Florida legislators said they were doing good for the public when they made it harder for policyholders to sue their insurance company over denied claims. They asserted that it would relieve market turmoil, attract new companies and reduce the nation’s highest homeowner rates. That’s highly debatable, because the law (last session’s HB 837) doesn’t require companies to pass along their savings. But that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.

Now, at least one legislator who voted for that bill aims to do well by cashing in. Republican Sen. Joe Gruters approached colleagues about investing in a start-up company, Village Protection Insurance. A solicitation he forwarded described a “unique and lucrative opportunity for investors.”

Gruters, 46, of Sarasota, is a CPA and former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida who was state co-chairman of Donald Trump’s first Florida campaign in 2016. The senator reported a net worth of $2.8 million last year.

Deepening the distrust

Other companies are also luring legislators to invest, according to the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times.

You might be asking, “Is this legal?” The answer is yes. But it’s wrong on two important levels: Public opinion and public policy.

Public opinion of politicians and distrust of institutions is dangerously low throughout the nation. Among the reasons, Pew Research reported, is that 63% of those polled believe that all or most elected officials run for office to make a lot of money.

What Gruters proposes deepens the distrust.

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, alluded to it when he said why he wouldn’t invest in Gruters’ company or in any other.

“I just don’t want to be directly involved with profiting off of what is less restrictive, or more favorable, conditions for insurers,” Pizzo told the Times and Herald. The appearances “probably aren’t great,” but he said policyholders wouldn’t care if their rates come down.

Insurance is highly regulated by a division of the Florida Department of Financial Services, which executes the laws that legislators pass and depends upon them for its appropriations. For legislators to also be investors creates the possibility of improper influence on regulators and self-dealing through lawmaking.

There’s nothing new about state legislators angling to enrich themselves from their positions.

In the 1960s, a Miami company, State Fire & Casualty was known to be in financial difficulty, but state Insurance Commissioner Broward Williams held off on declaring it insolvent and putting it into receivership. The reason, as it appeared, was that the chairman of the House Insurance Committee, Rep. Carey Matthews, a Miami Democrat, was the insurer’s general counsel.

Acceptable ‘by current standards’

The scandal led to a U.S. Senate investigation, Williams’ electoral defeat in 1970 and Matthews’ indictment in 1971 on 19 counts of securities, mail and wire fraud. He resigned from the Legislature, pleaded guilty to one count and got five years’ probation.

Over the years, many legislators have been licensed insurance brokers. Rep. J. Hyatt Brown, a Daytona Beach Democrat and House speaker in 1977-78, headed a brokerage that became the sixth-largest in the country.

Although the state insurance division can revoke licenses, that aspect of regulation is not nearly as extensive as its authority and responsibility to assure the financial soundness of the companies they represent.

Even there, experts say, investments by Gruters and other legislators would not cross a legal or ethics barrier.

But public opinion is much different.

“At its worst interpretation, Gruters’ behavior is probably deemed acceptable by current standards,” said Bonnie Williams, a former executive director of the Florida Commission of Ethics, in an email to the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board.

She added that if the legislation was controversial — as the insurance bills were — “a legislator would be hard-pressed to argue that his subsequent interest was a coincidence.”

The optics look bad

The bar to reach a conflict of interest in the Florida Legislature is intentionally very high because they can hold outside jobs, according to Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, a watchdog group. He noted that legislators often sponsor bills and serve on committees that could benefit their own personal income. Senate rules require senators to vote unless a bill would provide them a “special private gain or loss.”

What Gruters is doing would not be a conflict of interest under Senate rules. But the optics look bad to Floridians struggling with sky-high insurance premiums.

“I’m sure he will spin it by saying he’s trying to make insurance more affordable, but to the public, it will look like he is seeking to profit from homeowners desperate to find affordable insurance coverage,” Wilcox said.

The Legislature is scheduled to convene for 60 days a year, but legislative service is increasingly time-consuming, with frequent special sessions, committee meetings in the months preceding the session and frequent public appearances and gatherings with constituents. Legislators are paid $29,697 a year.

