Editorial Roundup: Florida

Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:

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Jan. 6

The Orlando Sentinel on suspending driver licenses because of unpaid tickets:

Debtors’ prisons were supposed to be an anachronism, a relic of the 19th century that made no sense. Once in prison, debtors had no means of earning money to repay what they owed.

Here in Florida, we’ve built a de facto financial prison by routinely suspending the drivers licenses of people who don’t pay traffic tickets, toll violations and criminal fines and fees.

As with debtors’ prisons, a person who can’t drive because of a suspended license may not be able to keep their job. No job means no money to repay what they owe.

The Fines & Fees Justice Center, which did a deep dive into license suspensions in the Sunshine State, estimates some 2 million Floridians have suspended licenses because of unpaid fines and fees, with Orange County having occupied the dubious top spot until recently.

In 2018, Orange County had more than 143,000 people with suspended licenses for failing to pay fines, representing an astonishing 13.8% of the total driving population, the center found.

Suspending licenses satisfies our table-thumping rhetorical instincts: If those deadbeats would pay what they owe they wouldn’t lose their license!

Like a lot of table-thumping rhetoric, that observation fails to consider that not everyone has the luxury of paying a fine right away.

If you’re wealthy and get a speeding ticket, you pay up. Problem solved.

If you’re poor, or barely getting by, you might have to weigh paying the ticket against paying the rent. Or the power. Or the water. Or buying medicine.

More table-thumping: Don’t break the speed limit and you won’t get a ticket!

Here in the real world, people make mistakes. They’re running late to work because of traffic. They’re racing to day care to pick up the kids on time so they don’t get charged a late fee.

While most of the licenses that get suspended in Florida are for unpaid tickets from traffic offenses, thousands of others lose their licenses because of unpaid fines and fees resulting from criminal offenses.

Once again, how is that offender supposed to get his life back on track if he can’t drive?

This is Florida, not New York City. Our public transportation system is lame. Many places here either have spotty bus service or none at all. If you don’t own a car, employment may not be possible, or you may have to take a job nearer to home that doesn’t pay as well.

And if you’re unemployed or underemployed, the fines you owe aren’t getting paid. See how this works? Or, more precisely, see how it doesn’t work?

Sometimes people don’t even know their license has been suspended. People may not get notices of tickets or delinquent fines if they’ve moved or if a mistake was made.

In one case, according to the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a college student whose credit card on an EPass account had expired missed $6 in tolls on a Lee County bridge. The violation notices went to the wrong address and she was hit with more than $900 in penalties and a suspended license, which she didn’t discover until getting pulled over by the police.

This is not a call for traffic-ticket amnesty. We’re also not conflating license suspensions for unpaid debts with losing a license because of a DUI or too many points from tickets.

We’re advocating a system that allows people who owe money to keep their licenses so they can keep their jobs and pay down debts.

State Sen. Tom Wright, a Volusia County Republican, has introduced a bill that would do away with license suspensions for unpaid fines and fees. Instead, counties would put drivers who owe money on a payment plan they can afford. A companion bill in the House was filed by Byron Donalds, a Lee County Republican.

States as red as Mississippi and as blue as California already prohibit suspending drivers licenses because of unpaid court debt.

Lawmakers in Florida have lately been saying they want to reform the way this state dispenses justice. If that’s true, they’ll join other states and stop yanking drivers licenses just because someone is too poor to pay a fine.

They’ll find a fairer way to ensure the debt is repaid while allowing people to continue working and leading their lives.

Online: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/

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Jan. 3

The Daytona Beach News-Journal on making Florida schools safe:

It remains the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, after Newtown. The slaughter of 17 students and teachers at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018, cast an overwhelming shadow over the Florida legislative session that started a few weeks later. Shamed, shocked and deeply saddened, lawmakers passed the state’s first restrictions on sales and use of firearms in decades. They also carved out hundreds of millions of dollars for school security .

Lawmakers deserve full credit for their determination to make sure Floridians never endure such a tragedy again. But by the end of the 2018 session, politics had crept into the process. Lawmakers siphoned the cost of the required security enhancements from funding that would otherwise probably have gone to classrooms, and attempted to strong-arm school districts into controversial (and almost certainly ineffective) measures such as arming classroom teachers.

Most district officials across the state were conflicted in their responses. They didn’t want to appear indifferent to the safety of their students, but many criticized the legislative mandates as unworkable and expensive.

Palm Beach County School District officials issued a flat “no” to allowing teachers and others school staff to carry guns on campuses for example. The school district, which garnered millions of dollars in a 2018 voter-approved referendum for additional school security, also pushed back against providing security officers to privately-run charter schools — a position they were forced to reverse last month by an administrative law judge.

Our county school board is not alone. A grand jury report released last month blasted local school districts for failing to comply with the new laws. Lawmakers should pay attention to the findings, but it’s also important to recognize, now that the panicked trauma of the Parkland massacre has faded, that some criticisms of the 2018 laws are justified. Before lawmakers follow the grand jury’s recommendation of harsher punishments for districts that don’t comply with state rules, state and local officials should collaborate on a sober evaluation of school-security policies and make adjustments where necessary.

