Florida politicians are waging war on workers. Not even astronauts or baseball players are safe.
The Trade Show (2023 ed.), Vol. 9
This is “The Trade Show,” a weekly collection of shorter news nuggets and stories from other outlets around the state and country about the special interest-driven issues that lawmakers spend most of their time working on. The name comes from something a mentor once told me before I covered my very first session of the Florida Legislature more than 20 years ago: “Ninety percent of what goes on up here is a trade show.” As always, our content here at Seeking Rents is free to all readers. But please consider a paid subscription to support our work, if you can afford one.
The Florida Legislature’s 2023 session is only two weeks old, but it is already shaping up as a terrible one for workers.
The most obvious examples are Senate Bill 256 and House Bill 1445, a pair of aggressively anti-union bills that Gov. Ron DeSantis is driving through the Legislature as he loads up to run for the Republican nomination for president.
McKenna Schueler of the Orlando Weekly has taken a couple of deep dives into the details of the legislation (read ‘em here and here), and Jeff Solochek of the Tampa Bay Times captured all the action last week. The bottom-line goal is to destabilize, defund and, ultimately, decertify unions that collectively bargain on behalf of most public-sector workers.
This legislation is primarily targeted at unions representing teachers. But it would go far beyond them. It would also attack unions for bus drivers, 911 dispatchers, nurses, librarians, garbage haulers, utility line workers and cafeteria employees, among many others.
DeSantis and other supporters claim they are trying to “protect” these workers. That is a lie.
And you can tell it’s a lie because they are making sure that none of these “protections” will apply to police officers, firefighters or prison guards — whose unions are more likely to be supportive of Republican politicians like DeSantis.
This is all part of a years-long, nationwide campaign by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity to pass union-busting bills through as many state legislatures as possible. Here’s an email showing lobbyists for AFP and another right-wing group (the “Center for Worker Progress Action”) pushing an earlier version of this bill ahead of last year’s session, via the office of Manny Diaz, the former Republican state senator who is now Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner.
Why are these conservative groups so intent on busting up unions? Because the fewer unions there are, the more power employers have to suppress wages, pare benefits, squeeze schedules, and skimp on workplace protections.
But it’s not just teachers and bus drivers who are in Tallahassee’s crosshairs. Private space companies like Blue Origin are lobbying to strip legal rights from crew members who are injured or killed in explosions. Major League Baseball is lobbying to cut minor leaguers off from the minimum wage.
That’s right: Not even American icons like astronauts and baseball players are safe from Florida’s anti-worker agenda.
By the way, Americans for Prosperity, Blue Origin and Major League Baseball share something in common:
They’re all backed by billionaires.
Protecting car dealers…from consumers
Speaking of billionaires, a contender for the most anti-consumer bill of the year gets its first hearing next week in the Florida Senate: Senate Bill 712, a bill written by car dealers for car dealers.
Lobbyists and lawmakers who support this legislation are claiming it would protect local car dealers from giant car manufacturers.
What they’re really trying to do is protect car dealers from consumers.
Do you like having to go to a car dealer to buy a car? Do you like not knowing the price ahead of time? Do you like grinding through negotiations with a high-pressure salesperson working on commission, who keeps trying to tack on $200 for undercoating?
Too bad if you don’t. Because SB 712 — and House Bill 637 — will cement this antiquated and absurd system into place for a whole new generation of cars sold by traditional car makers like Ford and Honda.
You’ll still be able to buy a Tesla directly from the company and from the comfort of your home computer. But if you want an electric car from Honda, you’ll have to keep going through a middleman with a regional monopoly. (For more details, see our story on this legislation last month: Car dealers are lobbying to make sure consumers must keep haggling with high-pressure salesmen.)
You could even think of this as the Elon Musk Protection Act.
But, really, this piece of protectionist legislation was written by representatives for the Florida Automobile Dealers Association, along with folks from a few particularly large car-dealer networks — including Braman Motors, the Miami company owned by billionaire car magnate Norman Braman.
And, hey, would you look at that? SB 712 is sponsored by Sen. Bryan Avila (R-Miami). And the same month the bill was filed, Avila took $10,000 donations from both Braman Motors and the Florida Automobile Dealers Association.
The same is true of Rep. Jason Shoaf (R-Port St. Joe), the sponsor of HB 637. He took $10,000 each from Braman Motors and the dealers association last month, too.
But there appears to be some bipartisan generosity around this bill. Campaign-finance records show the car dealers association’s political committee made more than $280,000 in donations last month.
That included $75,000 to a committee controlled by House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) and $50,000 to a committee controlled by Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples). But it also included $15,000 to a committee led by House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa.)
A good week for government vendors
Committees in both the House and Senate advanced bills last week that would let cities and counties contract with vendors of speed-camera systems that could issue $100 tickets to drivers caught speeding through school zones.
