BILLS THAT DIED ON THE VINE:

Citizens raised their voices and their legislators listened. Aquifer Storage and Recovery: SB854 and HB705. To all of you who made calls, sent emails, you too made the difference. A collective effort.  As we reported to you during session, in our mini-TRs, often daily accounts of what bills were up for a vote and how the votes went down - your interest and effort to take the time to respond and call your legislator put us over the top.  Word around the Governor's folks is that Sierra grassroots provided the final blows to kill the ASR. Our tabling on Earth Day, with dirty water bottles as displays and having information handy about the ASR bill; who the sponsors were, telling how legislators voted and what it would do to our current and future drinking water "RESOURCE";  along with Sierra's co-ordinated press conferences giving legislators a platform to voice their concern about the bill and focusing on Senator Les Miller from Tampa who changed his vote from yes to noâ€|kept the momentum; and Dr. Wanless's presence on Monday April 30th sealed the ASR legislation's fate. Dr. Hal Wanless, Professor and Chairman of Geology from Miami University gave us a day out of his schedule to walk the hallways with our lobbyist and deliver his message which was: "send clean water down and not contaminate our precious resource."

SB910/HB1135 Administrative Procedures Act or what we called the anti-citizen participation act; anti-protecting your rights to clean air and safe drinking water from pollution died AGAIN.  Make no bones about it, we fought against this from day one. This bill was offered by Republican Majority leader, Senator Jim King (Jacksonville), for the second year in a row. And a newly elected Republican Dennis Ross (Lakeland), who had many regrets for doing so once session began. HOW WE BEAT THE BILL: The number of bills that the environmental organizations have to fight during session requires us to split up the issues and have different organizations take the lead on different bills. We do this at the pre- session legislative summits held at Rollins College, so many citizen group representatives from around the state can attend, and then monthly during the summer, and every Friday during session, we meet to share strategies and update each other on issues here in Tallahassee. So at any given time, most of us help each other as much as we can. We are telling you this because many of the Organizations don't always attend our summits and therefore don't always feel accountable to those of us who do. However, as bills died and issues passed or died, the last week of session availed the opportunity for some who hadn't had the time to fight the anti-citizen bill to join in. We met Wednesday morning May 2nd to decide how to stop the bill and to quelch the one organization that was dealing away citizen standing.  Two hours later we were on the third floor holding a press conference tucked away in a corner. Our press conference,  organized by Marcia Elder and FL APA, combined two issues: the new information on the DRI increase to 200, and the movement on the Senate side in the last days on the anti- citizen participation bill. (Thank you goes out to Representative Larry Crow, (Republican) Palm Harbor, who is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and who agreed with us that this bill was bad and stated that he would not release the bill since it hadn't been heard in House Judiciary Committee. What typically happens is the leadership and sponsors try to get the Committee Chairs to sign a release form and allow a bill assigned to their committee be removed from the committee and dropped onto the House floor. Rep. Crow stayed true and didn't give it up.  (See earlier TRs as a reminder to Thank Rep. Philip Brutus (Democrat) Miami and Senator Al Lawson (Democrat) Tallahassee for sponsoring our series of amendments to lessen the damage and to slow down these bills.)

We pulled out all the stops, we lobbied DEP, Rep. Crow, Senator Tom Lee, (those we referred to as the Control Tower members), the Attorney General's office got involved opposing the bill, the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers helped us. We informed the Governor's office there was no deal. Many of us fighting this from day one were Sierra Club, Save the Manatee Club, Florida League of Conservation Voters, Florida Consumer Action Network, Florida Wildlife Federation, 1000 Friends of Florida.  American Planning Association Florida Chapter, Defenders Of Wildlife and Environmental & Land Use Law Center joined us towards the end. The bill was passed by the full Senate on May 4th and there was not a single "no" vote against the bill on the Senate Floor. There were 38 yes's and 0 No's.  Senators Rossin and Smith did not vote. We all really worked very hard against this bill. We routed position paper after position paper listing the organizations that opposed this legislation and the reasons why. We sent this to you in email alerts during the fight. (Organizations opposed were Florida League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Florida Consumer Action Network, Florida Wildlife Federation, 1000 Friends of Florida, Save the Manatee Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Florida League of Anglers, League of Women Voters Florida, American Planning Association,  Florida Chapter, Environmental & Land Use Law Center). CHAIRMAN OF HOUSE JUDICIARY LOCKS THE BILL UP AND THROWS AWAY THE KEY: Because Rep. Crow did not release HB1135 from Judiciary, the companion bill to SB910 was not on the House Floor when SB910 arrived in the House from the Senate. In addition, Representatives Greenstein and Seiler, both Democrats, had amendments waiting to try to gut the bill: language to take out the anti-citizen standing and the bad Board of Trustees language (the Senate had changed the attorney fee requirement prior to sending SB910 to the House.) It's Friday early evening and the House brings up SB910, our breathing stops, and the bill is tabled, put on hold. And while we waited minute after minute, hour after hour, on pins and needles for sine die - possibly hearing that awful number come up again, we never did. It died. Will we see it again? Maybe, but it is going to be an election year in 2002 and the legislators think we already have short memories and will not remember - this year or last year (but they are wrong and tell them so when you visit them over the summer.)

