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Nonprofit writes Florida law for its own program Scholarship bill shows influence of lobbyists writing legislation
Reader Comment: This story shows how corporate writes the law, lobbies to get the law past, and then reaps the tax benefit accrued from the bill. These corporate tax credits for private schools are one reason for state revenue shortages and consequential cuts to funding for Florida public schools. Disgusting. When will the public wake up?
Reader Comment;: "The culture of Tallahassee" certainly sounds better than "graft".
Reader Comment: Maybe Matt Dixon needs to look at all of the bills ALEC and The League of Cities write for their business compadres.
When you look at the bills they write for multiple states, they are verbatim. No doubt that someone else wrote them for the legislators.
By Matt Dixon
A 2011 bill aimed at protecting a scholarship program funded by corporate donations was written by the only group that offers the scholarship program -- not an elected official -- and included a provision that would have given that group access to confidential tax information, according to emails and documents obtained by the Times-Union.
The legislation was signed into law on June 2 and upped the amount that companies can give to the program, from 75 to 100 percent of their corporate income tax liability. Donor companies are given a tax break for their contributions. The roughly $4,100 scholarships go to low-income students who want to attend private schools.
In Northeast Florida, 111 schools take part in the program, including 87 in Duval County, the second most of any county in the state. Nearly 3,600 students are enrolled in the program in Duval, Clay, St. Johns and Nassau counties.
Emails between the office of the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Mike Horner, R-Kissimmee, and Denise Lasher, the top lobbyist for Step Up For Students, show that on Jan. 26 the group sent to Horner a copy of the bill that it wrote. At Horner's request, it provided him a blow-by-blow breakdown of what was in the bill so he "would not embarrass myself or you, but rather properly defend this bill."
Read the emails here (opens on scribd.com)
Step Up For Students is a Tampa-based nonprofit that offers the tax-credit scholarships. It is the only organization that takes part in the program.
Though the emails provide just one example of an outside group writing a bill that changes state law to its benefit, it's not unique. Most people who troll the halls of the state Capitol already know Tallahassee's dirty little secret - lobbyists, not elected officials, write many laws.
"It's very common. It unfortunately is kind of an effect of term limits. Lawmakers don't really have the expertise to write their own legislation even with the help of the staff," said Ben Wilcox with Common Cause Florida, a watchdog group.
The bill written by Step Up For Students was aimed at "insulating" the scholarship program from future policy changes that could make fewer funds available.
"In the 2011 Legislature, Gov. Scott and some legislators are considering a reduction in the corporate income tax. The corporate income tax is the largest of the five tax sources" for the program, read an analysis the group prepared for Horner.
One of the most controversial provisions in the bill would have handed names and addresses of the 100 companies with the largest state tax bills to Step Up For Students. Horner said during committee testimony that the bill would allow the group to "fish where the fish are."
A group spokesman said that the provision, later stripped, was written to only give the information to groups that dole out more than 10,000 scholarships annually at the behest of the Department of Revenue. The Department, East said, did not want just any organization to be able to register and get the information.
"Second, and more pointedly, Step Up is in fact the only [group offering the scholarships] in Florida," East wrote in an email. "Does that really feel like a conspiracy?"
Horner explained the notion of having lobbyists write his bills this way:
"I'm not an expert," he said. "I talk to my constituents, industry experts, the executives to learn about issues that are important."
Underscoring the frequency of special interests writing bills that often become state law, Horner's office created a template during this year's session that gave those writing his bills step-by-step instructions on how they should explain their legislation to him. The summary uses the generic example of a bill that would change state law to require that buses stop at railroad tracks.
"For the sake of example, let's say we lived in a world where buses were not yet required to stop at railroad crossings and we were proposing a mandate for them to stop at railroad crossings," read the template. "Please set up my cheat sheet for each individual element."
The template included sections where groups needed to explain the current law, the proposed change, the reason for the change and "anticipated issues/questions raised by the opposition."
Step Up For Students sent a four-page cheat sheet following the template for Horner on Feb. 18.
In emails reviewed by the Times-Union, the template was sent to other companies and groups, including AT&T regarding a rewrite of telecommunications law, and several interested parties related to a medical malpractice bill, including the Florida Hospital Association, and the Florida Medical Association. Both bills became law.
Wilcox said that it can often be difficult to say no to sponsoring a bill written by a powerful company or lobby.
"It can be very bad, especially if they are writing checks for the party you belong to or to one of the committees set up by the legislative leadership," he said. "It's in the culture of Tallahassee."
The Tax Credit Scholarship program has expanded by leaps and bounds over the past few years. In 2011, the amount that can be awarded through the program increased from $140 million to $175 million.
Step Up For Students also has played a hand in shaping past legislation that helped the program grow.
East said that analysts with the group also helped pen milestone legislation in 2010 that upped the program's cap from $118 million to $140 million, and allowed that cap to increase by 25 percent after any year the number of tax credits handed out reaches 90 percent of the total cap.
"I mean, we have someone on staff who is very talented," he said, "so we try to use that."
matt.dixon@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4174
— Matt Dixon
Florida Times-Union
2011-08-27
http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2011-08-23/story/nonprofit-writes-florida-law-its-own-program?cid=hp-topnews
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