There is one area where local and state officials should find rapid agreement: In many counties, communication is the real Achilles’ heel - not just in response to school shootings. Many counties operate with a ragged patchwork of county and city communication technology, with radio systems that don’t interconnect and dispatch centers that don’t communicate across city and county lines.

Everyone needs to be on the same page. And state lawmakers can’t continue to side-step their responsibility to make that a priority.

Grants to counties could encourage adoption of centralized communications and dispatch. The Florida Legislature should try that first, before moving to the more punitive and forceful approach the grand jury recommends.

The same goes for other recommendations in the report. Grand jurors were appalled to find that many schools - including newly built ones - don’t allow for efficient communication across the campus. On any given school day in any given Florida county, a person can walk onto a campus, into a classroom and sit down. They can still pass numerous security checkpoints and not be stopped.

The grand jury makes one other point lawmakers should consider: Many suspect that violent incidents are under-reported by many districts. Giving the state Department of Education greater authority to mandate these reports - including potential sanctions - makes sense.

Finally, we’re concerned about one recommendation that didn’t make the grand jury’s report. Physical barriers - fences or walls - can be one of the most effective tools for securing school premises. While it may seem expensive to retrofit older, more open campuses, that cost is probably far less than some of the measures the grand jury has called for. Certainly, all new schools should be constructed in ways that limit entrances and exits.

Lawmakers understand that no solution can protect students from every threat, and they’ll never know for sure if any of these measures prevent mass slaughters. But student safety is too important for complacency, and deserves ongoing attention that comes with the highest priority.

Online: https://www.news-journalonline.com/

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Jan. 3

The Lakeland Ledger on protecting the elderly:

The concept of “retirement,” along with a government social welfare programs to support old folks who no longer worked, dates to the 1880s. That’s when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck concluded that a little socialism for the elderly - Germany set retirement its age at 70 - was better than blanket entitlement programs for all his constituents.

As Bismarck’s idea circulated across the Atlantic, Florida didn’t take long to catch on. The New York Times noted a few years ago that by 1910 middle-class retirees joined the wealthy in discovering the Sunshine State as an appealing place to live out their golden years. Retirement communities began popping up within the next two decades.

Thus, for a century Florida has marketed itself and catered to the elderly, and until recent challengers like Arizona and the Carolinas emerged, has remained the top destination of elders seeking a retirement pasture.

But that influx of senior citizens made Florida a target-rich environment for various hucksters, shysters and ne’er do wells out to con them - or harm them in other ways. And on occasion that abuse came from those we’ve entrusted to watch out for their interests.

Now, state Rep. Colleen Burton has joined an effort to better protect our seniors.

The Lakeland Republican has sponsored a bill that would toughen oversight of the state’s guardianship program for seniors, which is managed by the state Department of Elder Affairs.

Focus on this arm of the tiny agency began last summer after media reports surfaced about Rebecca Fierle, an Orlando-based guardian. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated her after one of her clients, Steven Stryker, 75, died from choking on food while hospitalized in Tampa. Fierle reportedly filed a “do not resuscitate” order, which precluded hospital staff from treating Stryker, without permission from either Stryker or his family. Subsequently, an audit by Orange County determined Fierle had billed Advent Health more than $4 million over 10 years, double-billing the hospital system and court for the same services.

A few months before Stryker’s case became news, the website RealClearInvestigations.com reported on Lillie White, an 88-year-old from Palm Coast. During an August 2016 doctor’s appointment, while her niece remained in the waiting room, a guardian took White and declined to say where she went. Two years later White’s family learned that her sole granddaughter, who had been cut out of White’s will, had persuaded a judge White needed guardianship. White, who was worth $4 million, was housed in an assisted living facility 35 miles from home. The guardian, without White’s family’s knowledge, sold her house and some of her other assets to pay the fees of the guardian as well as a court-appointed lawyer and other people overseeing her case.

WFTS in Tampa recently reported on a Pinellas County guardian charged with draining her 92-year-old client’s bank account of $541,000 in just 10 months. She had convinced him to grant her power of attorney over his affairs and proceeded to pay herself $1,600 a day.

Meanwhile, the state’s director of the program resigned last year amid a lengthy backlog complaints about guardians - which the Department of Elder Affairs now says has been addressed.

In response, Burton and Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, have filed bills that will strengthen protections for the more than 3,800 Floridians managed by guardians.

The measures, among other requirements, mandate that:

– Judges look more closely at possible conflicts of interest and other disqualifying factors before appointing a guardian;

– Guardians seek court approval for DNR orders, and be prohibited from seeking their own appointment;

– Potential kickbacks be outlawed.

We believe that most of the state’s 500-plus guardians are professional, conscientious, devoted to the best interests of their wards and law-abiding.

But as noted above, some are not. And so in order to protect Florida’s elderly who need this service, as well as the state’s reputation as a haven for senior citizens, we must have stricter rules governing this program. For working for that, we applaud Rep. Burton and Sen. Passidomo.

Online: https://www.theledger.com/