The omnibus Growth Management bill SB310/380 & HB1617/1437 did not make it, thank goodness. Even though the Senate and House version got stripped down in the final hours, they both had some offensive language lingering and that stuff passed in other bills that are discussed in the BAD NEWS Part II email. We managed to defeat the marina DRI exemptionâ€|Sierra and STMC and FLAPA and LWVs did a lot to stop that from happening. As we said during the session in our TR's the Omnibus Growth Management bills were out in draft form very late in session and much of the word-smithing was done behind closed doors with legislators and staff, before we got our hands on any of the versions. This made it very difficult for us to respond with amendments or our position on them. However, the informal Growth Management team - American Planning Association Florida Chapter, 1000 Friends of Florida, Sierra Club, Florida Consumer Action Network, Florida League of Conservation Voters, Save The Manatee Club, League of  Women Voters Florida, Defenders of Wildlife and Environmental & Land Use Law Center reviewed 100's of pages of  bills and amendments and drafted 100s of amendments and wrote position papers for distribution to media, legislators and you all. (Thank you, Marcia Elder & Bill Jones, who pumped out statement after statement for us to review and sign on to). Thank you to our Anti-sprawl Co-chairs Denise Layne and Alan Farago. Denise who put many a mile on her car, driving up here week after week, to assist with the reviewing of the bills and amendments and lobbied like the rest of us. And to Alan Farago who wrote position paper after position paper and editorials/press releases for distribution by our National support staff, Beth Conner, Joe Murphy and Jon Ullman. The sad part about the Growth management debacle is that all summer before session and during the election cycle, the Governor's Growth Management Commission capitalized on a lot of our organizations' energy and time, stealing it awayâ€|for, in the end, what we liked in the final analysis of the Commission and what was in a few bills, (School concurrency and true cost accounting), died because the homebuilders, farm bureau and other agriculture interests didn't like it.

ANTI-OCKLAWAHA RIVER & ANTI-MANATEE RESOLUTION BILLS DIE HB1177 Memorial: Florida Waterways/Open Access requests Congress to assure all Boaters have their boating rights in water bodies over manatees, who live in them. The sponsors of this bill were Representatives Kottcamp (Republican); Allen (Republican); Harrington (Republican and Chair of House Natural Resources); Seiler (Democrat); Green (Republican).  This bill moved from committee to committee, along with King's Kingdom which consisted of a pavilion, parking lots, boat ramps and a bleecher at the Rodman Reservoir, SB1246 and HB 1085.  Sierra Club's manatee Issue Chair Helen Spivey (who is also Co-Chair with Jimmy Buffett for Save the Manatee Club)  and our Ocklawaha River Restoration Chair Dan Donaldson discussed our position early in session and the final day of session making sure we still opposed (Florida League of Conservation Voters and FCAN opposed as well)  the compromise agreed to by the Governor's office and Florida Defenders of the Environment, FL Wildlife Federation and a few others. Even the last day there was pressure for the groups opposed to King's Kingdom to cave, but we didn't agree from the very beginning, no matter what amendments were flying around, with the premise that we had to accept the infrastructure King wanted in exchange for testing the water quality of the River. Senator King was holding hostage money to clean up the water in exchange for getting his Rodman Reservoir World Class Fishing Tournament facility. We already have the information needed to clean up the River and to bring down the dam. Just do it!   Many of our friends at FDE were torn between fighting the fight with us and going along with the Governor's office compromise. But that is the way it works, at least their intentions were out in the open and we were informed and communicated about it along the way.  Even a last minute amendment attached to the Senate version, offered by Senators King, Horne and Smith, stated that, lowering the water and cleaning up the nutrients was not then a reason to take the dam down; it is our understanding that FDE didn't like this language either. Thanks go out to Helen Spivey, who traveled to Tallahassee week after week and testified over and over again,  and to our lobbyist for wearing several hats and writing so many position papers and for distributing them with the help of STMC employees sending out alerts after alerts. We also learned that Rep. Pickens, the House sponsor, tried to get some bi-partisan support for his bill and when the Democrats told him that they would not because of the opposition voiced by  STMC , Sierra and the fact that this was on the FLCV repeat offender bills list, they would not support the bill. There were several Republicans who did not want the bill to come up, either. It was also clear that the Governor wanted all the enviro's to sign off on the bill and that wasn't going to happen.

 HB729 and SB2074. "Environmental Control": Rep.Argenziano added some language to the Senate bill that Friday evening and sent the Senate bill back to the Senate. Thanks to her being a bit greedy, the bill died in returning messages. The Senate sine die'd  earlier then did the House and the muck bill was not on the list to bring back up and pass. If you want to check it out, get on online sunshine and look up the bill. The bill was exempting permitting requirements for removal of invasive plants and removal of organic detrital material from freshwater lakes and rivers under specified conditions.  Congratulations to Save the Manatee Club for keeping up with this bill and to Jerry Karnas who worked it for the Club.

