For ages, civilization divided the day at the time the sun was highest, and called it high noon. Standard time is natural time.

Eons earlier, the biological clocks of humans and other living things had set themselves to the same quotidian rhythm, beyond the power of any Congress or Legislature to change.

Farmers can’t instruct the roosters when to crow or tell cows when they need to be milked. There’s no persuading a teenager that it’s time to rise and shine, when the sun hasn’t.

Congress didn’t care. The semiannual clock changing ritual that it forced on America happened again at 2 a.m. Sunday. Now that clocks are set back to where they belong, they should stay there. Let this be the final “fall back,” and may “spring forward” be a fading memory by March.

It’s time for the Legislature to stand for year-round standard-time in Florida, even if other states don’t — and for Sen. Marco Rubio to stop trying to move the nation to permanent year-round daylight saving time (DST).

No news is good news

The Senate passed Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act last year by unanimous consent, which meant most senators weren’t paying attention or didn’t care. Something so drastic deserves debate. The House didn’t take it up. This year, it has not budged in either house of Congress — a case of no news is good news.

Even better news would be if Rubio and others sought to repeal daylight saving time and make standard time permanent. That is much safer and healthier, and it might even pass.

Florida and 18 other states have endorsed year-round daylight saving time if Congress permits it (Florida’s state proposal passed with overwhelming bipartisan support five years ago). Please, no.

The last time Congress did that, during a 1974 energy crisis, it was so unpopular that it was quickly repealed.

Parents were irate about sending their kids to school bus stops with flashlights in mid-winter. Early-morning traffic deaths spiked, prompting cries of “Daylight Disaster Time.”

Sick of changing clocks

The arguments for again permanently imposing unnatural time go only so far, and not far enough.

People are literally sick and tired of resetting their clocks and smart appliances twice a year. The hour lost in spring precedes significant statistical increases in heart attacks. There’s evidence of more early-morning car crashes, though data is mixed as to whether that is offset by fewer accidents at night.

As for heart attacks, studies show from 4% to 29% more of them occur in the week after “spring forward.”

There’s less evidence that it saves any significant amount of energy, which has been the political rationale for DST here and abroad through wars and oil shortages. Instead, it appears to coincide with the business models of big box stores, golf courses and other businesses that can profit from later sunset.

A medical consensus

The AMA and American Academy of Sleep Medicine both favor permanent standard time. When the AMA House of Delegates acted a year ago, it said “issues other than patients’ health” were behind year-round DST.

Year-round DST would largely wipe out the good work the Legislature did this year, enacting a requirement (HB 733) that by 2026 the instructional day cannot begin in Florida before 8 a.m. for middle schools or 8:30 a.m. for high schools. Lawmakers should have finished the job and rescinded their 2018 call to Congress to enforce DST year-round.

Year-round natural time would improve student performance. Ask any high school teacher.

Benjamin Franklin is often credited — or blamed — for creating daylight saving time, but the Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia, says it’s “the one thing Franklin did not invent.”

According to its website, the legend owes to a tongue-in-cheek essay he wrote in 1784 while serving as an American diplomat in Paris. Startled from sleep by a noise to see daylight at 6 a.m., he wrote that “your readers, who have never seen sunshine before noon,” should readjust their sleep schedules to rise and retire with the sun.

He projected “immense savings” from the wax and tallow candles that would no longer need to be bought and proposed a tax on window shutters and restrictions on candle use. Every sunrise, he added, should be greeted with church bells and, if necessary, cannon fire to “wake the sluggards effectively.”

He meant only that they should adjust their habits, not their clocks. It would be more than a century before governments embraced that idea. How time flies. But the “extra hour” isn’t worth it. It’s time for DST to RIP.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

So they turned to a state-sponsored borrowing program, Florida PACE Funding Agency (PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy), marketed to homeowners with weak credit who have to borrow money. Since 2015, PACE says it has financed $574 million in home improvements. Its splashy website features testimonials from satisfied customers.

More than a decade after the Legislature created Florida’s program, PACE has been a financial success, but it is mired in controversy, legal battles, even allegations of predatory lending. The program may have been well-intended, but has become another profit center for businesses with far too few consumer safeguards.

In Jacksonville, city officials call PACE a threat to the public. In Polk County, Tax Collector Joe Tedder cites PACE’s “abusive lending practices.” In Palm Beach, officials sent PACE a “cease and desist” letter in March, to no avail.

In Broward, aggressive contractors knock on doors in poor neighborhoods with promises of “zero money down, no credit needed.” Their flyers bear Broward’s official logo, falsely implying it’s a government program. (PACE says it doesn’t hire contractors; homeowners do.)

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners are getting roofs and windows, but at a steep price: They are saddled with loans that will take decades to repay, and some people may lose their homes.

