The more details emerge about Gov. Jeb Bush's Medicaid proposal, the more troubling it is.

Bush wants a dramatic overhaul of the program, which provides health coverage to 2.3 million Floridians, most of them children and seniors. His plan has a few good elements, but much of it would be devastating to families struggling to eke out a living on the edges of the state's shaky economy.

The president will visit senior-rich Florida next week to push his plan to revamp Social Security as Democrats gear up to fight the proposal.

We barely have the votes counted from 2004 and legislators already are raising money for 2006 and 2008. ...

We never seem to get out of fundraising mode anymore.

Everyone complains about it, but nothing ever seems to change much. Even the $500 contribution limit means little in a system where clever lobbyists become "bundlers" and deliver envelopes full of checks.

It leaves a message: "I am an important lobbyist with well-heeled clients and you should remember where all this money comes from."

In 2004 legislators spent almost $25-million getting elected to jobs that pay them $29,000 a year. The average Senate race cost $227,176 while the average House race cost $159,000. The most expensive race was that of Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, who spent more than $516,000 running against a write-in opponent.

It will cost more in 2006 when all the legislative candidates have to divert attention from a hot governor's race and open Cabinet seats.

"misconstrued" the law in allowing the search warrant, contending that the state requires a subpoena. Actually, the search warrant requires a higher threshold than a subpoena, as the appeals court noted. Two judges had to approve it.

The case is very simple: Privacy rules do not allow patients to hide possible evidence. You would think the attorney general would back up prosecutors on that point.

In 2002, Gov. Jeb Bush closed one of the three offices of the capital collateral regional counsels — state-paid lawyers and support staff specializing in Death Row cases.

The move was designed to save the state money and speed up the appeals process, but instead has resulted in delays due to inexperienced private lawyers and a lack of oversight, according to a Jan. 25 report from the commission.

Appearing at a meeting of the Commission on Capital Cases at its request on Tuesday, [Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul] Cantero characterized the work of the private attorneys handling the final appeals for Death Row convicts as "some of the worst lawyering I've seen." ...

Cantero, appointed by Bush two years ago, told the commission that registry attorneys have penned "the worst briefs that I have read" and their ineptitude bogs down the court and creates "inefficiencies."

The Florida Legislature may tackle the state's troubled clemency system, starting with a plea by influential Republicans to the governor to automatically restore the rights of felons.

Two powerful Republican lawmakers are urging Gov. Jeb Bush to restore civil rights to felons who have completed their sentences -- and have vowed to support a voter referendum to end Florida's 137-year-old ban altogether if the governor refuses.

Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican and chairman of the criminal justice committee, said the Legislature could put an amendment on the ballot that would permanently eliminate the ban from the Florida Constitution if a majority of voters approves.

"I think it has great potential," he said. "If our committee would do it, then we could get this [idea] out of the Legislature and get it onto a statewide ballot. Its time has come."

The idea also has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Alex Villalobos, a Miami Republican.

Senate budget writers Thursday hammered the state Department of Education over what they called confusing and incomplete cost estimates to implement the voter-approved class-size amendment.

Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, wondered why the department has not yet pushed for changes to school construction standards so schools do not continue to build classrooms that can accommodate 30 or 35 students when the amendment limits classes to 18, 22 and 25, depending on grade level."Now, there's something wrong with this picture," Wise said.

The eventual outcome of the long-running, bitter dispute over a chiropractic program at Florida State University is still uncertain, even after the Board of Governors on Thursday rejected the plan.

That isn't to say that the vote or the sometimes heated rhetoric about the proposal has been for naught. The plan's high profile has helped illustrate a broader, more fundamental problem in higher education governance in Florida.

Who's in charge?

That question already has been posed in Leon County Circuit Court by plaintiffs who contend that Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature ran roughshod over a constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2002. The amendment, which Mr. Bush opposed, created the Board of Governors to oversee Florida's 11 public universities.

In the wake of this testy tiff involving political power and questions of science, it's now time to let cooler heads prevail.

Canadian energy companies have discovered oil off the northwest coast of Cuba, according to news reports. Cuban President Fidel Castro claims that 100 million barrels are waiting there; if so, the sale of oil could provide a boost to his country's anemic economy.

Martinez's concerns about Florida's environment will ring hollow, however, if he doesn't apply the same standard to proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Bush administration will pressure Martinez to support drilling in the refuge. But the senator should resist for two reasons: One is that the costs and risks of drilling in the Alaskan refuge outweigh the benefits; the other is that Martinez's opposition to drilling off Florida's coast would be compromised.

