Photo by Miami Herald’s Pedro Portal
by Miami Herald’s Mary Ellen Klas
May 31, 2017
Two months after the formation of the Constitution Revision Commission, the rules governing the 37-member panel remain in turmoil as a power struggle between the chairman and the rest of the commission has emerged.
The commission is convened every 20 years and has the power to put proposals directly on the November 2018 ballot. The chairman, Carlos Beruff, was appointed by the governor along with 14 other members. The remaining commissioners were appointed by the House speaker, Senate president, and chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
Before the commission first met on March 20, Beruff proposed a set of rules to shape how the panel operates. They were modeled after the rules used by the CRC that convened in 1997-98 but modified to essentially give Beruff the authority to control which proposals made it to the ballot — more power than the chair had 20 years ago.
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Among the changes Beruff is seeking are provisions that will allow him to reject proposals by individual members or committees, send a proposal back to a committee after it has been amended in another committee — a tool used to effectively kill proposals — and give him sole discretion over which proposals will be referred to which committee.
He also proposes upending Florida Sunshine laws: allowing members of the commission to meet for the first time with two or more members in secret.
Barbara Petersen, president of the non-profit First Amendment Foundation, warns that the commission should be considered an executive-branch agency and must follow the open-meeting provisions of Article I of the Florida Constitution or risk having everything it does invalidated. Instead, she said, Beruff’s proposed rules apply the standard used by the Legislature — which allows for only meetings of more than two members to be considered an open meeting.
“If they adopt the legislative standards, rather than the Article I standard and somebody disagrees with what they’ve done and files a lawsuit, everything they’ve done is out the window,” Petersen said.
Roberto Martinez, a Miami lawyer appointed to the commission by the Supreme Court, has proposed an amendment to the rules that adopts the stricter Sunshine Law standards.
“I feel very strongly this commission should be governed by the Sunshine Law,” he said. “The two prior commissions were. This is very basic stuff. Every Floridian that has served on a government board or agency board has been subject to the Sunshine Law. This is not a mystery to anybody.” [READ MORE]