As a result, Florida’s low-salaried “citizen legislature” is highly unrepresentative of how most Floridians live. A 2018 study by the Tampa Bay Times found that nearly half the legislators serving were lawyers or chief executives. Only nine reported lawmaking as their primary income source, but few could survive on that paltry salary.

This imbalance will continue as long as Florida perpetuates the myth that governing the third-largest state is not important enough to be full-time work — and so will the temptation for legislators to do well for themselves.

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.

DeSantis banned the TikTok app from government devices. He restricted Chinese citizens from owning land in Florida. In what critics saw as a political stunt, he cut off state subsidies to prestigious private schools in Weston and suburban Orlando, claiming they are controlled by an investment firm with ties to China.

One of the laws DeSantis signed in May was Senate Bill 264, which prohibits Florida government entities from doing business with the People’s Republic of China and other foreign “countries of concern.”

But as with so many of the governor’s political pronouncements, the reality is much more complicated than it appears.

A Broward County connection

Our story begins at Fort Lauderdale’s Executive Airport, of all places.

A few weeks before the bill-signing ceremony targeting China, the DeSantis administration quietly signed multimillion-dollar contracts to lease a sleek high-tech aircraft to track down and detain illegal immigrants, especially in the Florida Keys.

The DeSantis administration’s aircraft of choice was a twin-engine, high performance, diesel-powered jet known as a Diamond DA62, made by Diamond Aircraft, an Austrian firm which in 2017 was purchased by Wanfeng Aviation Industry Co., headquartered in China.

On many days, as the flight tracking website flightaware.com shows, Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents board the plane at Fort Lauderdale Executive, where we photographed it recently. From there, they often fly down to Marathon in the Florida Keys in search of undocumented immigrants.

Operation Vigilant Sentry, or OVS as it is called, claimed to have arrested 20 undocumented arrivals in Key Largo a couple of weeks ago — 17 of them Chinese nationals.

A very pricey arrangement

The state’s one-year contract is with the Bank of Utah, a trustee for the aircraft’s owners. It isn’t cheap. State records show Florida will pay $2 million through next May (the cost to replace the plane would be $4 million). The contract, obtained through a public records request, was signed by DeSantis’ chief of emergency management Kevin Guthrie and FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass.

More apparent contradictions in DeSantis’ record on China became a flashpoint in a Republican presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday.

Rival Nikki Haley asked DeSantis why he scrubbed the website of Florida’s economic development arm to remove positive references to China as a leading trading partner of Florida.

Don’t try to find it. Suddenly missing from the website of Select Florida (formerly Enterprise Florida) is a three-year-old report, finished in DeSantis’ first term, that called Florida “an ideal business destination for Chinese companies.”

A more recent report emphasized Central America, South America, the Caribbean and Mexico as trading partners and the need to lure business away from China.

The sanitizing of the website was first reported by The Messenger, and the website factcheck.org looked at both candidates’ claims and found both to be slightly misleading.

The state’s response

The governor’s office referred questions about the aircraft contract to the Division of Emergency Management (DEM), an agency directly under DeSantis’ control.

In response to questions from the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, a DEM spokeswoman said in an email: “The plane that DEM leased was from the Bank of Utah … In no way did we send a nickel to China. The narrative you are trying to pursue is purely false.”

No, Florida is not directly doing business with China here. The state is doing business with a bank that is doing business with an unknown plane owner who’s doing business with China. The middlemen just allow DeSantis to keep his hands ostensibly clean, and show how porous this ban on doing business with Chinese companies really is.

The state is shelling out a lot of taxpayer money for a politically inspired program that is obviously not a core function of state government: immigration enforcement.

The state is leasing an aircraft made by a company owned by the Chinese, to carry out a signature DeSantis priority of searching for undocumented immigrants. It’s a transparent DeSantis strategy to highlight President Joe Biden’s failure to secure the southern border.