The National Wildlife Federation contends that congressional approval of drilling in the refuge would be followed by a renewed effort to open the Gulf waters off Florida to oil and gas exploration.

There are differences, of course, between drilling in the Gulf and in the Alaskan refuge. But the principle is the same: Vital American environmental assets should not be put at risk for relatively minimal amounts of oil -- especially since the nation and its people have yet to embrace conservation as the preferred alternative.

Based on a single study covering one school year, the Florida Board of Education is ready to deny promotion to students at all grade levels who fail state reading tests. Demonstrating blind faith in retention as a solution for low-achieving students, the state board voted unanimously last week to ask lawmakers for indefinite authority to expand the requirement.

Lawmakers should reject the proposal.

This move is symbolic of the board's myopic test-oriented perspective of how to improve public schools. Scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test are valid when they are used to measure progress, but they are wrongly applied as the predominant gauge of whether a child should be promoted to the next grade.

The first Florida volley in the battle over President Bush's Social Security reform was fired, with anonymous calls targeting a Florida congresswoman.

Financially strapped hospitals serving large numbers of uninsured patients, like St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, could find themselves in a tougher pinch under Gov. Jeb Bush's Medicaid reform plan, legislators warned Wednesday. ...

[S]everal legislators, including Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, have begun publicly questioning whether the strategy will only shift health spending from the federal and state governments onto the shoulders of local governments and private hospitals.

They said they envision scenarios in which large numbers of Medicaid patients reach the spending cap but continue seeking health services from doctors and hospitals that are obligated to treat the patients.

Legislators begin the debate over 'cleansing' the state Constitution of citizen-driven changes they say now litter Florida's guiding document.

Bush recently reminded Florida politics watchers just what a conservative governor we've got - not that anyone worried that his views were liberalizing in his lame-duckery. ...

It's easy to be conservative when you've never had to stretch a paycheck to the end of the month or worried about affording care for a sick child. ...

Your kid's in a bad school? Here's a tax-paid voucher - only we'll call it an "opportunity scholarship" - so they can go somewhere else.

Taxes? There's always a room to cut more.

Bureaucracy? Privatize. Not reading at grade level? Same class, next year.

In his first term, Bush started an optional retirement plan to let state employees invest pension money - sort of like what his brother wants to do with Social Security. Now the governor wants "health savings accounts" as an option for employees who will join high-deductible, low-premium health plans and gamble that they stay healthy.

Lawyer-lobbyist Curt Kiser, a Republican who served Pinellas County in the Legislature for two decades, said Wednesday he is considering a run for Florida attorney general in 2006.

The head of a Senate oversight committee said Wednesday the state is "stuck" with the People First system for payroll and personnel services because privatization contracts are rigged to protect companies such as Convergys - even if they provide poor service.

Sen. Nancy Argenziano, chairman of the Senate Governmental Oversight and Productivity Committee, said some contracts even require agencies to lobby in defense of private companies whenever legislators start poking into the need, cost or quality of an "outsourcing."

Ongoing problems in the state's new payroll system are accomplishing what years of complaints by state employee unions and Democrats could not: Republican resistance to the idea of privatizing state government.

Six years after Gov. Jeb Bush began his push to outsource government services to shrink state employee rolls, Republican legislative leaders are starting to push back, saying the trend often has led to questionable decisions and lax oversight.

Nationwide Insurance Co., the state's fourth largest insurer, is seeking a double-digit hike in rates, becoming the latest company to file for an increase since last year's four hurricanes.

Ostrich owners may soon have to start paying taxes on feed for the flightless birds that were once touted as the next big thing in lean meat.

Unlike the business — or the birds — an effort to repeal a sales tax exemption on their feed may just fly this year.

When anyone talks about Florida's hodgepodge of exemptions to the sales tax, ostrich feed often heads a list of tax free things that some consider odd: horse and dog track admissions, Super Bowl tickets, collectible coins, fill dirt, and cattle growth enhancers.

"This thing blocks out the sun," Bush said later at an Orlando campaign stop. "It is so big that it will mean a broad-based tax of some kind. And people need to know that."

Gov. Jeb Bush has launched a plan to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by restricting Medicaid patients' access to only the least expensive prescription drugs.

Bush ordered his top health officials this month to seek legislative and federal agency approval for his proposal, which would create a scaled-down list of drugs that doctors can prescribe to the state's 2.1 million poor and disabled, half of whom are children.

Strong indications are that U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa, state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua and Lawton "Bud" Chiles III of Orlando, son of the late, two-term Democratic governor, are planning to run, according to those attended.

Betty Castor, who lost the U.S. Senate race to Republican Mel Martinez last November, joined the meeting by conference call and told participants she "remains very interested" in the governor's race, participants said.