A loan that’s a lien

A PACE loan appears on a homeowner’s property tax bill. It’s really a lien, with the house as collateral. Collecting those assessments is the critical part of the PACE model. That’s what makes the program so attractive to bondholders.

In Broward, officials report about 23,000 PACE liens, many in struggling areas such as Lauderhill, Margate and North Lauderdale. Tax records provided to the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board show some homeowners annually pay three times as much money to PACE as they pay in property taxes to all local governments combined.

On top of the crushing cost of property insurance, this is another housing crisis in the making, yet local officials have said almost nothing about it.

Even rural Gadsden County in North Florida is a breeding ground for shady contractors. In one case, an elderly widow lives in a mobile home assessed so low that with exemptions, her property tax bill next year is $49.66, county tax records show. But when she hired PACE for a new roof at 8.99% interest, she must pay $2,752 a year every year for 30 years, totaling more than $82,000, three times what her mobile home is worth.

“People are in jeopardy of losing their homes,” says Gadsden County Tax Collector W. Dale Summerford. “We have a duty to fight back on this.”

He’s right — and many are doing just that.

Counties refuse to collect

Many of Florida’s elected tax collectors refuse to collect the assessments as a result of a hotly disputed decision a year ago in state court. PACE contends that Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh in Tallahassee, who validated $5 billion in PACE bonds, normally a formality, also ruled that PACE can operate anywhere in Florida without signing contracts with counties known as interlocal agreements.

That decision blindsided counties, who received no notice of the hearing, and if PACE is right, it means the agency is not subject to local consumer protections, as in Palm Beach County.

Palm Beach Tax Collector Anne Gannon, a leader in holding PACE accountable, has sued PACE and asked to be removed from the case, claiming her rights were violated because she never received any notice. Statewide, PACE says at least 35 counties refuse to collect its assessments, including Lake, Seminole, Volusia, Duval, Hillsborough and Pinellas.

PACE needs more rigorous government oversight. When the legislative session begins in January, lawmakers should bring the statewide program under control, rein in renegade contractors and protect homeowners by giving them time to change their minds before taking on decades of debt.

It’s wrong that contractors in Broward can circulate flyers that say “immediate action required” with “no payments until November 2024.” Broward is belatedly drafting an ordinance to make those come-ons illegal.

A clash at the Supreme Court

PACE’s $185,000-a-year executive director, Mike Moran, is a Sarasota County commissioner who’s running for county tax collector. PACE wrote an op-ed that said tax collectors have “gone rogue,” accusing them of breaking the law by refusing to accept his group’s assessments. The two sides appear headed for a clash at the Florida Supreme Court, with nervous bondholders said to be backing away from the program because of legal and financial uncertainty.

“We’ve had these government bureaucrats taking away this option from the homeowners,” Moran said.

A homeowner with a PACE assessment makes a “voluntary choice,” Moran said, and in-house PACE surveys show 92% of customers are satisfied.

Moran defends PACE’s financing model as a bargain, saying if homeowners paid for expensive repairs with a credit card, they could pay up to 29% interest.

In an interview with the editorial board, Moran says that tax collectors have a constitutional duty to collect assessments from PACE, the same as any other special district for hospitals or water management.

When the Legislature created Florida PACE Funding Agency, the votes were overwhelming and bipartisan. Only four senators, all Republicans, cast “no” votes. One of them was Mike Fasano, Pasco County’s long-time tax collector, who knew from the outset that PACE would be trouble.

“I have been fighting them since Day One,” he said.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

In case you missed it, Fine repudiated his endorsement of DeSantis for president and embraced Donald Trump instead, in an op-ed in the Washington Times that soon rippled through Florida media. With Israel at war and DeSantis’ poll numbers dropping daily, Fine, the only Jewish Republican in the Legislature, claimed DeSantis is weak on antisemitism, and cited his conspicuous refusal to denounce Nazi demonstrations in the state.

Fine considers Trump any better? What? It was Trump who said “fine people” were among the Nazis at Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. It was Trump who hosted notorious antisemites Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Nick Fuentes at a Mar-a-Lago dinner.

Firing back, DeSantis accused Fine of turning against him in pique over not being a finalist for the presidency at Florida Atlantic University.

Fine claims the governor’s office urged him to seek the FAU post and that he was hesitant, but according to Politico, an unidentified source in DeSantis’ office said Fine and some supporters “went to the governor’s office begging to get him the FAU job.” Speaking to Sun Sentinel reporter Scott Travis, Fine questioned why DeSantis can’t control the FAU trustees.

Poisonous secrecy

What matters is this: Nothing about Fine’s application, or any others, was supposed to be public unless he was chosen as a finalist. And that was wrong.

