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Hey, Florida legislators, here’s a bill idea for you: Let’s charge you a personal fee for every bill you file.
While an affordability crisis is ravaging our state, including the astronomical rise in condo special assessments and monthly fees pricing our seniors out of their homes, Florida legislators have done nothing.
Despite calls from the governor to tackle the problem this year, leaders from his own party in the Florida House and Senate refused to cut their vacations early, hold a special session, and reconvene to provide residents relief until – wait for it – March of 2025.
It’s like the cost of filing a bill comes straight out of their pockets or something, not ours. So, we might as well start charging them and get some revenue.
Particularly when, instead of buckling down and doing the hard work of addressing Floridians’ kitchen-table worries, Republicans like Miami Sen. Ileana Garcia are tunnel visioned on so-called “messaging bills.” Like her latest stunt bill (SB 56) banning the government from controlling the weather, a wink and a nod to false and dangerous chemtrail conspiracy theories that the Deep State is creating and siccing hurricanes on unsuspecting citizens. Sen. Garcia of course knows that no such technology exists.
A spokesman for the governor, the leader of her own party, called it “unscientific, agenda-motivated, and unhelpful” to suggest otherwise. But she thinks we pay her to draft, file, and clog up committee time with dead-on-arrival bills that to do little else but appease and stoke the fear of a thin slice of her voting base.
Like it doesn’t cost us anything.
Like there isn’t opportunity cost in drawing attention away from the issues that matter, like skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance, onto harebrained rationalizations for climate change. Like there isn’t a measurable, dollar-for-dollar cost to the “investigation” she says we ought to pursue into a matter that has been thoroughly debunked since the early 2000s.
Like there isn’t a cost to human life and suffering in politicizing our state and federal emergency management services at a time when mistrust in our institutions is at an all-time high. Like there isn’t a reputational cost to our state when comparisons are drawn to the likes of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, whose weather-control claims drew bipartisan mockery in Washington, DC. (Said Miami Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez, “Humans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can needs to have their head examined.”)
We are all shouldering these costs. So maybe spend-happy legislators playing politics in Tallahassee should foot the bill. We can use the fees we raise from them to reinvest in our kids’ education and address the teacher shortage, or make housing more affordable, or expand Medicaid.
Sen. Garcia is the one, after all, who filed a bill last session to get Florida taxpayers to pony up $5 million for President Trump’s legal fees. She only withdrew it after Gov. DeSantis, who had already dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed President Trump, threatened to veto it.
But she might have thought twice about filing it in the first place, and wasting her office’s resources (and, by extension, our tax dollars) on an obvious play for President Trump’s affection, if she had to pay out-of-pocket for it. Just like Floridians are paying out-of-pocket their home and medical-insurance premiums that are too damn high. You know, the things that actually matter.
And if an ill-fated attempt at platforming crackpot conspiracies is her thing, then Sen. Garcia should pay for it. They all should pay a price for jamming our comically short legislative session (Imagine working just 60 days out of the year.) with do-nothing bills aimed at drawing media hits and raising campaign dollars instead of solving the everyday crises facing Floridians.
My proposal: Make them feel it in their wallets – or, better yet, at the ballot box.
Robin M. Peguero
Robin M. Peguero is a lawyer, published author, and law professor, as well as a resident of Coral Gables. He earned degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He served as a staffer for six-plus years in the U.S. Congress, most recently as a lawyer on the January Sixth Committee and chief of staff to a congressman. Peguero practiced seven years as a prosecutor (most recently as a homicide prosecutor and division chief) at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
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