The Florida Legislature's get-along session got ugly Friday as lawmakers battled to the brink of midnight before approving a $63.1 billion budget and a $1.5 billion plan to build desperately needed roads, schools and utilities across the fast-growing state.

The Republican-ruled Legislature also handed Gov. Jeb Bush his worst session ever, killing education changes he sought while endorsing scaled-back versions of his Medicaid and growth-management plans.

In an historic rebuke of Gov. Jeb Bush, his major education reform plans died quietly on the last day of the legislative session Friday as the Senate refused to second-guess voters on the class-size amendment, grant more school vouchers or allow lesser criminal background screening for private school teachers.

The Florida Legislature resolved a tense standoff on its final day Friday before rushing to pass a $63.1-billion budget, a plan to control growth without new taxes and a modest revamp of Medicaid.

But the 2005 session ended shortly before midnight with no agreement between the House and Senate on a proposal to increase scrutiny of lobbyists, one of Senate President Tom Lee's top priorities.

The bill was Bush's No.1 legislative priority, but it almost didn't become law because the Senate wanted a go-slow approach to the changes.

But under a deal worked out Friday between Bush and legislative leaders, the change will start in a few counties and won't expand further until it gets approval by the full Legislature.

The Senate late Friday still had not taken up two further restrictions on the amendment process:

One would place a second question on the 2006 ballot, asking voters to limit citizen petitions to issues affecting basic rights, government structure or items already in the state Constitution.

The other, which would not require voter approval, would place new restrictions on the petitioning process to qualify a citizen initiative for the ballot. It would make it a first-degree misdemeanor for someone to gather petitions without a prominent ID badge, or to pay people for each signature collected. That bill also requires groups to turn in signatures to local elections supervisors every 30 days. Late signatures would be thrown out.

In addition, only Florida residents could collect signatures for a petition, which could exclude many college students and seasonal residents.

It was a victory for Senate President Tom Lee, a developer, and Gov. Jeb Bush, who both said it was a top priority, although environmentalists said it was a vastly watered-down version of Lee's initial proposal.

[in February] Greer's pastor asked him to reconsider his membership at Calvary Baptist Church, one of Clearwater's largest and best known Southern Baptist congregations.

Greer severed ties with the theologically conservative congregation within days of the request.

Calvary says it did not technically ask Greer to leave. But to some, its actions may have left the impression that the judge was forced out of the very place where disagreements are supposed to be quashed.

An employee of the Diocese of Palm Beach said Thursday that Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Ronald Alvarez, a Catholic, should be denied communion for allowing a 13-year-old foster child to have an abortion.

Don Kazimir, who works for the diocese's Respect Life Office, which opposes abortion and the death penalty, called Alvarez's office Wednesday to ask which church the judge attends. Kazimir said he wanted to speak with Alvarez's priest, who he said might have a problem with a Catholic judge agreeing to an abortion.

Alvarez was angry about the call. It is wrong, he said, for the church to try to intimidate a judge into putting his faith above the law. ...

And though the Vatican opposes the death penalty, Gov. Bush, a Catholic, believes in capital punishment and signs death warrants for inmates.

In November 2002, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI wrote a doctrinal note on the topic of Catholics in public life. He said bishops must acknowledge that Catholics need to follow the laws of the countries where they live and "are called to participate in the political life of democratic societies."

is the most dangerous day of the year in Florida.

No, it's not the beginning of tourist season, when our highways fill up with snow birds driving badly.

It's the last day of the Florida Legislature's regular session.

Lawmakers are moving into the final day of the 60-day legislative session today with the budget primed and ready for a 3 p.m. vote.

But, even working late on Thursday wasn't enough to ensure other priority bills won't die by tonight's midnight deadline.

The budget is the only bill the Legislature is required to pass. But both House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City, and Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, have other bills they want to pass today.

And, as is typical with lawmakers this time of year, the most important bills will be the last ones passed.

In twin defeats for Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida senators rejected controversial proposals Thursday to ease school class-size requirements and expand taxpayer-funded vouchers.

Senators voted 21-19 to kill a Bush plan that would have asked voters next year to scale back a 2002 constitutional amendment requiring smaller school class sizes. In exchange for easing class-size requirements, Bush proposed raising teacher salaries to a minimum of $35,000 a year.

Hours later, the Senate changed another education bill to eliminate a proposal that could have led to tens of thousands of additional children receiving vouchers. Bush has made vouchers a centerpiece of his efforts to overhaul the state's education system.