That secrecy was the sole stated purpose of a 2022 law, SB 520, which made secret a search process that had been public from start to finish for decades. Now, only the names, applications and interviews of three finalists for each vacancy are public. Fine was one of 86 House members who voted for it, and DeSantis signed it.

Supporters ignored warnings that it would make it easier to corrupt academe with partisan politics that wouldn’t be seen until it became too late to stop them. Or perhaps some voted for it for precisely that reason.

In Fine’s case, the political meddling was obvious in time to stop it — revealed ironically by DeSantis himself when he said Fine would make a good president at FAU. It was an unmistakable message to the trustees, most of whom are direct or indirect DeSantis appointees.

But it backfired. To their credit, search committee members chose three other finalists, all highly regarded educators. A decision was blocked in July by heavy-handed interference in Tallahassee, where DeSantis’ Board of Governors has alleged “anomalies.” Four months later, FAU still has no permanent president.

The whole sordid episode vividly shows how university presidents should not be hired. Sunshine is still the best disinfectant for political meddling.

Gaming a bad system

After the law exempting university presidential searches from public record was passed, naturally, publicity-shy applicants quickly gamed the system, refusing to become finalists unless they were the only ones. That’s how Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, secured the University of Florida presidency. From Gainesville to Omaha, others saw the fix was in.

Sole finalists are now a pattern. DeSantis’ ally Richard Corcoran had no known competition at New College of Florida, and state Rep. Fred Hawkins of St. Cloud was the lone finalist at South Florida State College — a move that necessitated Tuesday’s special election to choose Republican and Democratic nominees to square off in January for his long-vacant District 35 seat.

The thin pretext for search secrecy is that top-ranking academics are loathe to apply for jobs they might not get for fear of jeopardizing current jobs. The reality is more likely sheer vanity that they can’t stand the embarrassment of not being chosen.

When it comes to public university vacancies, voters and taxpayers have an absolute right to know not just who’s chosen, but who was not, and why.

The secret search law is a disaster and should be repealed. It hasn’t produced better college and university presidents; it has only created a job pipeline for favored politicians.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

It’s that Trump was instrumental in elevating this election denier to the speakership. The ultra-conservative Louisiana politician, who in the past has advocated criminalizing sex acts between consenting gay adults, is now second in line for the presidency and augers an even more extreme tilt to the House than under the hapless Kevin McCarthy.

It was always unprecedented for anyone with White House connections to meddle in congressional leadership politics. Trump has profoundly offended the separation of powers, a founding principle of American life. The issue was acute this time because the ex-president is the odds-on favorite to be his party’s nominee in 2024, and some polls show he could beat President Joe Biden.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” James Madison wrote in The Federalist 47.

Trump’s seal of approval

The nation’s aspiring tyrant, despite facing 91 charges in four criminal cases, endorsed Johnson after torpedoing Tom Emmer of Minnesota, whom he had called a “globalist RINO” (Republican in name only).

Trump phoned House members who might not have gotten that message from the media, condemning Emmer to be the third caucus nominee to be eaten by its sharks. True to form, Trump was gloating.

“It’s done. He’s over. I killed him,” Politico reported that Trump said.

Congress owes the Constitution a respectful independence from the executive branch, especially when the president’s party has a majority in either or both houses. But Trump had most of the Republicans eating out of his hand when he was president, and he means to control them again.

It’s without precedent

Trump’s domination of virtually all elements of the Republican Party has no precedent, either. Not even the popular Ronald Reagan sought such iron-fisted control.

Johnson did more for Trump after the 2020 election than to vote against certifying Biden electors, as he and 146 other House Republicans did.

He also recruited 125 of them to sign onto an amicus brief in the Supreme Court backing a Texas lawsuit that challenged Biden’s election. His election denialism is something to worry about if the next electoral count is close.

Emmer’s sins, in Trump’s eyes, included his vote to certify Biden’s election after the Trump-inspired Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, his subsequent criticism of Trump’s role in it, his indisposition to defend Trump against his four indictments and his hedging on whether to endorse Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries.

Emmer’s nomination was a golden opportunity for House Republicans to declare their independence from Trump. Instead, they blew it and prostrated themselves to him again.

The last person standing

Johnson became the last person standing in the political equivalent of a demolition derby. He won by being the least objectionable Republican option. One plus is that the uber-nasty Jim Jordan paid the price for having offended many colleagues.

But Johnson is, if anything, more extreme. Rolling Stone describes him as a “hardcore Christian nationalist” who has linked mass shootings — like those in Maine Wednesday — to abortion and the teaching of evolution.

The magazine cited this Johnson quote from a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, La.: “People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we’ve taught a whole generation — a couple generations now — of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”

In an interview in 2015, a year before his election to Congress, Johnson asserted that “When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.”

