by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
Incoming Florida Senate President Jim King says the coming year is full of problems and “passing the constitutional amendments will make it worse.”
King, who takes the top position for the 2003 session, came out strongly against the amendments in a speech Tuesday to the Chamber’s Government Affairs Committee.
“The bullet train amendment [which passed in 1992] left me some wiggle room,” said King, “but the new amendments don’t. If we pass the amendment limiting classroom size, we have problems that we really may not be able to solve.”
The amendment limiting class size, King said, will cost the state at least $2.3 billion initially and there is no funding mechanism in place.
“A solution would be a one-cent increase in the sales tax, which would produce $2.8 billion a year,” said King. “But even if an increase were passed [by the legislature,] it wouldn’t go into effect until at least July. By then, we would have been grabbing money from every source we could find to start paying for the classrooms.”
“It is a flawed amendment in every way,” said King. “There is no empirical evidence anywhere that smaller classrooms give a better product.”
He used his campaign manager as an example for his next issue with the amendment:
“If we have to scatter kids around, we’re going to break up families,” he said. “Susan Pitman has four kids. If they’re in public school, what if three get to stay and one has to go somewhere else?”
Finally, he said, Florida has a teacher shortage.
“Until we solve that, we can’t even address other issues,” said King. “States like Mississippi and Arkansas even pay teachers more than Florida. If we have more classes, we’ll need more teachers.”
King said that the bullet train amendment, which threatens to make the state put in a multi-billion project that’s unfunded, can be delayed.
“I have wiggle room because the wording of the amendment says that it must be started, but it doesn’t give a completion date,” he said. “I’ve put $15 million into it so far, which funds studies on rights-of-way and things like that. It’s started. They can’t clear out the jails and put me in, because I’ve done what the amendment said.”
He said the bullet train amendment was an example of the dangers of easily being able to amend the constitution.
“You can’t get something through the legislature,” he said, “so you go get signatures and get it on the ballot. In this case, you end up with something that may cost $9 billion and doesn’t seem to serve a good purpose.”
The initial cost would pay for a train from Orlando to St. Petersburg. “You get off the plane, pay to get to the train station, pay to ride to St. Pete, pay for a rental car and what have you done?” he asked. “The same thing that another guy did — except he got a rental car in Orlando, drove to St. Pete and he was already looking around while you were trying to get a car.”
In his 40-minute speech to about 50 committee members, King said he has a reasonably good idea of his agenda for the session. In Florida’s legislature, the head of the House and Senate each wield enormous power and can steer legislation easily.
“You know how you think sometimes, ‘If I ever get to be so-and-so, then I’ll do such-and-such?” he said. “Well, I’ve gotten to be so-and-so . . . the president of the Florida senate, and I’m thrilled. But, I wake up at 3 in the morning and ask myself what I’m going to do.
“I’m like the dog chasing cars. He catches a tire, and now what?”
Right now, there are three main items on his menu:
• “Addressing the crisis of medical malpractice.”
• “Getting the nursing home legislation straightened out.”
• “Re-doing the workers compensation laws.”
He also hopes to get North Florida more education money, which now goes to the more politically-powerful South Florida area in a disproportional basis. “There’s a better way to apportion these dollars,” he said. “I think we can work with the South Florida legislators and come up with more money for this area.”