Vaccine ‘Monopoly,’ shut-out session and DeSantis’ rising star

It’s Monday, March 8 and legislating in the time of COVID has begun.

Gov. Ron DeSantis opened Florida’s legislative session last week with an unapologetic defense of his pandemic response and an outline of the conservative policies he wants state lawmakers to pass as he prepares for a reelection campaign next year. His speech, and his agenda, was geared more to a national stage than a Florida one, however, as DeSantis is emerging as a rising right-wing star in Trump’s still-powerful orbit.

He urged lawmakers to prioritize voting law changes that could add new hurdles to vote by mail and ballot drop boxes. He repeated his call for a crack down on “violent mobs” and he said lawmakers need to clamp down on “the oligarchs in Silicon Valley.”

But in keeping with his rose-colored view of the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis sidestepped any mention of the 31,000 dead from COVID-19, the $2 billion budget hole or the plan for recovery. Instead, he enthusiastically portrayed Florida as having already become a comeback success where “the sun is rising.”

COVID lawsuit immunity: One GOP priority has already made progress. The Florida House on Friday passed sweeping liability protections for businesses, governments and schools from coronavirus-related lawsuits. House Bill 7 would make it harder to successfully sue businesses and governments for claims stemming from COVID-19 by raising the legal standard and giving defendants immunity if they were following government-issued safety guidelines.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

This week in Florida vaccines: The good news is that Florida has now vaccinated 1.9 million people, as the nation logs more than 2 million vaccinations a day. In Florida, much of it has been done with legions of enormously dedicated public health workers, volunteers and public officials.

‘Real life Monopoly’: But the inequity, confusion and lack of transparency is growing. Consider the case of Yanira Vázquez, a caregiver for a patient with Down Syndrome, who was turned away Sunday at the Florida City vaccination site because the note she had from her patient’s pediatrician confirming her eligibility for a vaccine was on her phone and it was not printed.

Vázquez ultimately was able to find a nurse willing to accept her proof of employment, but the confusion is just one of many we’ve heard stemming from the state’s haphazard process. One Floridian frustrated by the vaccine chaos summed it up: “This is real life Monopoly.”

Lowering age: The governor has established himself as Florida’s vaccine gatekeeper and, as demand wanes among those ages 65 and up, he has resisted lowering the age threshold and broadening the qualifications. Although President Joe Biden announced he wants all teachers vaccinated by the end of the month, the governor insisted that only teachers above age 50 should qualify for now. He said Friday that he will lower the age to 60 this month, but “we’re not doing any occupation changes.’‘

Red tape: The governor’s latest executive order, requiring people under the age of 65 to get a physician’s slip, added a layer of red tape that has created a barrier for the uninsured and low-income.

The result has been that vaccine doses are going unused across the state. And on Saturday, at the Florida City site, staff vaccinated hundreds of Florida residents 18 years or older who didn’t meet the governor’s narrow definition.

Special treatment: Back in January, as the state was allocating very limited supplies of the vaccine to county public health facilities, the residents of the gated Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo were given vaccines by Baptist Health South, intended for their exclusive use, state records show. The hospital had 4,875 doses given to them by the state and dedicated just to the Keys. The CEO of Baptist Health, Brian Keeley, happened to own a home there and 18 of his neighbors have given the governor $340,000.

The governor tried to distance himself, claiming “the state was not involved.” Both Baptist South and Monroe County contradicted his claim. The state’s top Democrats, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Senate Democratic Leader Gary Farmer, said it looked like vaccine “pay to play.” They asked the FBI to investigate.

No sunlight for distribution: DeSantis’ defense is that the state has done plenty of special events in Democratic strongholds too. But there is no way to validate his claims because the state won’t turn over the distribution lists to prove who has gotten the vaccines and who has been left out. It’s unclear what the state is recording either. A Miami Herald analysis found that while state officials shipped 70,000 COVID vaccine doses a week to Publix’s central distribution hub in Lakeland in Central Florida, it didn’t track where the shots were going.