As a lawyer, he represented the Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group. He’s also a prominent climate-change skeptic.

For now, the nation must hope that Johnson was sincere when he told the House that his job is “to serve the whole body, and I will.” He talks constructively of a continuing budget resolution — like the one he recently voted against — to avoid a government shutdown that’s looming in less than three weeks. His proposal for a bipartisan commission on the national debt could be very good if properly constructed.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

UF President Ben Sasse, himself a former Washington insider, has made himself an avatar of cronyism by appointing those people, who worked for him when he was a U.S. senator from Nebraska.

Cronyism is flourishing in Florida.

Its epicenter may be New College, founded as an idealistic institution dedicated to innovation and inclusion — two things that mortally offend DeSantis, who has vowed to remake the small college in the mold of ultra-conservative Hillsdale University. Two of New College’s new right-wing trustees have never lived in the state and its new permanent president, Richard Corcoran, is a former House speaker who passed on running for governor in 2018, leaving room for Ron DeSantis, who appointed him commissioner of education once Corcoran was term-limited out of the Legislature two years later.

Upon cashing in, Corcoran was handed a $699,000 salary to replace a fired New College president whose base salary was $305,000.

With perks, Corcoran’s compensation is about to rise to as much as $1.3 million — about the same as Sasse’s pay for running a major research university with an enrollment of some 61,000.

New College has just under 700 students. Corcoran’s general counsel, Bill Galvano, is a former state Senate president. The dean of students, David Rancourt, is a former lobbyist and political strategist in Tallahassee. The college foundation is run by Sydney Gruters, the wife of a former state Republican chairman.

‘Abuse of leadership’

The hypocrisy here is stunning.

As Corcoran climbed Florida’s political ladder a decade ago, he created Blueprint Florida, an 86-page manifesto for supposed political reform. Among its tenets (page 33): “Leadership is about service, not about advancing your own career. Yet because self-promotion dominates, this abuse of leadership is viewed as a normal part of the process. This must change.”

At UF, Sasse’s cronyism is a perfect fit for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ practice of political plunder. Notably, he gifted state Rep. Fred Hawkins of St. Cloud into the presidency of South Florida State College even though Hawkins was in no way qualified to hold that position. Thursday, Rep. Randy Fine spilled his tale of would-be bromotion to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, saying the governor’s office told him he’d be a shoo-in for the presidency of Florida Atlantic University. Sadly, Fine and DeSantis have apparently undergone a recent, ugly breakup.

‘You’re going to waltz right in’: Randy Fine talks of how FAU presidential bid fizzled out

Sasse’s hires went unnoticed until The Independent Florida Alligator, the feisty UF student newspaper, reported them Oct. 16. They had already been listed as members of his transition team, a function more commonly associated with governors and presidents than with heads of universities.

James Wegmann, who was Sasse’s chief publicist, is now UF’s new vice president for communications, at a starting salary of $432,000, according to the Alligator, which noted that his predecessor, a media relations employee since 1996, had been paid just $270,000.

Raymond Sass, who was Sasse’s Senate chief of staff, is UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships, a new position. His starting salary is $396,000, more than twice the $181,677 he earned in his last year on Capitol Hill.

Sass, who worked for Sasse when he was president of Midland University in Omaha and became vice president of strategy there before rejoining him in D.C., “will focus on strategic value creation for the university, at speed, to improve student learning and life-change,” a UF press release said. “He will also work to leverage technology and partnerships to improve measurable outcomes across a wide variety of initiatives.”

Whatever that means. (Somebody at UF needs a refresher course in basic English composition.)

On UF’s payroll, in Maryland

Whatever it means, he won’t have to reside at the university to do it. Sass will work remotely from Maryland, the Alligator said. Wegmann will continue to live in Washington.

It is common practice for universities to hire people from faraway places, but it is virtually unprecedented in Florida to not require them to relocate to their new campuses at some point. The few plausible exceptions in Florida should be those who represent state government in Washington, but lobbying does not seem to be in the job descriptions of either of Sasse’s high-priced appointees.

Working remotely can accomplish many things, as the pandemic demonstrated, but it does not foster collegiality. Nor does it demonstrate a personal investment in the society that’s paying one’s salary.

It is impossible to imagine that even Florida in the days of DeSantis would allow a new university president to work remotely. It’s just as inappropriate for his top-level staff. But it does suggest that perhaps Sasse doesn’t want them getting too close to the faculty and staff who were there before him.

We report by way of endorsement what Danaya Wright, UF’s Faculty Senate chair, said of the hirings, and her tongue-in-cheek commentary on how the generous salaries might set a good example.