Charles Lee, vice president of the Audubon of Florida, called the EPA's review "disappointing," particularly since the agency in 2003 had warned portions of the law "appeared to conflict" with federal law.

"In the short term, we're certainly glad that the governor is asking for funds to deal with the backlog. But in the long term, you have to ask why Florida is spending money on a process that most states find completely unnecessary," said Courtenay Strickland, coordinator of voting rights for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which successfully challenged the Department of Corrections clemency process in a class action lawsuit settled last year. "If you provide for automatic restoration of voting rights after completion of the sentence, then all of this becomes unnecessary."

The Committee to Restore Voter Integrity, a group headed by Sen. Mandy Dawson, D-Fort Lauderdale, has begun to gather signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2006 allowing voters to decide if felons should have their rights automatically restored once their sentence is complete.

[AG] Crist confirmed Tuesday that he wants to know whether there is fodder for a full investigation. His interest was piqued by a Tribune editorial published Jan. 11 urging him and his office to bring an independent eye to Gov. Jeb Bush's pet project.

As antsy faculty and alumni worried about starting a controversial chiropractic school, Florida State University president T.K. Wetherell publicly espoused a cautious approach, saying the university faculty would review the matter to decide the right course of action.

But in e-mails written months ago, Wetherell showed his mind was clearly made up in favor of the new school - and he was spoiling for a fight with the statewide university board that will decide Thursday whether to bless or kill the school, the product of dealmaking in last year's Legislature.

Few would argue that outsourcing some public services to private companies is never a good idea. When a private firm can perform as well or better than government, at lower cost, outsourcing may serve taxpayers better in the long run.

By most accounts, the slate favored by Democratic state senators all happen to be Democratic state senators: Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, would run for governor; Campbell would run for attorney general; and Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, would run for chief financial officer.

None of those prospective candidates say final decisions have been made. And at least in the governor's race, competition appears likely.

Smith's potential competition includes Lawton "Bud" Chiles III, son of the late governor, who has filed papers to run, and U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, D-Tampa, who has been talking to people across the state about running. Maddox implied Monday that while he won't decide for some time, he is inclined to run unless former Education Commissioner Betty Castor gets in the race. She hasn't closed the door on getting in, but has downplayed the likelihood.

Before a closed-door huddle of potential candidates at the Jefferson County farm of U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, Nelson said he has asked former Sen. Bob Graham to come out of retirement and run for governor again - but was turned down.

That leaves Betty Castor, the party's unsuccessful nominee for the U.S. Senate this year, as the biggest name in the race to succeed Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. Castor is expected to announce her personal plans after the legislative session.

Nelson told reporters at his downtown office that Castor "is very interested in running for governor."

Florida will collect an additional $4-billion in its wallet next year, but Gov. Jeb Bush wants to hand universities what amounts to pocket change. His proposed 2005-06 budget covers only a fourth of what his own Board of Governors says is necessary merely to keep pace with new students.

Attorney Larry Klayman, representing one woman, claimed in opening statements that agents of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service vented their prejudice against Cubans during the raid.

"This was a chance for payback to the Cuban community," he told the judge at the opening of a trial that may take up to two weeks. "Agents intended all along to use excessive force."

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief Monday in a case challenging Florida's original school voucher law, arguing that a state appellate court that found the law unconstitutional erred in interpreting a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Florida's Supreme Court is considering the appeal of a November ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal that the voucher law violates a provision of the Florida Constitution forbidding the state from using tax dollars to aid any church, sect or religious denomination.

The U.S. Supreme Court sent Gov. Jeb Bush a loud message Monday: He is not above the constitution.

In a letter sent to the president Monday, Wexler said Brown should be fired for his "failure to address agency fraud including a massive misallocation of recovery aid funds in Florida."

President Bush's controversial proposal to overhaul Social Security has huge political repercussions in Florida -- home to more than three million senior citizens. ...

"This is, without a doubt, precarious territory," said U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, an Oviedo Republican who backs Bush's proposal but admits that "no one is betting the ranch we're going to have success."

Feeney notes there may be long-term political advantages for Republicans among younger voters who are worried that Social Security will go belly-up long before they hit retirement age.

"There's a risk here for Democrats, as well," Feeney said.

But Florida's nearly three million seniors remain one of the state's most avid voting blocs, resulting in election-year pilgrimages by political candidates to city-size retirement centers such as Broward County's fabled Century Village, Sun City near Tampa and The Villages in Central Florida.