 Clean Money activists in Florida (including Sierrans) focused strategic coalition efforts to block last-minute shenanigans by Florida's House of Representatives who attempted to force campaign finance deforms onto Florida's electoral reform bill during the final weeks of the 2001 Legislative Session.  House Republican leaders attempted to double  the maximum contribution amount allowed to any Florida candidate (from $500 to $1000) and to limit the statewide public funding amount a candidate could receive. We objected loudly and brought in many allies such as labor, NAACP, women's groups,  Florida Clean Elections Coalition, Florida League of Conservation Voters â€|to object during committee meetings. Because of our alerts and serious communication efforts, dozens of advocates activated grassroots telephone trees and email trees to shock the House Leadership with overwhelming disgust from citizens in key districts around the state. We took  such a quick, no-compromise position that their arguments for "inflation for the last fifteen years" and "compensating for the loss of fund-raising for the second primary (runoff)" never made it to the statewide audience.  Instead, we exposed the amendments as bad-faith, politically-motivated aberrations that were not even a part of the electoral problems from the November elections.  Nor had the campaign finance changes even been heard in any substantive committees in either house. The Result: The Democrats and moderate Republicans stuck together on the conference committee and the Senate Committee Chair was able to deliver the crucial speeches to the House conferees echoing our message:  the public doesn't want MORE money in politics, they want LESS.  He added, "At some point, the campaign (war chests) pile up like nuclear proliferation; and each side adds more to match what's there; but you can only nuke somebody onceâ€|" The public's  outrage had been heard, and the deform provisions disappeared from the next version of the bill.  In the final conference bill, however, the partisan Republican majority still inserted one provision which purports to limit matching money for statewide candidates seeking public funding by eliminating out of state contributions from the calculations for matching funds.   This provision will probably fail in court, since it violates Florida's Constitutional protections of the amount of public funding available in existing law. The coalition work succeeded (Florida Clean Elections Coalition, Common Cause Florida, League of Women Voters of  Florida, Sierra Club Florida Chapter, Florida League of Conservation Voters, other enviros, labor, etc.) in stopping this blatant campaign finance deform language in the election reform legislation. Congratulations to all you activists who responded so quickly and firmly, and to Helen Spivey and Dan Hendrickson. For more information contact Dan Hendrickson at 850-385-6160.

Despite the publicity and seeming sigh of relief by the news media, the Florida legislature did finally pass the long awaited electoral reform legislation to address the debacle of the 2000 Election in Florida. Unfortunately, most legislators didn't learn as much as they are being credited.   In fact, the legislation accomplished only the bare minimum of what the public demanded - get rid of the punch card voting equipment and clean up the blatant contradictions in Florida election laws which became too obvious during the recount, protest and contest periods of the aftermath of the November 7 election.  Many of the most important reforms were intentionally overlooked, and in some cases, voted down by legislative leaders who, early in session, dragged their feet and even mumbled only lukewarm intentions for passing any meaningful electoral reforms at all. But, in the final weeks of session,  a strategic poll  conducted for political science professors at four state universities  underscored the public's adamant support for AT LEAST SOME legislation this year to clean up our election laws (more than 80%, per news release 4/17). Leadership finally acknowledged that something was in fact going to pass.  In the House, that meant  that top Republicans began looking for poison pills or partisan provisions that they could attach to the legislation to further help their cause or to at least prevent the bill from easy bipartisan passage.  The most blatant were the last minute campaign finance deforms stapled onto the major election bill (See  Citizens Turn Back â€|  above).  But other partisan editing of the final bill intentionally omitted several reforms which had been progressing in other bills during the several months since pre-session committees began considering clean up suggestions for Florida's election process. The final watered down compromise barely deserves to be called "electoral reform."   In short, the bill failed to address the systemic changes many of us hoped would result from last fall's embarrassing election flaws in Florida:

1.  ban the punch cards voting technology in Florida; 2.  require precinct-based tabulation of each vote, so voters can get a second chance if their ballot is rejected; 3.  fund PART ($24 million) of the $ needed for the replacement hardware for Florida precincts; 4.  provide $6 million for public voter education activities (See Section 59, page 86); 5.  clarify the use of "provisional ballots" when a voter's registration is not verified at the polling place; this will allow voters to vote even if their name has been purged for whatever reason, and the ballot may be counted if later that person is determined to be a valid voter (but only in that specific precinct). 6.  require the posting of a ten-point "Voter's Bill of Rights" at each precinct; 7.  clarify the use of manual recounts, which was hotly contested even after the end of the Presidential Recount; (Speaker Tom Feeney insisted at the beginning of session that Florida law would make sure that recounts are done by machines, not people); however, manual recounts now will include both undervotes and overvotes; 8.  begin internet access for voters (but see "overseas only" limitation in #13 above); (Section 50, page 73) 9.  extend the certification deadline for general elections from 7 days to 11 days following the election; (late returns, however,  must now be ignored.); 10. require minimum training for poll workers; 11.  require a uniform ballot statewide.