State: Take a breath: Session is busy

For the first time, Republicans will redraw the political map, tightening their grip on power. Democrats, their ranks depleted by elections and defections, are reduced to bystanders in the ruthless game of redistricting.

Another first: The Senate president is putting his power on the line for one policy issue, an overhaul of a loophole-riddled sales tax he says serves special interests more than families. In the Capitol's suddenly topsy-turvy world, business lobbyists have launched an attack against a sitting Senate president, a conservative himself.

And for the first time since Gov. Jeb Bush took office three years ago, talk of tax cuts is out. A limp economy could force even deeper budget cuts than the $1-billion slashed, with schools at risk for deeper cuts. That's risky, in a year when Bush is leading his party into an election year on a pro-education platform.

It all adds up to a highly combustible mix, rich with partisan conflict.

"The real hostility hasn't come out yet. But it's coming," said Guy Spearman, a lobbyist who has spent decades watching the Legislature. "Wait until these guys start carving up each other's districts. It's going to get nasty."

There's more. Lots more.

Bush wants to limit growth where schools are over capacity. The duties of an elected insurance and banking regulator must be outlined, with lobbyists seeking special advantages for their clients. Medicaid, a health-care lifeline for poor Floridians, will be under the microscope for dishing out millions in overpayments. And special interests are peddling their wares, from Las Vegas-style video poker machines at race tracks to protecting the local Publix from slip-and-fall lawsuits.

Floridians have come to expect tortured machinations from their lawmakers every year. But the session, which begins Tuesday with Gov. Bush's state-of-the-state speech, will test the patience of voters and the politicians elected to serve them.

The session is starting six weeks early to accommodate redistricting. If a run-of-the-mill session is a 60-day marathon, this is a triathlon, a grueling obstacle course of reapportionment, taxes and the budget.

The last session that resembled this one was the chaotic reapportionment year of 1992. A bitterly divided, Democrat-controlled Legislature lurched through several sessions stretching over six months. Judges wound up drawing the congressional district lines, and lawmakers narrowly dodged a shutdown of state government.

Weary lawmakers who hit the campaign trail that August had no clue that Hurricane Andrew was headed for the state that same terrible month.

"We called it the session from hell," recalls Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach, a freshman House member at the time. "Back then, nobody was in charge, really."

Geller's Democrats ran both chambers and then-Senate President Gwen Margolis was determined to secure for herself a winnable congressional district, just as Speaker of the House Tom Feeney is now.

"There were huge personal agendas at stake. That was a big part of the problem," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, who was in the House then and now heads a House congressional redistricting committee, and has his own designs on Capitol Hill. "What are our goals? Obviously, to learn from some of those lessons. I think if you are greedy and if you are unrealistic, and try to protect people and not recognize the demographic changes in certain areas, you're not going to succeed."

With Florida gaining two seats in Congress for a total of 25, and Republicans holding a slim majority there, the Sunshine State is one of the biggest national prizes in the national redistricting sweepstakes.

"Florida is one of the last states out of the box for congressional reapportionment," said Pete Dunbar, a lobbyist and former Pinellas County House Republican leader. "I think you will find a strong amount of pressure at the national level for the Republican-controlled Legislature in Florida to deliver, at a minimum, two new seats."

Pressure might best describe this session.

Senate President John McKay, R-Bradenton, is using his clout to force debate on an issue most lawmakers would rather ignore. He wants to let voters reduce Florida's sales tax from 6 percent to 4.5 percent and force the Legislature to close many existing tax exemptions.

McKay has the power to keep senators in line. But forcing Feeney's House to see things his way isn't so easy.

"The time is getting late," Feeney said last week. "The Senate leadership has been working on tax reform in private, out of the sunshine, for two years. That's certainly their right, but they're basically saying that in six weeks we've got to make an up or down decision. While we're going to try, that's becoming increasingly difficult."

With relations frosty between McKay and Feeney, and with Feeney skeptical of McKay's tax plan, chances of getting the 72 votes necessary for passage in the House appear unlikely. It seems inevitable that McKay, in an epic game of horse-trading, will demand passage of his tax plan in return for giving Feeney a central Florida congressional seat.

"A presiding officer in the Florida Legislature has a great deal of power when he wants to exercise it," said Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor.

Diaz-Balart said he thinks Feeney would abandon his congressional dreams before accepting a tax plan he can't support.

Beyond McKay's tax plan and redistricting is the budget -- the only bill legislators are required to pass under the state Constitution.

Some legislators are showing signs of battle fatigue as a result of two recent budget-cutting special sessions that have left scant time to hear from constituents or research complex legislative ideas.

Bush has released his proposed spending plan, which he said includes nearly $1-billion more for the K-20 education system. But the bulk of the $726-million increase Bush seeks for public education would come from local property taxes and savings from decreasing school district contributions to the retirement system.

After factoring in 72,000 projected new students for next fall, schools would get a 3 percent increase. When inflation is factored in, the increase amounts to about 1 percent.

"Basically, we have a continuation budget year," Bush said.

Legislators have signaled plans to engage in a little one-upmanship with Bush on education spending. Even the handful of key lawmakers Bush invited to stand with him two weeks ago said Bush's plan was a "wonderful foundation," but vowed to do better.

The governor also plans to unveil a package of new reading initiatives in the next couple of weeks and has set aside $400-million in his budget plan to pay for that and other programs and a cushion if the economy does not improve.

The recession-strapped state budget will squeeze more than just education. Lawmakers cut several extra Medicaid programs for low-income and disabled Floridians last month to balance the budget. With the economy driving more people into Medicaid, the pressure is not expected to let up.

Medicaid recipients face paying for their eyeglasses, hearing aids and dental care by July unless lawmakers restore the program, one of many targeted for elimination in December's special session.

Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, who heads the Senate Health, Aging and Long-term Care Committee, said lawmakers likely will support Bush's plan to use tobacco money to prop up those programs in the short term, but said they might balk at Bush's plan to make Medicaid participants pay more.

"It will certainly generate some controversy," Saunders said.

Saunders also plans to file a bill based on a select committee study of overpayments to Medicaid providers. The committee is expected to release its findings in several weeks.

In this politically supercharged session, even something as basic to the state as the reform of Medicaid will be a tough sell.

"Everybody really needs to temper whatever objectives they have," said Sen. Ron Klein, a Delray Beach Democrat. "Expectations this year will be dominated by three things: reapportionment, the continuing budget problems and McKay's tax proposal."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk