what's going on."

a State Technology Office with sweeping power to direct how state agencies purchased everything from computers to telephone systems to software.

Now he wants it all undone.

Defense is Florida's third largest economic sector with a $44 billion annual impact. It employs more than 714,000 Floridians.

Four years ago, before the state signed a $350 million contract with Convergys to privatize the state personnel system, a top official in the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush raised a warning flag.

Kathleen Kearney, then the secretary of the Department of Children and Families, had a team from DCF trying to assist with the design of the payroll outsourcing project.

In a March 5, 2001, letter obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat, Kearney suggested the procurement process for the project was riddled with flaws.

The governor knew of her warning but didn't heed the advice. Later that month, an "invitation to negotiate" for outsourcing payroll, benefits and employment services went out from the Department of Management Services.

Some of the things that HB 711 would require, like making agencies show a "business case" for each privatization project, are already being done without a new law. Cost-benefit analyses, performance monitoring and "contingency planning" for late or lousy service are already being done - but Ryan's bill would require such lifeboat drills before racing into ice fields.

It also calls for annual reports to the House and Senate on which services agencies are privatizing and what measurable savings, or service improvements, they are getting. Agencies would also have to disclose "which work formerly performed in this state by state employees is being performed in other states or out of the country" by contractors.

Once a deal is made, its cost couldn't rise more than 10 percent and its term couldn't be extended by more than a year without approval by the joint Legislative Budget Commission, under Ryan's bill.

- require that the private company performing the work does the work in Florida with Florida workers (as proposed, only "disclosure" of out-of-state work would be required.

- do not permit companies with records of violating enviromental, labor and other laws to bid on, let alone perform, the work.

- track the impact of any proposed outsourcing on incumbent employees, and ensure that senior employees aren't dumped on the street"

- track the political contributions - via PCs, CCEs, and federal PACs - of the companies seeking to perform government functions via privatization.

- determine whether the companies seeking to do the work offer equivalent health insurance, pensions and other benefits to their employees, as opposed to being a financial drag on their communities.

two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

saluted his new Department of Management Services interim chief, Robert Hosay, as an "accomplished contract attorney whose significant experience in state purchasing and large-scale procurements will continue to serve the department well."

What most state employees probably would rather know is whether Mr. Hosay is equally able to grasp small-scale problems: for example, the abrupt and accidental insurance cancellation of a longtime state employee with an illness, which may be terminal. He is now struggling to not only get well, but also get his health insurance restored.

Sen. Al Lawson ... expressed justified skepticism, tinged with outrage, last week at Mr. Hosay's appointment, questioning whether he will be looking out "for the interests of the state and its workers, and not the interest of Convergys."

That's because Mr. Hosay was a major player in designing the outsourcing contract with Convergys, the largest privatization contract in state government, and which has produced what might be called a comedy of errors if not for the utter despair caused by some of the human and systemic errors. ...

Likewise, while Mr. Bush calls his latest appointee "accomplished," the fact that Mr. Hosay has been out of law school only four years suggests a kind of "accomplishment inflation" that's faintly alarming when it comes to management of huge, high-stakes systems.

During his tenure as governor, Jeb Bush has disparaged slot machines as a dangerous expansion of gambling, but since the approval of the amendment that authorizes a vote on them in South Florida, the governor has engaged in some high-stakes gambling of his own.

Bush must decide soon whether to open negotiations with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians -- and concede that the passage of Amendment 4 allows them to operate slot machines at their gaming parlors -- or he can delay the talks, continue his fight to challenge gambling on Indian land, and risk launching an expensive legal battle with the well-financed tribe.

The private contractors that run Florida's programs for juvenile offenders pay their workers some of the lowest wages in the nation, a problem child advocates say is causing crippling staff turnover and putting teens in danger.

What's out of control is the growing numbers who turn to Medicaid because costs of private insurance are out of control.