Legislature looks at not 1, but 3 amendment do-overs

[seafan]

Legislature looks at not 1, but 3 amendment do-overs

By MARK LANE
February 22, 2008

Your Florida Legislature does not like it when voters tell it what to do. Not one bit.
When legislative leaders aren't thinking of ways to limit the ability of voters to change the state constitution by petition, they are thinking of ways to undo the things voters already passed.

Legislature leaders want do-over votes on three constitutional amendments:


The amendment creating appointed education commissioners. (Passed 1998 with 55 percent of the vote.)

The state education commissioner now is picked by the Florida Board of Education. The idea was not only to empower governors to set their own educational policies, but also to have independent educational professionals running things instead of professional politicians.
But the current commissioner and State Board of Education are acting too independently to suit the Florida Legislature. Legislators would rather have the state's schools guided by a non-educator politician. Somebody who will sit up and listen when the religious right wants to dictate science policy.

.....

Amendment creating a board of governors to run the university system. (Passed 2002 with 60 percent of the vote.)

Another group that's getting too independent for legislative tastes is the University Board of Governors. The board members have lately had the temerity to complain that Florida is underfunding the university system. Just because the state ranks 41st among the states in instructional spending per full-time student and dead last in student-teacher ratios.
The board even wants to raise tuition, now among the lowest in the nation, ..... This sort of thing galls legislators who are used to calling the shots and accustomed to using the universities as an easy target for cuts.

The answer: Repeal the 2002 vote creating the University Board of Governors because obviously the voters didn't understand that the Florida Legislature always knows best.


Amendment limiting public school class size. (Passed: 2002 with 52 percent of the vote.)

When this was being debated, then-Gov. Jeb Bush didn't even bother to come up with a less drastic and more workable plan to head it off. Why? Because it would be easier just to subvert it down the line. He was famously caught on tape bragging that he had "a couple of devious plans if this thing passes."
The latest of many devious plans is for the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission to put a repeal amendment on the ballot. And if that doesn't work, the Legislature is looking to redefine the amendment to limit its scope.

"Stack them deep and teach 'em cheap" isn't officially in the Florida Constitution, but it might as well be. And, if Florida voters forget their place and pass anything that interferes with this sacred philosophy, it will just have be overturned, overruled, reinterpreted, or, if all else fails, revoted and repealed outright.


In Florida, voters never get the last word.

The boot heels of Jeb Bush and his minions still grind Florida into the dust.