In an extraordinary and once-unthinkable rebuke, the Republican-controlled Florida Senate on Thursday scuttled Gov. Jeb Bush's proposal to undo public school class-size limits that voters approved in 2002.

A coalition of Senate Democrats and a handful of brave Republicans stood up for the voters and public education Thursday. The Senate soundly rejected Gov. Jeb Bush's cynical effort to gut the popular class size amendment by bribing voters to change the rules in return for higher teacher salaries. The class size amendment has flaws, but this was not an honest attempt to address them and deserved to be defeated.

The FDLE is moving to expand a law-enforcement database by adding credit and insurance information about individuals, a move that some privacy advocates oppose.

Though Tallahassee exerts more and more control over local school districts through FCAT grades and other ploys, Tallahassee has paid less and less of the costs since Gov. Bush hit town in 1999.

Florida lawmakers debate the state's proposed $62 billion budget today, they're likely to brag about their own fiscal responsibility and boast about the good they're doing for state priorities like education.

But dig deeper into that budget, and the illusion of responsibility melts. The proposal short-changes the voter-mandated pre-kindergarten program, and predicates much of the public school budget on a hefty -- but little-discussed -- local tax increase.

Lawmakers seem to be missing the big picture. Public schools have long held the No. 1 spot in Floridians' priorities for state government, and voters approve every pro-education ballot initiative presented to them. They understand how important a world-class public education system is to a state that wants a thriving economy and high quality of life. Lawmakers don't seem to.

Negotiations on what could be a historic growth management deal will continue today after a small group of lawmakers failed Thursday evening to reach agreement.

Florida lawmakers are in the midst of a last-day standoff over the proposed overhaul of the state's property insurance system.
The Florida Senate tacked on nearly a dozen amendments to its insurance overhaul package late Thursday night to bring it closer to the version the House passed last week. If both bodies fail to pass the insurance overhaul today - the last scheduled day of the session - about six months of work could fall to the wayside.

Sen. Rudy Garcia, who sponsored the legislation, described the changes as a win- win for consumers and insurers, despite numerous concessions to the insurance industry.

The state constitution is optional reading for Jeb Bush these days as he continues using his office to push his personal beliefs.

His most recent action as Pope of Florida was trying to block a 13-year-old girl from an abortion.

... the same DCF that botched her care to begin with moved to block her in court. DCF has become a front operation for Bush. It is his right-to-life security force. ...

Does anyone really believe that Bush, DCF or all these Christian groups give one hoot about this girl? They simply folded up the circus tent over Terri Schiavo's hospice and found another place to set it up.

With the most recent version of Travelgate speeding through Congress faster than the Concorde, Central Florida's own Tom Feeney is at least taking the time to apologize for his role in the brewing scandal.

No, not to the voters who elected him, silly. To the real victims in all this: the lobbyists.

Though they have yet to formally adopt next year's budget, some Florida lawmakers already have begun to brag about school spending. They might want to bite their lips.

The proposed $1.3-billion increase for public schools, which a House summary describes as "one of the largest . . . increases in history," is indeed a handsome sum of money that can go far to help students in classrooms. But what that large number obscures is a disconcerting pattern of the state passing the buck.

Embarrassed by the state's procurement process, which is used to buy goods and services ranging from jet planes to ink jet printers, lawmakers have written a law that gives them the power to oversee contracts for which they authorize the money.

Gov. Jeb Bush says this is "meddling," and that lawmakers can't usurp his oversight powers. But lawmakers have deftly tied their proviso language to their appropriations, attempting to keep the governor from vetoing one without the other. If he wants the money, he shares oversight.

If Mr. Bush stares them down and vetoes the whole thing, as he has hinted he would, he'll create a a legal showdown between the executive and legislative branches.

Anyone who thinks honestly about solving America's health care crisis understands that someday, somehow, the law must require everyone to be insured. For a few teasing moments this week, so did the Florida Senate.

During debate on the Medicaid bill, Minority Leader Les Miller of Tampa and three other Democrats proposed an amendment obliging employers with 10,000 workers or more to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on federally deductible health care costs. Those who spent less would have to pay the difference to the state.

Miller cited recent reporting by Sydney P. Freedberg and Connie Humburg of the St. Petersburg Times, who estimated that some 29,900 low-wage employees of Wal-Mart and four other large corporations are enrolled in Florida's Medicaid program. Noting that Wal-Mart also receives substantial industrial incentives, Miller told the Senate that taxpayers "shouldn't have to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for corporate welfare." Moreover, he said, Georgia, North Carolina and some other states already make health insurance a legal requirement for doing business.