"People in the system have their antennas up," said Jeff Johnson, a strategist for the Florida AARP. The national chapter is running newspaper ads that denounce Bush's proposal as risky and dispute his contention that Social Security in the future will run out of money. "It's a critical issue, if not the critical issue."

Nelson said he has sought assurances from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada that he'll play a leading role in Democratic efforts to rebuff Bush and portray his proposal as a "breach of a sacred trust."

In a crucial blow to efforts by Gov. Jeb Bush, the Florida Legislature and others to keep Terri Schiavo alive, the U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to take up the governor's appeal in the case, leaving the door open to the removal of the feeding tube that has kept the severely brain-damaged St. Petersburg woman alive for more than a decade.

A lawsuit challenging how Florida funds large urban school districts remained alive, although barely, after a judge threw out key provisions.

A bid by the Miami-Dade school district to undo the way the state doles out money for public schools was seriously damaged Monday after a Tallahassee judge threw out most of the district's lawsuit.

The district first went to court over the summer, after the Florida Legislature reduced the amount of money that Miami-Dade and other South Florida counties traditionally received to help pay for higher living costs. The change in the funding method has helped direct millions more to counties such as Orange, Leon and Duval, the home county of former Senate President Jim King, who was instrumental in altering the formula. ...

But Circuit Court Judge P. Kevin Davey sided with lawyers hired by the Legislature, throwing out two of the three parts of the lawsuit. Davey ruled that changing the cost-of-living formula did not violate the state's requirement that school funding be done in a uniform way. He also ruled that legislators did not use the state budget to change a stand-alone law, which is also prohibited by the state Constitution. ...

The judge, however, kept alive a portion of the lawsuit that questions whether the Department of Education had the authority to alter how it hands out the state money without changing state law first.

Floridians can't afford another year of their representatives expending more energy bickering with each other than working together on behalf of the well-being of all the state's residents.

A legislative panel that will recommend changes to the state's property insurance laws in the wake of last year's four hurricanes decided Monday to delay its vote until next week

Looking to rebound from a disastrous showing in last fall's elections, Florida Democrats soon might unveil a carefully crafted lineup of candidates for some of the state's most powerful posts.

Although at least two contenders will likely slug it out to become the Democratic nominee for governor, party leaders say they are trying to lessen the odds of costly primary fights in the races for attorney general and chief financial officer.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce is upset that voters overwhelmingly have approved a constitutional amendment raising the minimum hourly wage $1, to $6.15. The chamber, which speaks on behalf of businesses, doesn't think it's fair to compensate the state's lowest-paid employees a little better. It thinks it's unfair that employers have to pay the higher wages. It claims, from alarmist and alarmingly phony evidence, that jobs and benefits will be lost as a result. The chamber can't change the minds of 71 percent of voters who approved the amendment. So it's asking the Legislature to "clarify" through a new law the meaning of three words: "employer," "employee" and "wage." The clarification presumably would help businesses skirt the amendment so that they can legally keep paying their employees chattel wages.

Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" defines a corporation as "an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." It's a harsh judgment. But the Legislature would only be making Bierce's point, and shaming Florida, if it went along with the chamber's dodge around the Minimum Wage Amendment.

Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to let state employees set up "health savings accounts" embodies two ideas that have been gaining attention in recent years.

First, HSAs would give "ownership" of their insurance plans to employees who choose them, by letting them bank some tax-exempt savings and having the money matched by the state - up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families. ...

Second, HSAs represent a cost-shifting from employer to employee. ...

Instead of having one premium for individual employees and another for families, last year Bush tried to let employees choose between a stripped-down basic plan and a comprehensive policy that would have cost more and covered more. There still would have been separate columns for single and family coverage in each category, but the Legislature rejected the whole idea.

Now, instead of a Volkswagen plan and Cadillac plan, Bush has come up with something like a bus pass with tax breaks.

There seems to be a new attitude toward privatization in Florida's Capitol.

Republican legislative leaders, who gave Gov. Jeb Bush pretty much whatever he wanted in "outsourcing" of state services over the past six years, now speak of "accountability" in contracting.

And Democrats, who have doggedly resisted every initiative that would reduce the number of government jobs, have adopted a conciliatory tone of not throwing themselves in the way of efficiency initiatives that are going to pass anyway.

Even Gov. Jeb Bush, who sent shock waves through Tallahassee's major industry by speculating about emptying downtown office buildings in his second inaugural address, last week acknowledged that his administration made "mistakes" in negotiating big-ticket deals. Bush included $1 million in his budget proposals for creation of an "office of procurement" to help agencies drive a harder bargain when they contract out for services.

