This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the journalism of others — that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida, written by Jason Garcia.
One of the hardest questions to get a legislator to answer is, “Who wrote the bill?” The response usually includes some vague mention of “stakeholders” – and stakeholders is always plural. Trying to get an actual name is like trying to pick up a fish with your bare hands.
This is a true story: During the final week of the 2019 legislative session, I was told that Disney was behind a sales-tax break that the Florida Senate had just tucked into a big package of tax cuts. So I found the Senate sponsor, Republican Sen. Kelli Stargel of Lakeland, in a Capitol hallway and asked her about it.
We went around and around a few times, me asking specific questions, she giving general answers. It was pretty clear that neither of us were particularly happy with how the conversation was going. Finally, she just walked off. As she was descending a stairwell, I asked one last time whether she’d worked with anyone from Disney.
“I don’t know a Mr. Disney,” she responded.
So this week’s Trade Show starts with shoutouts to reporters figuring out who wrote the bill.
(And yes, a lobbyist for Disney wrote that tax break.)
The nursing home industry wrote the bill
A bill has been filled this year – sponsored by a future Senate president – that would let nursing homes continue admitting new customers even if they don’t meet minimum staffing levels. Hannah Critchfield and Kirby Wilson of the Tampa Bay Times report that it comes from the Florida Health Care Association, a lobbying group for nursing homes and assisted-living facilities and “a dominant player in the multibillion-dollar long-term care space.”
A bill to loosen staffing standards at Florida nursing homes was initially drafted with the help of one of the state’s most powerful long-term care lobbying interests.
Under the measure, Senate Bill 804, nursing homes that fail to meet state-mandated staff requirements would no longer be barred from admitting new residents.
It would also broaden which kinds of employees can be counted in these mandatory staffing minimums, which are intended to keep residents safe.
Proponents say such a bill is desperately needed to deal with a chronic and growing staffing shortage at long-term care facilities. But patient advocates fear the bill as written will lower the standard of care in nursing homes — without increasing the amount of staff inside.
Read: Bill changing Florida nursing home standards was written by the industry, emails show
A security deposit company wrote the bill
We mentioned last week that there’s an effort afoot to help some relatively new companies that sell products that essentially change upfront security deposits into monthly fees.
Jeffrey Schweers of the Tallahassee Democrat reports that the bill was written by lobbyists for one of those companies: California-based LeaseLock Inc.
Emails and text messages obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida show that LeaseLock’s Florida lobbyist provided the language for state Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, to file in bill drafting and offered talking points for the bill.
The House version of the bill is sponsored by Rep. Jim Mooney, R-Islamorada.
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Campaign finance records show the company gave Boyd's political committee, Building on YourDreams, a $2,000 contribution at the beginning of January, three months after the bill was submitted to bill drafting and six days before the legislative session began. Lawmakers are prohibited from soliciting campaign contributions during the two months of the state's legislative session.
LeaseLock also contributed $1,000 in December to Mooney.
The records offer a textbook example of the influence one company can have on a piece of legislation that could potentially affect millions of Floridians.
Read: Florida bill touted as affordable housing fix was written by a company to 'normalize' its business
By the way, there’s another big player in this space, New York-based Rhino. It’s lobbied up on this bill, too – and has helped write similar legislation in other states.
An air-taxi company wrote the bill
This bill actually sounds sorta cool: It aims to establish some ground rules for air taxis and other types of transport in the nascent “advanced air mobility” industry.
Ryan Gillespie of the Orlando Sentinel found an extra interesting detail: The bill includes a definition for a new kind of aircraft – an “eVTOL,” or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft – that was written by a lobbyist for Lilium GmbH, a German company that makes eVTOLs and is planning to open up a “vertiport” in Orlando.
The city of Orlando promised Lilium $800,000 in property-tax breaks for the project, which will be built in the Tavistock Group’s Lake Nona development (a company and development that knows a thing or two about taxpayer subsidies).
Years ahead of futuristic air taxis taking flight over Florida, lawmakers are looking to form a group to study the industry and suggest laws to govern it.
Bills proposed in the state House and Senate call for the creation of a 20-member task force to study how existing state and federal laws would affect the so-called advanced air mobility and craft a report to state leaders on how to safely implement the industry.
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The bills also would define “eVTOL” in state law for the first time, which is the formal name for an aircraft “that uses electric power to hover, take off and land vertically without a runway.”
A lobbyist for Lilium — the company planning to launch in Orlando — sent the same definition last year to house staffers, which was included in a transportation bill that ultimately wasn’t approved.