Though Miller was making a serious point, he did not expect his amendment to pass. Yet it did, 18 yes to 16 no. Seven minutes later, the Senate reversed itself and killed the amendment, 20 to 14.

Former U.S. Rep. Karen Thurman claimed victory in her bid for the Florida Democratic Party chairmanship Wednesday, but her main rival said dissidents still hope a dark horse will emerge at the state conference this weekend.

Amid calls for more oversight, the Legislature is poised to extend three contracts without competition.

An amendment would extend an exemption Florida Panhandle developers have enjoyed for a decade from the water management permits required in the rest of the state.

The amendment was added to a bill that would give the state sole oversight of developments that fill in wetlands smaller than 10 acres. Critics say that would make it easier to destroy wetlands.

Even though the state will get $5 billion in extra money to spend this year, many Floridians may wind up paying higher taxes and fees, courtesy of the state Legislature.

Legislation to provide roads, schools and water for the state's fast-growing population has hit a snag, a key lawmaker said Tuesday.

"It's a train wreck," Rep. Randy Johnson said, warning that changes adopted in the Senate could be "disastrous" for what is one of the year's top-billed issues.

Others involved in negotiations said there was still time to reach a deal before the session adjourns Friday.

More than 50,000 employers in Florida - including those with high-profiles in the marketplace such as Wal-Mart, Publix, Winn-Dixie, McDonald's, Burger King, Walt Disney World, BellSouth, Blue Cross, Bank of America and Dillard's - have workers on Medicaid, according to a Tallahassee Democrat article last December.

any for-profit business with 10,000 or more employees would have to document spending the equivalent of 8 percent of the total of its employees' wages in Florida on health insurance. Or it would have to pay to the state the difference between that amount and what it does pay for health coverage. A similar rule would apply to non-profit businesses, with a lower threshold of responsibility equal to 6 percent of employees' wages.

Some provisions of the state spending plan lawmakers released Tuesday do more than set specific parameters on how the money can be spent - they likely set the stage for a showdown between the Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush. ...

Bush, who railed against similar but softer language last year, isn't likely to stay quiet. He already has accused the Legislature of "meddling" in executive branch powers and said he will veto bills that do so, but he can't veto the so-called budget proviso language without vetoing the money.

Coming only two weeks after charges against Dyer and three others were dropped, the measure would make it unlawful to hire someone to collect absentee ballots only if there is "intent" to commit vote fraud.

"You'd have to have the intent to hire someone who is going to alter, modify or do something wrong," said Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, who served with Dyer in the state Senate from 2000 to 2002. "Hiring somebody in and of itself to do something is just simply not unlawful."

Smith called the Dyer indictment a "debacle" and said the amendment he tacked onto a sweeping elections bill would prevent similar prosecutions in the future.

The Florida Department of Children & Families just can't seem to stay out of court and away from those controversial "right-to-life" wedge issues.

Declining to engage in judicial activism, the Florida Supreme Court refused last week to hear talk show host Rush Limbaugh's argument that prosecutors illegally seized his medical records. The decision was a ruling for law enforcement, not against privacy.

The Senate refused Tuesday to approve a change to an abortion clinic bill that some lawmakers said must be made to let clinics around the state provide second-trimester abortions. ...

Opponents say the intent of the bill is to erode the constitutional right to abortion and to drive women into illegal and unsafe abortions.

Monday was a great day for the people of Florida. Thanks to an initiative voters approved last fall, some 700,000 workers began to receive a $1-an-hour minimum-wage increase. That is a rising tide that will lift all boats. Whether it was the sort of issue that belongs in the Constitution is irrelevant now. What matters is that representative government, co-opted by powerful special interests, had failed for years to give a fair hearing to the necessity. So the people, exercising some hard-won rights, took the cause into their own hands, and won.

But Monday was also a terribly sad day for the people of Florida. In a series of procedural votes, the Senate refused to clean up a bill that incorporates the revenge of those same special interests. The legislation, moving toward enactment as HB 1471, is intended to harass organizations sponsoring current and future initiative campaigns. Under the pretext of preventing fraud, it sets up a gantlet of gimmicks for the disqualification of otherwise valid signatures.

A Palm Beach County judge ruled that a 13-year-old foster child is free to end an unwanted pregnancy, but state officials again intervened before she could act.

As the House okays its bill, Senate Democrats plan to call attention to big companies that get tax breaks but don't provide health coverage.

