by Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida
Private lawyers hired by the state of Florida would see their fees capped at $50 million under legislation approved by a House committee on Tuesday.
The bill (HB 437) is the top legislative priority of Attorney General Bill McCollum, who lobbied for the bill Tuesday in the House Criminal and Civil Justice Policy Council, which approved the measure 9-6.
McCollum said that his office has often been able to handle all of the state’s legal work in house, but noted that there was no guarantee that would be the case in the future. The fee cap would ensure the state was never caught in a pay-to-play situation.
“This bill is a transparency bill, it’s an accountability bill,” he said.
The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, would cap the amount the state could pay out at $50 million and also set out bidding and disclosure requirements for private attorneys. It would also prohibit the Department of Legal Affairs from entering into a contract with outside counsel unless the attorney general first makes a written determination that using a private lawyer is in the best interest of the state.
“Fifty million is an immense amount of money,” Eisnaugle (R-Orlando) told lawmakers.
But critics of the legislation argued that the cap would set a dangerous precedent and limit future attorneys general from hiring lawyers capable of aggressively taking on large cases that would likely require more work, such as the tobacco lawsuit engineered by the Lawton Chiles administration in 1997.
“Why would this Legislature bind future attorneys general to do something that would restrict the choices of the citizens of the state of Florida when they need those choices?” asked Bob Harris, representing the trial lawyer section of the Florida Bar.
With passage in the committee, the House bill is ready for a vote by the full House. A Senate companion bill (SB 712) has also passed its initial committee tests and is now at its final stop before the full Senate, the Ways and Means Committee.