“I think it is great,” she told the Alligator. “At the same time, I hope that he looks deeply and creatively around UF and realizes that there are highly qualified and capable people already here who have experience in higher education and a deep knowledge of the history of UF and that he also promotes them to similarly well-paying positions.”

One can always hope.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

McCarthy was removed as speaker Tuesday and the House was left leaderless by a margin of six votes, 216 to 210. Nobody is in charge. Another shutdown is looming just before Thanksgiving.

The architect of these theatrics was Rep. Matt Gaetz, a media-obsessed Republican from the Florida Panhandle who’s now a pariah among many fellow Republicans. Days after McCarthy made a deal with Democrats to pass a continuing budget resolution, Gaetz and seven GOP members struck the same strange-bedfellows bargain, removing McCarthy after nine months as speaker — the first revolt of its kind in 113 years (the last one failed).

ItWell, score one for bipartisanship, we suppose.

From Democrats to destruction

To win the speakership last January after 15 rounds of balloting, McCarthy sold his soul and made concessions to Gaetz and others on the far-right fringe. Nobody but the parties involved knows exactly what was in that agreement but it did include a rule allowing any member to make a motion to vacate the speaker’s office. Gaetz used it to topple McCarthy Tuesday.

His capitulation made McCarthy speaker in name only. He partially redeemed himself and the speaker’s office by agreeing to a continuing budget resolution that could pass only with Democratic support.

But he did not consult Democrats on what should be in it. That neglect, and his decision to order an utterly unfounded impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden, cost him when Democratic leaders supported the motion to remove him.

McCarthy was a terribly flawed leader, to be sure, but he was better for the country than Gaetz, who may be thinking now that he is the de facto speaker of the House.

Shutting Gaetz down

What the House needs to do first is to shut down Gaetz. He’s as reckless as Joe McCarthy, the Red-baiting demagogue from Wisconsin censured by the Senate in 1954.

There was jubilation at the Kremlin, to be sure, when Kevin McCarthy left a Ukraine aid package out of the continuing resolution. It must be made clear to both Gaetz and Vladimir Putin that the decision was only tactical and temporary, as Biden and responsible members of both parties in Congress have promised.

McCarthy had overwhelming support among his Republican colleagues (other than Gaetz, every other Florida Republican in the chamber supported him). Gaetz owes his victory to the Democrats, who should not expect him to be grateful.

Gaetz appeared to be hoping, actually, that the Democrats would save McCarthy so that he could accuse him of being “their” speaker. But the entire process has been more about his preening before the cameras than anything else. It was noteworthy how he hogged the anti-McCarthy side of the debate Tuesday, from a lectern on the Democratic side of the floor because the Republicans refused to let him use theirs.

The House Ethics Committee should persist in its investigation of Gaetz that began when the Democrats were in control. There were signs a few months ago that the committee may be looking seriously into allegations that include sexual misconduct and drug use. A similar Justice Department investigation ended without charges, in part, apparently, because it would have had to rely on the testimony of his imprisoned friend, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg.

But it doesn’t require a criminal conviction to find that a member of Congress deserves censure or expulsion. In a House teetering on the edge of anarchy, Gaetz could soon find himself the target of his Republican colleagues.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

“Because we say so” was essentially how the Public Service Commission justified its 2021 approval of a settlement resulting in $1.25 billion so far in electric rate increases for Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest utility.

Not so fast, the Florida Supreme Court said. In a significant if temporary victory for ratepayers, the court has sent the issue back to the PSC with orders to explain its reasons in detail for awarding FP&L the largest rate increase ever, potentially totaling $4.9 billion.

The decision has lasting benefit for the public if it sets a new benchmark for the court to strictly consider rather than rubber-stamp future decisions by the PSC and other regulatory agencies.

‘Fair and just’? No

By a 4-2 vote, the court said the PSC “has not supplied a basis for meaningful judicial review” of its approval of the controversial settlement as “fair, just and reasonable.”

With 60 witnesses, 635 exhibits and a record of more than 70,000 pages, the PSC devoted “little more than a page” to “conclusory statements” rather than “the reasoned explanation required for our review,” the opinion said.

It’s not enough, wrote Justice John Couriel, “to point to the pile of paper memorializing these proceedings and say, ‘It’s in there.’ Instead, the Commission must do the job with which the Legislature has tasked it by showing, in its final order, how the paper in that pile supports its decision.”

That shouldn’t have been a complete surprise to either the PSC or FP&L. On similar grounds in a still-pending case, the court last year ordered the PSC to elaborate on a decision authorizing a disputed Duke Energy Florida solar energy filing.

FP&L customers can’t count their refunds yet. The court did not throw out the settlement, so the PSC’s eventual explanation could satisfy the court and confirm the rate hike.

