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Lobbyists corner market on state legislators' souls
The Florida
Legislature is in session and the citizenry is appropriately nervous.
Surely most
Floridians have heard the tales of the unnaturally cozy relationships
between legislators and lobbyists that warp and rend the fabric of
representative government. It is part of our state lore that lobbyists
for Big Sugar wrote the legislation that delayed parts of the Everglades
cleanup by years, and the chief lobbyist for BellSouth wrote the
telecommunications bill that so recently raised our phone bills. Such
relationships are not at all unusual in Florida, nor in many other
states, but the practice is far worse than you think — even if you are a
leather-bottomed cynic with years of Legislature-watching experience.
Last Sunday,
the St. Petersburg Times published an extended piece by Lucy Morgan, the
paper's Tallahassee bureau chief, that, if read by enough people, should
blow the lid off of the annual circus where corporate dollars dictate
residential phone rates or which hospitals are permitted to do open
heart surgery or how many toxins can be dumped into pristine rivers.
Legislation is not about need, not about the brightest future, not about
our heritage, not about keeping our promise to Florida's children. It is
about greed and the game, and money is the only way to keep score.
There is a
whole new breed of lobbyists in Tallahassee now. They are slicker, more
organized, forming alliances that shift with each new issue and using
computers to track the votes and count the dollars down to the dime.
Legislators open new campaign accounts the day after the preceding
campaign is finished — a repository for lobbying dollars. Everything is
more complex and certainly more expensive. Not too long ago, you could
finance a run for the House of Representatives for $25,000. But no more.
Our representative, Ken Sorensen, raised $177,000 for the 2002 general
election, with $500 contributions (the maximum) outnumbering $25
contributions by 3 to 1.
Back in 1970,
872 lobbyists spent an average of less than $500 per legislator. Last
year there were 2,024 lobbyists in the game and they spent, on average,
over 100 times as much per legislator. It is all about the money now,
and it is a disgrace. It doesn't even begin to pass the smell test. This
is politics at its most crude.
Our sister
publication, Solares Hill, has made arrangements with the Times to
publish the full report in its Friday edition. We urge you to read it.
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