"This law, first of its kind in the nation, encourages people to be quick with guns, knives, or fists. ... Florida has ignored common sense and public safety by adopting a law that encourages violent confrontations ... Florida has taken a wrong turn that no other state should emulate."

In his second-to-last regular session as the state's chief executive, Bush has asked legislators to overhaul Medicaid; scale back the class-size amendment; expand school vouchers; finance new schools, roads and utilities needed because of runaway growth; and impose new limits on lawsuits.

But with the session scheduled to end Friday, virtually every Bush initiative is at best unresolved or hanging by a thread.

may be handed his most significant legislative defeat as a Republican-controlled Legislature appears unlikely to approve some of his education proposals.

Early voting proved to be so popular in 2004 that nearly 1 in 5 Floridians chose to cast a ballot before Election Day. The only downside was that the wait often grew to hours. So the state's elections supervisors asked lawmakers to approve more sites and send more money to staff them.

But this is the Florida Legislature, where arrogance and cheapness constantly battle for dominance. In this case, it was a tie. Instead of expanding early voting, the House shrank it. And don't bother to complain, because the bill says early voting isn't a right but "a convenience to the voter."

State Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, cooked up a half-baked scheme to restrict travel by Floridians to Cuba. ...

The bill would have denied state and federal benefits to Cubans who returned to their homeland within three years of coming to Florida. Charter flights also would have been taxed heavily.

When Florida Senate President Tom Lee verbally blasted Gov. Jeb Bush earlier this week, many chalked it up to simmering political resentment and end-of-session fatigue.

But Lee's frustration is legitimate, especially when it comes to the Bush-backed plan to radically revamp the state's massive Medicaid program -- a move that could hit state taxpayers and vulnerable residents hard.

Bush likes to describe his Medicaid plan as a "big, hairy, audacious goal," and the appellation fits. Under his proposal, the state's 2.2 million Medicaid recipients -- mostly children, senior citizens and people with chronic physical or mental illnesses -- would be pitched into the private market to negotiate their own care. Private managed-care providers would be allowed to decide what tests, medications and medical services to offer, and when to cut off coverage. To their credit, House leaders blinked at the scope of the governor's proposal, trimming it back to pilot programs and requiring a greater degree of accountability.

But Senate leaders -- including Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, and Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville --did a far better job of penetrating the weakness of the plan. Senators say they won't accept a change that lets private plans offer a lower standard of coverage than state law currently requires.

one state [California] is serious about protecting people and the other [Florida] is not.

Florida's failure grows from a fundamental flaw that leaves enforcement to the state Department of Agriculture, an obvious conflict of interest. California inspectors work out of a separate Department of Pesticide Regulation and have the autonomy to do their jobs. California also has many more state inspectors — about 350 compared with about 45 in Florida — and the counties assign hundreds more to work at least part-time in compliance and enforcement. When California inspectors find violations, they are much likelier to draw fines and penalties; Florida inspectors often give growers repeated warnings for the same violations. The state's doctors and health departments also have been indifferent when it comes to following a law requiring them to report pesticide poisonings. Only a few reports are made each year.

To provide the three-day wait that the constitution requires between a House-Senate compromise and a floor vote on the budget, clearing the way for on-time adjournment of the session, legislators don't have to reach an agreement until late Tuesday.

Partners Dave Ericks and Mike Raynor, both lobbyists in their 50s, are selling the institution to up-and-comer Alan Duffee, a Panhandle lobbyist who promises that everything will remain the same — except the bathrooms.

Duffee, 39, is a former Florida Privatization Commission director who bought the Windsor Group, a Tallahassee lobbying firm, in January.

[E]nvironmental groups say the bills prevent people from playing a role in key growth decisions. The bills prohibit residents from challenging local governments' plans for new roads, schools and water and sewer projects.

"Anything that eliminates citizen participation to challenge government decision is a huge problem for the League of Women Voters and the Sierra Club," said Susie Caplowe, a lobbyist for both groups.

Audubon of Florida and 1000 Friends of Florida also have raised concerns about the bills.

Under Bush, the [judicial] nominating commissions have become the functional equivalent of Republican patronage committees. Nearly 80 percent of their members are registered Republicans, as best as can be determined from the state's voter database. That's more than twice the party's share of the electorate.

Bush had been in office less than a year when his assistant general counsel developed a plan to covertly recruit judicial applicants who would be "ideologically compatible" with the governor. That did not survive its exposure, but in 2001, Bush easily persuaded the Republican-led Legislature to let him appoint all nine members of each nominating commission.

If the state Senate goes along, voting will become more difficult and elections will become more expensive.

