Gov Charlie Crist: please veto HB 1565 ... by gimleteye

Governor Charlie Crist should veto HB 1565: this isn't one of the bills that the mainstream press has bothered to pick up, but it reads like just the kind of trash the Florida legislature would slip in, to boost the fortunes of special interests who ran the economy right off the rails. Tea Party'ers: are you connecting? Contact Gov. Crist today: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com or (850) 488-4441




From the Orlando Sentinel blog:

"Another agency that has a beef with the bill: the St. Johns River Water Management District, whose general counsel Kathryn Mennella, says it would impact every nook and cranny of state government, pitting the scientific analyses of state agencies against the lobbying fire-power of regulated industries.

Here’s a portion of her brief on the bill:

To subject, in effect, most new agency rules, or amendments, to legislative review and an affirmative ratification before the law can be implemented is unprecedented and significantly frustrates the efficient operation of government solely reserved to the executive branch by Florida’s Constitution. The rulemaking process itself is lengthy, but this additional ratification hurdle effectively stifles any promptness in implementing the law, or at worst can result in suppression of the law’s implementation and frustrate executive branch operation if the Legislature perpetually fails to act on the rules session after session.

In only the environmental context, the vast majority of resource protection rules would exceed the monetary threshold, and the provision would frustrate the enactment of rules concerning TMDLs, minimum flows and levels, MFL recovery or prevention strategies, water conservation, alternative water supplies, wetland protection, and even the newly enacted septic tank evaluations. Of course, the provision is all-inclusive and would subject rules for all State regulatory programs to legislative ratification. Moreover, the provision shifts rulemaking accountability from the procedural and evidentiary process of section 120.56, Florida Statutes, to legislative lobbying. Put simply, a regulated party would no longer have any need to contest a rule under the mandated processes of Chapter 120 where the scientific and technical expertise of the agency and regulated party is presented on numerous complex technical issues to a neutral administrative law judge. Rather, the regulated party would simply lobby the Legislature, outside the processes of Chapter 120, to eliminate the rule or to encourage the Legislature to never address the bill ratifying the rule.

The preparation of these statements in each instance where a person appears and suggests some “lower cost regulatory alternative”, no matter how frivolous that alternative may be, will substantially complicate and increase costs associated with adoption of any rule. Typically, preparation of such economic analysis will require the agency to contract and retain outside consultants at public expense. The automatic triggering of an expensive study process requiring procurement of outside consultants under these circumstances is unreasonable and excessive interference with the ability of executive branch agencies to carry out statutory mandates that are already in place."