Transparency troubles: The dark box shrouding the detail on vaccine distribution is just part of a year-long pattern. As the governor has repeatedly shielded critical information about the coronavirus crisis from the public, transparency has been a casualty of COVID-19. Take a look at this timeline.

Shut-out session: Florida’s Capitol is normally hard to reach for most Floridians, but this year as lawmakers try to navigate a global pandemic and stay healthy enough to avoid disrupting the 60-day session, they have kept the public even more distant. They are rejecting virtual testimony and other work-arounds critics say would give the public more access.

Collecting cash: As DeSantis was crisscrossing the state holding pop-up vaccine clinics in select communities, his political committee was also raking in the cash. Friends of DeSantis, raised $3.9 million since December and, in February alone, his haul was a whopping $2.7 million.

DeSantis’ rising star: As the Conservative Political Action Committee in Orlando demonstrated, DeSantis’ star is rising. Mason-Dixon released a poll with the governor’s approval at 53% statewide, that’s a healthy boost for the governor who last year was derided as “DeathSantis” and mocked for stockpiling hydroxychloroquine, which has been discredited as as COVID-19 treatment.

A new poll by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, and reported by Politico, has DeSantis in the same orbit as former Vice President Mike Pence and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as the leading choices of Republican voters if former President Trump doesn’t run in the 2024 election. Trump is far and away the favorite, at 51%, but DeSantis and Pence are both second choice at 22%, and Cruz is at 19%. On the second choice list, Sen. Marco Rubio only received 2% while Sen. Rick Scott got 1%.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Ballot change pushback: The governor and other GOP leaders may want to make it harder to vote-by-mail in Florida, but leaders from across Miami-Dade County last week joined elections officials to oppose the measure. They said the plan would cancel existing mail ballot requests for millions of voters around the state, including more than 100,000 living in Miami-Dade cities with fall elections. They all say the bill attempts to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

Power play for school vouchers: A bill to create publicly funded educational savings accounts to help families pay for private tuition and other expenses also has the potential to significantly shift the way the state funds school vouchers in the budget. By creating a whole new funding formula, the measure would continue to chip away at the state’s public school systems and steer more taxpayer funds into competing, including for-profit, alternatives.

Time tolls for toll roads: What a difference a few years make. Remember those toll roads Florida legislators wanted in 2019? The Florida Senate is advancing a bill to repeal the law which called for three new toll roads.

Tied up, gunned down: A bill that would ban the tethering of unattended pets had drawn a powerful surprise opponent: the National Rifle Association. Yes, there’s lots of head-scratching.

Pot potency: Medical marijuana is a $1.2 billion business in Florida but there is a move afoot to limit the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). It’s got the industry worried.

Jobless numbers: New jobless assistance claims hit a pandemic low last week in Florida, but there were some question marks. First, the state’s count of claims flagged for fraud continued to climb. Next, legislators learned that the cost of fixing the CONNECT unemployment system will be three times more than it cost to build it in the first place: $244 million over the next five years.

Never intended to work: A new report from the Florida inspector general found that the state’s failed unemployment system was cursed by poor design and was never prepared to handle a modest amount of jobless claims, much less the historic number of claims that crushed it during the pandemic last year. What’s worse, the report found, state officials provided poor oversight and never fixed longstanding problems.

Contract conditions: One lesson legislators learned from the unemployment fiasco is that they may need to put more teeth into the contracts they sign with companies each year for billions of dollars. One bill that is getting attention would bar companies from bidding on new state contracts if they fail to meet the terms of their previous contracts.

Billions headed to FL: The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package on its way to Biden is expected to give Florida state and local government $16 billion in one-time aid, more than enough to erase the state’s estimated $2 billion budget shortfall. The governor says the formula is unfair and the state should be getting more. What role it plays in the state budget remains to be negotiated.

Stay well and we’d love to hear from you. Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas curated this newsletter. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a note at meklas@miamiherald.com.

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