The decision was won by a coalition of public interest groups including Floridians Against Increased Rates, Florida Rising, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Florida.

The decision was also an implied rebuke for the Legislature’s Office of Public Counsel, which had endorsed the settlement of FP&L’s original $6.2 billion request.

The Public Counsel is supposed to be an ally of consumers, not utilities, but its mission was compromised when the Legislature contrived a term limit to dislodge Public Counsel J. R. Kelly, who had run the office capably since 2007. Lawmakers replaced Kelly with Richard Gentry, a veteran lobbyist with no regulatory experience and an indirect connection to FP&L, which was known to be preparing the mammoth rate increase (Gentry resigned after the settlement went through).

Mountains of campaign money

At the time, FP&L, its parent company and affiliates were in the process of making more than $5.1 million in political contributions during the 2020 election cycle, according to the Energy and Policy Institute. Most of the money went to the Republican Party and GOP candidates.

The Legislature’s value to powerful utilities lies in its control not only of the Public Counsel but of the PSC itself. A nominating panel whose members are appointed by the Legislature selects finalists for the governor to appoint to the PSC in a state where the Legislature is virtually an arm of utility industries.

When Charlie Crist was governor, the nominating commission purged four of his PSC appointees after they turned down the then-largest electric rate hike in state history.

A rare split on the court

In another possibly significant aspect, last week’s decision revealed division among the dominant conservatives with whom Gov. Ron DeSantis has remade the court.

The justices supporting Couriel’s opinion were Carlos Muñiz, Jamie Grosshans and Jorge Labarga, while Renatha Francis and Charles Canady dissented. DeSantis appointed Couriel, Muَñiz, Grosshans and Francis. Canady is a conservative appointee of Crist, who also appointed Labarga, the court’s lone moderate and frequent dissenter.

The newest justice, Meredith Sasso, did not participate because the case was argued before her appointment.

The dissenters argued that nothing in the law entitles the court to require a fuller explanation and that the decision was inconsistent with a “presumption of correctness” usually accorded to PSC orders.

Quoting precedent, Couriel acknowledged that PSC decisions arrive at the court “’with the presumption that they are reasonable and just.’” Even so, he said, the PSC’s decisions must be “reasonably explained.”

it’s worth noting that this decision represents a cross-section of the tangled conflicts of interest that marks many of DeSantis’ appointments: Francis was an attorney with Shutts & Bowen, a law firm representing FP&L in the case, before her first judicial appointment to the Miami-Dade County Court in 2017. Arguing the case for FP&L was the firm’s managing Tallahassee partner, Daniel Nordby, a member of the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating commission that twice recommended Francis and nominated Couriel, Muñiz, Grosshans and Sasso.

Even so, this court took a stand against the worst excesses of Florida’s increasingly oligarchic, cronyistic government. It’s a small ray of hope in a darkening political landscape.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

When he did, it was to parrot Chris Christie, who criticized Donald Trump for not showing up.

“Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight,” DeSantis said. “He owes it to you to defend his record.”

DeSantis was right, of course, but it was too little, too late. DeSantis and his rivals have been so unwilling to confront Trump on anything, for fear of offending his MAGA base, that this mild rebuke qualified as news.

Over the course of two hours at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, DeSantis did nothing — zero  — to reverse the nosedive of his presidential hopes. He came across as humorless, rehearsed and stilted. He fudged the facts and told only part of the story, and his trailing challengers missed their last good chance to point out the myriad ways he’s ginned up bigotry and wasted tax dollars in pursuit of his all too apparent personal ambition.

One good example: His self-serving statement that he “vetoed wasteful spending” in Florida. What he didn’t say was that he also vetoed essential spending for programs such as flood control, homelessness, hunger prevention and to help victims of gun violence, this year alone.

The rest of the story: As Mike Pence noted on stage Wednesday, spending in Florida under DeSantis has ballooned from $92 billion in his first full year as governor to $116.5 billion for next year, a growth rate of 21% in four years’ time.

Reagan would weep

The debate was framed by frequent quotes by, and references to, Ronald Reagan. But he’d be appalled by this shambolic affair — an unwatchable spectacle of crosstalk, personal insults and non-answers.

The moderators from Fox Business lost control of the proceedings — and worse, introduced false narrative themselves, particularly with their assertions that crime was increasing sharply under Biden. (It’s not. By many measures, crime rates are dropping.)

They did ask some good questions, however, including pressing candidates on the intricacies of immigration issues such the border and birthright citizenship. One notable exchange: Stuart Varney’s grilling of DeSantis on the 2.5 million Floridians with no health insurance — a rate that exceeds the national average. He has done nothing as governor to expand Medicaid, the health care safety net.