The bills (House Bill 657 and Senate Bill 588) are supported by an outfit called the “National Coalition for Safer Roads” — which is itself supported by Verra Mobility Corp., an Arizona-based vendor that sells automated traffic systems to local governments.
Verra, which was formerly known as American Traffic Solutions, is probably best known for peddling red-light cameras. But the company is also making a big push into school zone speed programs.
Records show more than half a dozen lobbyists for Verra are registered to lobby on the legislation. Vera, which is a significant campaign contributor in Florida, turned a $92 million profit last year on revenues of $742 million.
Meanwhile, another pair of bills are moving that would create a new state grant program to help school districts pay vendors to produce digital maps of public school buildings. The digital maps could then be used in emergency response — like an active school shooting.
Among those pushing the bills (House Bill 301 and Senate Bill 212) is New Jersey-based Critical Response Group Inc., the country’s largest school-mapping contractor. Records show a pair of other contractors — Axon Enterprise Inc. (better known as the maker of Tasers) and Geo-Comm Inc. — are also registered to lobby on the legislation.
How a bill becomes law
First, someone breaks the rules. Then, their elected official uncle tries to change those rules.
Read: How a destroyed eagle nest led Florida legislators to attack local pollution rules (Florida Phoenix)
Scratching backs
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the DeSantis administration has paid more than $5 million for post-hurricane food aid to a catering nonprofit that pays a $170,000 a year salary to a newly elected Republican senator. That same senator is now carrying some of the DeSantis administration’s priority legislation through the Florida Senate.
Read: New senator’s BBQ company gets $5M from state for Ian relief (Orlando Sentinel)
Unnecessary cruelty
Your periodic reminder that Florida is about to kick at least 900,000 Floridians off Medicaid — and that many of those people won’t be able to find any replacement health insurance because Florida is one of the few remaining holdout states that refuse to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.
Read (or listen): Florida is 1 of 11 states declining to accept federal money to expand Medicaid (NPR)
Billionaires over bikers
The full Florida House of Representatives last week passed House Bill 837, which would restrict the ability of consumers to successfully sue businesses in Florida. The legislation is a priority of Gov. Ron DeSantis, big corporations like Disney and Publix, and business-lobbying groups like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida.
But this bill has also enraged Florida’s many motorcycle riders. A bunch of them have even been crashing the Florida Capitol in “Bikers Over Billionaires” shirts.
Read: Why Florida bikers are leading the attack on lawsuit limits backed by DeSantis, Republicans (Palm Beach Post)
Do car and health insurance companies really need the help?
Another good look at the lawsuit legislation, which is known in lobbyist lingo as “tort reform,” comes courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times.
Read: Florida lawmakers want to help insurance companies by limiting lawsuits (Tampa Bay Times)
While we’re on the subject of billionaires…
It turns out they are really good at timing their stock trades — when buying and selling shares of their competitors. Another must-read investigation from ProPublica, as part of “The Secret IRS Files” series:
Read: Wealthy executives make millions trading competitors’ stock with remarkable timing (ProPublica)
The sunshine is fading in Florida
This past week was Sunshine Week in Florida, so we’ll wrap up this wrap-up with a Miami Herald story looking at how the DeSantis administration is deliberately making Florida state government less transparent.
While you read it, remember that this is happening at the same time as the administration uses its power to weaken independent news media and prop up supplicant sources of news that promote him and attack his critics.
Read: Florida’s century-old Sunshine Laws under duress as DeSantis tries to redefine them (Miami Herald)
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the conservative groups that was lobbying for the anti-union “teacher paycheck protection” legislation. The organization is the Center for Worker Progress Action.
Well, this was an exciting way to start a cold Sunday morning. I won't be able to keep my milk toast down.
During the last 3 years, I have been asked, repeatedly, why we didn't STOP this in the 60's. My answer. Martin Luther King Jr., had a Dream. We had a Plan. And they institutionalized Racism. Take it from someone who was there, my friends were SDS and Weatherman. I knew the Chicago 7. My friend died at Kent State. What is now happening in Florida is, and was, our worst case scenario. An extinction event. And, even then, the Black Panthers knew that they were being funded by old, blue-blooded white men, hiding behind the curtain.
I am sickened by what we are now facing in Florida.
Augh!
And then there is this:
This old Republican narrative created a false image of the nation and of its politics, an image pushed to a generation of Americans by right-wing media, a vision that MAGA Republicans have now absorbed as part of their identity. It reflects a manipulation of politics that Russian political theorists called “political technology.”
Russian “political technologists” developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy by creating a virtual political reality through modern media. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split their voters and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to create opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-18-2023?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=20533&post_id=109308218&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Thank you for reporting on the issues which may ultimately define the collapse of democratic democracy.
The train has left the building, no stopping it now. Same with the banking system, it's a plan & it will all come crashing down on the Citizens.