House Republicans passed a bill last week that would limit early voting to eight hours a day and eight hours total on weekends. ... It further restricts weekend voting, an important feature for fulltime workers.

Early voting proved unexpectedly popular last year, with almost 20 percent of voters casting ballots before Election Day, including by absentee ballot. That led to long lines and short tempers in some places and a vow by supervisors of elections to do better.

So the supervisors asked lawmakers to permit them to keep early voting sites open longer and to offer more polling places. Incredibly, Republican legislators rejected them on both requests. (All Democrats voted for the measure.) ...

Democrats conclude that if more voters go to the polls, their party fares better. And early voting is particularly helpful to lower-income Floridians -- a Democratic stronghold -- for whom getting to the precinct on election Tuesday can be difficult.

Republicans deny any sinister intent, saying they simply want to cut costs and labor for election supervisors. But that's not what supervisors asked for. They want to expand, not curtail, early voting.

It doesn't take a genius though to make sense of why the House voted to eviscerate a law limiting the amount candidates can spend on their campaigns. In Florida's current conservative era, Republicans control state politics and collect the lion's share of campaign cash. The more money they're allowed to spend, the more likely it is they'll have an advantage over their Democratic opponents. ...

The House raised the limit to $21 million for gubernatorial candidates and $10 million for Cabinet contenders. In other words, no limits at all. Bush and Democratic opponent Bill McBride didn't raise $20 million between them in 2002; all candidates combined received just $5 million from the state.

If passed, the bill not only hurts the public in its pocketbook -- after all, it's taxpayer dollars we're talking about -- it harms their innate interest in fair elections as well. It does exactly what the original law attempted to prevent -- a candidate from buying his way into political office.

Making it more inconvenient for folks to vote and more expensive for them to run is nothing to brag about.

Special-interest groups bankrolled more than 200 trips for Central Florida lawmakers and their congressional staffs to such choice locales as Paris, London, Antigua, Napa Valley and Palm Springs, a review of travel records by the Orlando Sentinel shows.

From 2000 to 2005, the lawmakers and their aides enjoyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in trips from companies, nonprofit organizations and trade groups, many with business before Congress.

They stayed at such places as the luxurious Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, mingled at fancy receptions and, in some cases, brought along family members for free -- all of it legal under House rules.

The groups that paid for Central Florida lawmakers' trips are a roll call of powerful special interests, including the payday-loan industry, railroads and others with business before the lawmakers' committees. Some examples:

Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala, traveled abroad on the tab of the International Management and Development Institute, a nonprofit group financed by European companies and run by lobbyists.

The institute's president and one other board member are registered lobbyists and foreign agents. House rules bar lobbyists and foreign agents from paying for congressional travel, but because the nonprofit group paid the way, the trip met the House rules.

The agenda for the February trip shows that Feeney, Stearns and other lawmakers were offered outings to the private Hermes family museum in Paris and a reception in the New Palace in Stuttgart, Germany. They stayed at one of Paris' swankiest hotels, near the Champs-Elysées, the travel records show.

The former chief watchdog of pesticide use in Florida says the state's health officials abdicated their responsibility to protect workers and the public years ago, largely because of political pressure from the agriculture industry.

Dr. Omar Shafey, who headed the state Department of Health pesticide surveillance program from 1998 to 2000, says his superior told him that he could not "contradict" agriculture officials, even if he thought pesticide use was causing health problems.

Shafey says his superiors also changed one of his reports about illnesses caused by malathion spraying during the medfly infestations of the late 1990s, a report that said victims of pesticide illness should be treated at state expense and compensated. Shafey calls the Florida Health Department "corrupt."

"We're talking about bureaucrats whose first interest is self-preservation, in not causing controversy, and not in public health," Shafey says. "The system of protecting the public is broken."

[C]ritics say the Republican, tapped by Bush to sponsor an expansion of school vouchers, is too ambitious for his constituents' good. ...

While running for his District 56 seat, he was accused of caring more about resume-building than constituent service. His opponents said he was beholden to out-of-town special interests that funneled thousands into his campaign.

Traviesa stands out. He wears a Rolex watch, and he's rarely without a pocket square. His black hair is thick and glossy.

Conservatives can't stop whining about Hollywood, but the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too. It's not easy. In the showbiz wrangling sweepstakes of 2004, liberals had Leonardo DiCaprio, the Dixie Chicks and the Boss. The right had Bo Derek, Pat Boone and Jessica Simpson, who, upon meeting the secretary of the interior, Gale Norton, congratulated her for doing "a nice job decorating the White House."