In fact, DeSantis appeared to equate Medicaid expansion with charity. “We also don’t have a lot of welfare benefits in Florida,” DeSantis said. “We’re basically saying, this is a field of dreams.”

For once, the governor spoke the undeniable truth. Anyone who still believes DeSantis has any empathy for the hard-working, low-earning labor force that fuels Florida’s chief industries of hospitality and agriculture is clearly dreaming.

Time for change

This debate that wasn’t was such a monumental disappointment that the time has come to scrap the entire format, with its rigid 30- and 60-second time limits, and to reflect on whether these extended shouting matches do more to hurt democracy than to help it.

Candidates fudge their answers or worse, lie, as DeSantis did when Nikki Haley challenged him on energy and he denied favoring a ban on fracking in Florida.

Oh really? On his third day in office, Jan. 10, 2019, DeSantis signed an executive order that directed the state environmental agency to “take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.”

DeSantis could have proudly embraced that action, to the delight of independent voters who care about the environment. Instead, he ran from his own record.

A failure of leadership

What America saw Wednesday was a dirt-track debate, with second- and third-tier candidates at the kids’ table, shouting over each other about sanctuary cities, TikTok and Obama-era mandates.

The debate changed nothing in the weird dynamics of this Republican race, and solidified Trump as the presumptive nominee, even hobbled by four criminal indictments and a new finding of his long history of fraud in his business dealings.

With the sole exception of Christie, the Republican candidates failed a fundamental test of leadership by refusing to declare Trump unfit to occupy the White House. Their collective timidity is in itself disqualifying.

Biden, by the way, was in Arizona Thursday to again issue a dire warning about the threats Trump presents to the future of democracy, his fourth such address since the second anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As for the Republicans, their next primary debate is scheduled for Nov. 8, and it will be in Miami.

Is there still time to cancel it?

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Like the man himself, it’s crazy enough that it just might work.

Jimmy Buffett International Airport. Why not?

We aren’t alone in this musing. An online petition was started by Buffett fan Brad Russell to change the name of Key West International Airport to honor Buffett. As of this writing, that petition at change.org has 25,693  signatures, and we’re throwing our weight behind the idea.

Hardly the first time

Renaming an airport after an individual is not unprecedented. Both major airports serving Washington (Dulles and Reagan) and New York City (Kennedy and LaGuardia) are so named.

Nor would this be the first time an airport is named for an entertainer — witness John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., Pilgrim, where a large bronze statue of Wayne towers over the baggage carousel. Nor would this even be the first airport named after a musician, as anyone who has flown into Louis Armstrong New Orleans Airport can tell you.

Those last two are marvelous marketing schemes. When you land at the Duke’s airport, you know Hollywood can’t be far. And when you touch down at Louis Armstrong, the sounds of jazz are ringing in your ears before you’ve left the gangway.

When your plane hits the tarmac at Jimmy Buffett, it will be hard not to have visions of margaritas dancing in your head

Few musicians are so closely associated with a place as Buffett is with Key West. His songs are rife with references to the island, even if his best-known song about air travel might be “Jamaica Mistaica,” which recounts the true story of Buffett’s Grumman HU-16 Albatross taking incoming fire from Jamaican police who mistakenly believed it was running drugs.

The gears are turning

Officials in Monroe County, which owns the Key West airport, have heard the pleas, but change will be slow in coming.

“It would be a long process and we’d have to work through it,” County Mayor Craig Cates told WLRN.

Hurdles include approvals from the feds, the county and the Buffett estate.

Cates, who knew Buffett as mayor of Key West, where he served from 2009 to 2018, told the Palm Beach Post that Monroe County Attorney Bob Shillinger would reach out to Margaritaville Holdings, which controls the Buffett brand, to begin discussions.

Face it, the name Key West International Airport is boring — even if Key West, the place, isn’t.

An easy decision

Aside from Buffett detractors, whose bleating on anything Key Westian can easily be discounted, pushback on the renaming has come in two forms. First is a contingent of people on the island who have been calling for the airport to be named for someone else.

The Post reported that the most significant name is that of Freddy Cabanas, a local stunt pilot who died a decade ago in a crash in Mexico. Cabanas was, like Buffett, one of those larger-than-life figures whom Key West seems to attract. (Unlike the Mississippi-born Buffett, Cabanas was a fourth-generation Conch.) In 1991, the mayor of Key West declared Cabanas general of the Conch Republic Air Force.

That sort of prestige shouldn’t go unnoticed, but there’s a way to split this and make all sides happy. Key West International is expanding with a new concourse added by 2025. When completed, the new terminal could bear Cabanas’ name, just as the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium boasts Steve Spurrier Field.

