Haridopolos – silly games got in the way,
‘I’m embarassed’
By Dara Kam
Palm Beach Post
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Senate President Mike Haridopolos apologized to his members shortly before the 2011 legislative session fizzled to an end in the wee hours of the morning Saturday.
Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, brought the chamber back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up and pass a tax-break measure that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.
Instead of the usual fanfare celebrating the end of the 60-day session, the 36 senators who showed returned to the Capitol after Haridopolos sent them home two hours before were somber.
Haridopolos apologized for calling them back so quickly after he had told them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.
The big losers of the session were two Floridians whose claims bills the House refused to pass before Speaker Dean Cannon adjourned for the year: Eric Brody, who was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon, a wrongfully convicted Brevard County man who would have received less than $1 million for nearly 30 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. The claims bills for the two men were priorities of Haridopolos.
“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
The Senate sine die’d at 3:35 a.m. The 2011 legislative session is officially over.
Gambling over rules and rules over gambling in overtime
By Mary Ellen Klas
© 2011 Miami Herald
Saturday, May 7, 2011, 2011
After midnight and all the troubles started coming out. Senate President Mike Haridopolos said he'll sleep in his office and called members to return at 10 a.m.. House members, looking aimless, chatted and took turns posing for pictures on the floor. By 1:33 a.m., House Speaker Dean Cannon was clearly entertained, as he returned to the podium with a smile.
By contrast, Haridopolos wasn't smiling. "I've done everything in my power to make sure we didn't go in a ditch, even though ppl weren't saying the nicest things about us,'' he told reporters.
The House hadn't planned it this way. House leaders thought they had figured out a way to outsmart the Senate Rules chairman by refusing to accept a giant economic development conforming bill and strip it of everything but Sen. John Thrasher's proposal to allow parimutuels to install slot-like coin operated machines. They would then take the bulk of that bill and attach it to HB 143, a bill related to tax credit.
But the Senate got suspicious. Thrasher filed a resolution to extend the session into overtime but would only allow the budget and budget conforming bills to be taken up past midnight. That wouldn't work for the House because HB 143 wasn't a conforming bill. So the House was stuck. The clock struck midnight and the only way to get back was to return and pass HB 7203 unaltered.
Undaunted, the House waived the rules, took up HB 143, amended it with the HB 7203 minus the coin-operated games. The amendment passed 79-39. The bill passed 118-0. Time to sine die.