Electing politicians for a single geographic district is a structure that works well in most situations. It allows more participation from minorities while it holds down the cost of running for office. The Legislature and county commissions benefit from the structure, as does the U.S. House.

But it doesn't work for school boards. That's particularly true now that the cornerstone of school-accountability plans for both Florida and the nation is the transfer of students from bad schools to better ones. And usually the schools are in different political districts.

Just two years after Florida started flunking 9-year-olds for scoring low on a state reading test, Education Commissioner John Winn is entirely too eager to declare victory. His push for legislation that would extend the testing consequences to students in all grades is more than a little hasty.

Winn describes his effort as "bumping the standards up," but his plan doesn't increase the passing scores or change classroom curriculum. What it does, rather, is take one of the most agonizing decisions any teacher faces - whether to promote or retain a struggling student - and subject it to a rigid state bureaucratic directive where the teacher's judgment is irrelevant.

Mr. Bush is proposing that the state's 2.1 million Medicaid recipients be allotted money to buy their own health care coverage from managed care organizations and other private medical networks. If enacted, the program would make Florida the first state to allow private companies, not the state, to decide the scope and extent of services to the elderly, the disabled and the poor, half of them children. ...

Florida, with the most radical plan so far, would not be the only state to incorporate managed care into its Medicaid program. Most states do. The difference is that other states impose strict conditions about who will be covered and for which services. Under Governor Bush's plan, the private companies would make those important decisions without government interference. ...

Some details of the Florida plan are still vague, including at what point spending would be capped and whether any services would be guaranteed.

As Republican leaders have pushed in recent years to cut a tax imposed on investors, they have used a folksy message: Florida shouldn't penalize its "seniors and savers."

But with Gov. Jeb Bush signaling last week that he will lead a renewed effort to slash -- and ultimately eliminate -- the so-called "intangibles" tax, don't expect the senior and savers who would benefit from it to be the same ones you see bagging groceries at the corner store.

State figures show that fewer than 2 percent of Floridians are required to pay the tax, which is collected on stocks and bonds. And those who pay often are millionaires.

"Indecent proposal"

Gov. Jeb Bush is proposing a budget that would repeal the remaining taxes on Florida's wealthiest stockholders and deprive thousands of seriously ill people access to the hospitals and doctors who keep them alive. What the taxpayers would save is nearly what it would cost the state to continue the federally subsidized Medically Needy program.

Is this what the people of Florida wish the government to do in our names? Who among us could look in the mirror and say yes?

Bush's proposal to "make Medicaid coverage look and operate more like private insurance" inspires more worry than confidence, especially when private insurance is either unaffordable or otherwise unattainable for another 3.2 million Floridians.

That he quickly followed his announcement with a plan to cut the Medically Needy program casts more doubt on his brand of private-must-be-better "reform." The program offers last-ditch coverage to about 32,000 people who work but cannot afford, or are too sick to qualify for, private insurance.

Ms. Castor, who may run for governor in two years, announced this month that she will work with a group called the Committee for Fair Representation. Led by a Democratic legislator, its goal is to gather enough signatures to put on the November 2006 ballot a constitutional amendment that would establish an independent commission to draw congressional and legislative districts. ...

As you would expect, Florida's Republican chairman mocked the idea as "desperate," saying that Democrats want to change the rules for their benefit. And it's true that the Democrats would have said the same thing if Republicans had proposed it when they held just nine of 40 state Senate seats. But the proposal should have been on the ballot in 1998. The reason it wasn't is that GOP lawmakers knew it would pass and intervened. Most members of the Constitution Revision Commission supported the idea. Then Republican legislative leaders engineered vote-trading among commission members, and the proposal fell one vote short.

"I believe this is a common-sense budget based on sound conservative principles," Bush said of his spending plan. The same can't be said for his counterproductive strategy that targets an extremely vulnerable segment of Florida's population.

The State Board of Education's move to end social promotion sounded sweeping and bold, but it faces skeptical lawmakers, uncertain details and a long phase-in period.

State and local governments have paid or promised more than $21-million of benefits plus a tax break worth up to $74.5-million to help a financial corporate titan create jobs in Tampa - the same company that will lay off 1,900 employees this year.

Time and again, the company now called JPMorgan Chase & Co. promised Tampa and the state that it was bringing more high-wage jobs to Tampa - even as it was shedding other jobs here.

Florida easily could change its name from the Sunshine State to the Ocean State if Rhode Island, despite its meager 40 miles of coastline, hadn't already nabbed the title.

With a coast that is 1,350 miles long, Florida is second only to Alaska with real estate abutting the water. But Florida's population of 17 million uses its coast much more than the 650,000 Alaskans use theirs.