The other obstacle is money. Rebranding means added costs, which could be substantial. But it’s a fitting tribute.

Visitors to Key West are more likely to land in Miami and rent a car to take the drive, one of the most scenic experiences in America. But there are legions of fans for whom flying into Jimmy Buffett International Airport will become a rite of passage. If the tickets cost more money than flying to Miami, that’s partially defrayed by avoiding the cost of car rental and fuel driving down from the city. (Many visitors to the nation’s southernmost point opt to use bikes or ride-sharing within Key West to avoid parking challenges.)

So, come on, Monroe County. A ticket to Margaritaville could be just a mouse-click on a travel site away.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Now we’re learning that the flaws go deeper than anyone realized — the question of life and state-sanctioned death.

It has long fallen to Florida’s attorney general to defend transparency and open records. Attorney General Pam Bondi, a member of the revision commission, should have sounded the alarm. She did not.

Ashley Moody, her successor, is no better. She has made no objections to the way Marsy’s Law has cast darkness where light should shine, such as its use by police agencies to shield the names of officers accused of excessive force, including deadly force.

But Moody isn’t ignoring the law altogether. She’s invoking the amendment as a pretext to curtail stays of execution for Florida death row inmates.

Taking the law to death row

If the Supreme Court agrees, it would set a precedent and preclude the last hope of virtually every death row prisoner. Florida already has the nation’s harshest capital punishment regime, and what Moody wants would make it even more extreme.

The Florida Supreme Court almost never stays the execution of a death warrant, and it wasn’t considered likely to in the present appeal by condemned murderer Michael Duane Zack. He asserts fetal alcohol syndrome as grounds for an intellectual disability exemption.

A state judge ruled against Zack, and there’s enough of a record, regardless of Marsy’s Law, for Moody to persuade the court to let Zack die by lethal injection as scheduled on Oct. 3.

But she wants to use Marsy’s Law to shut the courthouse door against any future 11th-hour appeals. That’s consistent with Moody’s avid embrace of capital punishment, but it’s wrong.

The state’s legal position

Moody’s filing cites a Marsy’s Law provision that victims have a “right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay and to a prompt and final conclusion of the case and any related post-judgment proceedings.”

Applying that to stays of execution, she argues, would discourage death row lawyers from waiting until a warrant is signed “to employ extraordinary efforts and expect a stay.”

Zack’s claims, Moody contends, “could all have been brought pre-warrant.”

But the key is whether there’s anything inherently unreasonable about a final attempt to save a human life. (Moody is ardently pro-life when the issue is abortion.)

Stays of execution are the last resort once the governor signs a death warrant. That normally gives the inmate’s lawyer only 30 days to make a final appeal and seek a stay of execution.

Some condemned prisoners may be undeserving of the extreme penalty. Thirty who had been on Florida’s death row were eventually exonerated, more than in any other state.

The importance of preserving the right to seek stays of execution is underscored by how Florida governors have forsaken executive clemency. More than 40 years, and all but the first two of Florida’s 104 modern-era executions have gone by without a commutation.

Preoccupied with procedures

It is irrelevant to the laws and rulings governing criminal appeals whether someone might be innocent or undeserving of the most extreme penalty. All that matters to the courts is whether proper procedures were observed and filing deadlines were met.

In 1983, death row prisoner Joseph Green Brown came within 15 hours of execution before a federal judge granted a stay. Three years later, he won a new trial because Tampa prosecutors had knowingly allowed and exploited false testimony to convict him. The state dropped the charges, exonerating him.

Many years later, he went to prison in North Carolina for murdering his wife. But that subsequent guilt does not erase the fact that he was innocent when Florida nearly killed him.

Moody’s zealousness to invoke Marsy’s Law for hastening executions contrasts with her indifference to how it’s being used to conceal much of what the public needs to know about crime and law enforcement.

Some agencies routinely refuse to identify crime victims even when they or their families have not asked them to. Some conceal where a crime such as a rape or burglary occurred even when a nearby community needs to know.

The Florida Highway Patrol withholds names of victims in single-car accidents where no foul play is suspected. Worst of all, two Tallahassee police officers who shot and killed criminal suspects successfully sued the city to prevent it from releasing their names.

The city’s appeal of that judicial aberration has been pending for more than two years at the Florida Supreme Court. Friend-of-the-court briefs supporting openness were filed by a news media coalition, Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, six public interest groups, the ACLU of Florida, and the City of Miami Civilian Investigative Panel. There should have been one from Moody, but there was not.

If there were ever a time for Florida’s attorney general to advocate the public interest against someone’s “right” to keep their names secret, this case is it. But she obviously cares more for accelerating executions than for Florida’s historic commitment to government in the sunshine.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.