Read: Taking flight: Bill proposes task force to study air taxis, ahead of planned Orlando launch
‘We are human beings’
It’s hard to fathom just how brutal the conditions are for farmworkers, roofers and other laborers who work outside and without shade in the steamy Florida heat. These are grueling jobs and, of course, it’s exploitable migrant workers who often endure the most dangerous conditions.
The good news: There’s a bipartisan bill moving in the state Senate that would require heat protection for outdoor workers across Florida. The less-good news: It wouldn’t actually have any enforcement teeth.
Still, advocates call it an important first step. From Alex Harris and Syra Ortiz-Blanes of the Miami Herald:
The bill, SB 732, introduced by Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodríguez, requires employers to put in place heat-exposure safety programs that offer preventive measures for workers against heat, like access to sufficient, free drinking water as close as possible to the workplace. Workers who show mild to moderate heat illness must be pulled out of work and evaluated to see whether medical attention is needed.
Managers and employees must attend annual training on how to prevent, spot and treat heat-related illness. And “high-heat procedures” kick in based on the outdoor heat index. When temperatures are above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, employers must provide 10 minutes of rest every 2 hours. If passed, the law would take effect in October.
However, the bill — which has an identical counterpart in the House of Representatives — does not carry penalties for employers.
Read: ‘Water, rest, shade’: The fight to protect Florida’s outdoor workers from extreme heat
Winning friends and influencing people
This was a very smart story:
Hannah Morse of the Palm Beach Post (and ProPublica) took a deep dive into how Florida’s sugar industry influences local elections in the small, struggling communities that dot sugar country – and how those local elected officials can then become impactful advocates when the sugar industry needs help in Tallahassee.
(Bonus: Eagle-eyed readers who have been closely following Florida’s ghost-candidate scandal might recognize a few names.)
Last year, the Florida Legislature was in the midst of an extraordinary push to protect the state’s farming industry from lawsuits over air pollution.
Supporters argued that the legislation was critical to protecting Florida’s agricultural businesses from “frivolous lawsuits.” But some lawmakers were skeptical, noting that residents of the state’s heartland who were bringing suit against sugar companies would feel their case anything but frivolous. At issue was the practice of cane burning, a harvesting method in which the sugar industry burns crops to rid the plants of their outer leaves. Florida produces more than half of America’s cane sugar and relies heavily on the technique, but residents in the largely Black and Hispanic communities nearby claim the resulting smoke and ash harms their health.
So, on a Wednesday morning in March, lawmakers heard testimony on the new bill. In a committee room in Tallahassee, Joaquin Almazan stepped to the microphone as a newly elected city commissioner in Belle Glade, the largest city in the sugar-rich Glades region, where the smoke drops “black snow” on residents throughout every burning season.
Almazan had won his seat just one week before the hearing. His victory was also a victory for the sugar industry, a political powerhouse that employs more than 12,000 workers in the area during harvest season. His rival, Steve Messam, opposed cane burning and sought to end the practice.
Read: How the Sugar Industry Makes Political Friends and Influences Elections
Election controversies, unite!
Speaking of Florida’s ghost-candidate scandal, Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald reports that dark-money consultants at the center of that mess are also involved in a controversial petition drive to bring a casino to Jacksonville.
The political consultants who created the funding structure for the 2020 ghost candidate scandal are now in the midst of another election controversy over possibly thousands of faked signatures submitted by the campaign that is trying to bring a casino to Jacksonville.
Tallahassee-based political consultants Abigail MacIver, Dan Newman and Jeff Pitts, who run Canopy Partners, formed a subsidiary called Game Day Strategies with the goal of getting enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the 2022 November ballot, according to records released Tuesday by investigators for the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s office who are looking into the ghost candidate case.
MacIver and Newman worked with Tallahassee pollster and political consultant Ryan Tyson, and the effort was financed by casino giant Las Vegas Sands, through a political committee named Florida Voters in Charge, documents show.
Read: Consultants named in ghost candidate probe had role in questionable gambling petition
Meanwhile, in Jacksonville...
Speaking of Florida’s ghost candidate scandal, Nate Monroe of the Florida Times-Union looks at the role an attorney who did work for those consultants (whose clients included Florida Power & Light) also had representing Jacksonville’s city-owned utility company (which FPL tried to buy).
A Jacksonville attorney at Foley & Lardner who advised consultants to Florida Power & Light — while those consultants were devising strategies to conceal the utility's campaign contributions — was also among the firm's lawyers who billed JEA ratepayers during the contentious privatization campaign that same year, according to a review of Foley billing invoices throughout 2019.
