House, Senate can’t resolve differences on Senate districts

The implosion of the session marked another embarrassment for legislative Republicans, who have seen three sessions fail in 2015.

The Legislature also held a special session earlier this year to redraw congressional maps after they were rejected by the state Supreme Court.

One thing the House and Senate agreed on was that compliance with the Fair Districts amendments passed by voters in 2010, which prohibit configuring districts to favor incumbents, political parties or minority groups, is next to impossible.

He said the logical approach would be to draw three districts each with a Hispanic voting age population in the high 70 percent, rather than the current configurations that he says “pack” Hispanics into two of the districts but then diminish the numbers in the third.

Sen. Bill Galvano said it took the soul out of map making.

Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, complained the map split his rural Okaloosa County community in half, leaving his strawberry patch in his district but the community’s school and water supply in another district.

After about an hour of debate, the House approved its version of the Senate’s 40 districts on a 73-47 vote.

“The Legislature has fought the Fair Districts Amendments from the moment they were introduced”, said the lawyer, David King.

On the Senate floor, opponents hammered away at what they called shortcomings of the proposed plan, from the fact that it used a power line for the boundary of one district to the alleged mistreatment of a strawberry patch. Nancy Detert, R-Venice.

Diaz de la Portilla defended the amendment, saying it was best for the interests of the heavily Hispanic community in Miami-Dade County. Those districts had emerged as the main obstacle to a final deal.

There are other problems that could complicate moving the House map through the Senate. After the vote, House redistricting chairman, Jose Oliva had a few harsh words.

“We believe we have a good constitutionally compliant map”, said House Speaker Steve Crisafulli. But a few Senate members still have concerns about whether it can pass. “Legislators don’t need to be drawing maps”. They also left that special session without coming to an agreement.

Although the two veteran lawmakers have been recruiting Republican Senate candidates to run against each other in primary contests, Negron downplayed his tussle with Latvala as “an intramural competition”. Speaking to reporters after the session, Oliva tried to point out at least one success for the House.

While Republican leaders blamed the Florida League of Women Voters, Common Cause and their allies for using voter-approved, anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendments to their advantage, House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach honed in on another target. “This is an example of arrogance by a party which thinks it can do nothing wrong…and (members) who clearly had selfish issues it was anxious about in these maps”. Certainly, the Senate now has the opportunity to look at that and see what they think….

The process for settling on a final map will likely resemble the process for picking a congressional plan. The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on a recommendation from that judge.

The Senate scheduled a 4 p.m. vote on the map as a full-court press for votes continued behind the scenes, which ultimately failed.

“We did give them a lot of deference”, he said.