The Times-Union previously reported that Erika Alba, Foley's director of public affairs, had been advising employees at Matrix LLC — an Alabama consulting firm that was working with FPL in 2019 — at the same time that Alba's Jacksonville colleagues at Foley were billing hundreds of hours helping JEA executives sell the city agency to a private operator. FPL has previously acknowledged in statements to the Times-Union that Matrix worked on the company's behalf during the competitive bidding process to acquire JEA, Jacksonville's public electric, water and sewer utility.
But a review of Foley's billing records shows that on two occasions, Alba herself billed JEA ratepayers for work related to the privatization process. That work included an Oct. 16 phone call with one of the agency's top former officials, chief administrative officer Herschel Vinyard.
Read: Nate Monroe: Jacksonville attorney tied to FPL consultants billed JEA for privatization work
Who you gonna call? (Not these guys)
Speaking of Florida’s ghost candidate scandal, the Orlando Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher and Annie Martin report that the “election security” office that Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to create wouldn’t have any authority to do anything about sham candidates or dark-money networks supporting them.
That’s according to the senator sponsoring the bill.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed election security office would have no authority to clamp down on “ghost” candidates or the dark money groups that support them, according to the senator who outlined the responsibilities of the new office for fellow lawmakers.
Investigators in the new office would be focused on voter fraud — not illegal or unethical behavior by politicians and their campaigns, said state Sen. Travis Hutson, who is sponsoring the Senate’s bill.
State prosecutors and the state’s ethics commission are already handling campaign finance violations, Hutson said Tuesday night.
“If it’s illegal, they shouldn’t be doing it,” the Palm Coast Republican said. “If you want to add more protections and provisions in there, we could certainly look at that. That wasn’t the purview of this bill. This bill was to deal with election fraud — not candidacy fraud.”
Read: ‘Ghost’ candidates, dark money wouldn’t be focus of DeSantis’ election security office
The one issue everyone should be talking about
You can make a case that Florida leaders should be devoting all their attention this session to an affordable housing crisis that continues worsen all across the state. (Maybe $4 billion over five years would help?)
To that end, we finish this week’s Trade Show with few a stories from around the state exploring this crisis from a few perspectives:
From Rebecca San Juan of the Miami Herald:
Monthly home rents are rising sharply across South Florida, with some communities seeing as much as a 34% annual increase in December compared with a year ago.
While locals largely blame the wave of newcomers to the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas, experts say there are solutions: build more apartments priced affordably for the working class and companies should boost wages.
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Experts say to alleviate the burden of higher rents on consumers more development of affordable and workforce housing and wage increases are necessary. McCabe said the Miami area needs 40,000 affordable housing units, thousands more than what’s in the pipeline in Miami-Dade and the city of Miami.
Read: Apartment rents soar in South Florida. What’s driving the trend and when will it subside?
From John Kennedy of USA Today Network – Florida:
Florida’s white-hot housing market is setting new pricing records almost daily, but thousands of homeowners and renters are being scorched, unable to find anything they can afford.
Now, talk of the unfolding crisis is coursing through the Florida Legislature, with calls for lawmakers to do something.
But don’t expect help quickly.
“We sort of keep kicking this affordable housing crisis down the road," said Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, who recently tried unsuccessfully to enact new legal safeguards for any local government seeking to enact rent limits.
Read: Sizzling housing market in Florida hurts many, but help slow to come from legislature
Lastly – and most heart-breaking of all – from Lauren Peace of the Tampa Bay Times, who gives readers a deeply personal, ground-level look at how the lives of low-income, month-to-month tenants are suddenly thrown into chaos by gentrification.
First, Jami Speegle laid down the pillows. Then, the soft blue blanket. Finally, a weighted comforter to hold the makeshift mattress in place.
The seats of her green SUV had been pushed forward as far as they could go. The rest of her belongings — a small bag of clothes, some bathroom supplies, paperwork and medications — she piled on top.
Sleep, these days, was hardly sleep. It was more like wishful meditation. Just as she was slipping away, she’d be pulled back to the corner of the parking lot she’d been staying in since she became homeless at the beginning of January.
Sometimes it was her husband coming back from the night shift at 3 a.m. that shook her awake, twisting his body like a contortionist to try to fit into the car — two grown-ups separated by a midsized dog.
Sometimes it was the heat of their three bodies pressed against each other. Or the pain shooting up her spine.
A few nights earlier, it was the police that woke her. The officer didn’t give her any trouble, just ran her plates and asked if she was OK.
Her answer should have gone without saying, Jami thought. She was a 43-year-old disabled woman living out of her car, the handicap tag dangling from the mirror. She hadn’t showered in days.
Still, she didn’t want to risk having to move the car. She smiled and told the officer she’d be fine.
Read every last word here: Florida renters scramble for shelter as affordable housing erodes