Call it a coincidence if you want. But the state’s leasing of an aircraft made by a Chinese-owned company to hunt for Chinese nationals crossing our border vividly illustrates China’s economic reach in Florida, whether DeSantis likes it or not, and reveals the limits of his “crackdown on Communist China.”

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. Send letters to the editor to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

That stick-with-what-works mentality definitely includes Orlando, where Mayor Buddy Dyer and incumbent city commissioners Bakari Burns and Patty Sheehan cruised to victory with commanding leads. Granted, turnout was low — but that’s not so surprising, either; voters who are mostly content and only have a few races on their ballots tend to exert less effort.

That won’t make the coming two years of city business any easier. The City Beautiful has some ugly problems. That includes homeless people camped under I-4 overpasses and in city parks; a downtown emptied by the COVID-era shift to remote work during the day and taken over by a rowdy party crowd at night;  several historic neighborhoods where gun violence is on the rise and other big challenges. There are also big unknowns, including the real impact of the Legislature’s multiple attacks on local governments’ ability to carefully manage growth.

Overall, however, Orlando’s City Council seems to be doing a good job of balancing those priorities — while tending to local needs including health care, affordable housing,  resources for substance abuse and mental illness and impressive new entertainment venues. There are legitimate complaints, particularly from residents of neighborhoods who feel they’ve been left behind in the city’s push for progress. But Burns, who represents some of those communities, claimed a commanding 4-to-1 vote margin in his District  6 race. That’s a substantial margin of trust.

It probably didn’t hurt that, even as mail ballots went out, Dyer was working a last-minute miracle to get the Pulse nightclub property into the city’s hands and pave the way for a respectful, collaborative memorial to the victims of the second-worst mass shooting in the nation’s history. Dyer’s long been known for a take-charge style that sometimes steamrolls dissenting voices. In this case, decisive action was needed — and it’s not the first time Dyer’s vision has led to dramatic leaps forward for Orlando. Voters were right to keep him on the job for what he says will be his final term.

Regional challenges

Among the other cities with incumbents on the ballot — including  Oviedo, Lake Mary, Rockledge, Clermont, Tavares, Minneola, Indian Harbor Beach and Melbourne Beach — we can only find one incumbent who lost: James Reitz, the Ward 5 commissioner and current mayor of the north Lake County town of Lady Lake, which has been all but consumed by the sprawling megacommunity known as the Villages.

But there were some portents in Tuesday’s results that should give local leaders more to think about — particularly in Oviedo, where voters slapped down a pair of ballot questions that many expected to cruise to easy victory. One, a $35.5 million bond issue to build a long-awaited police station, could reflect significant voter apathy to anything that might raise their tax burden – especially in combination with Orange County’s thumping rejection of a local infrastructure sales tax in 2022. Seminole County leaders, who have their own sales-tax supplement coming up for renewal in 2024, should pay particular attention. (And we’re pretty sure they are.)

The other Oviedo defeat, a refusal to re-authorize the city’s ability to grant property-tax breaks as incentive for economic development, is more puzzling and will take time to unpack. This might not be a huge issue for Oviedo, who has only granted a few breaks under the economic-development law. But it could be a big deal for other cities facing their own tax-break authorization votes in the near future.

Overall, however, this set of election returns sends a clear message that voters are content with their status quo. Local leaders, particularly in municipalities that weren’t put to the test this year, shouldn’t take it as a license for laziness — but as an inspiration to keep serving their constituents respectfully and responsibly.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com

Instead, the GOP-dominated Legislature is taking swift action …. to act as governmental bootlifts, with no greater purpose than to burnish DeSantis’ swagger. The current slate of bills reflects nothing that would qualify as a legitimate emergency, outside of a servile desire to make the governor look tougher when he walks onstage Wednesday for the third GOP presidential primary debate.

Meanwhile, across Florida, families are facing emergencies that demand swift action, including potential evictions, skyrocketing property insurance bills and sick kids who are about to lose their health insurance. If the Legislature does anything at all to help these families, they will have to wait.

It’s a shameful performance, playing out on a national stage.In fact, we’d love to see some of DeSantis’ GOP rivals challenge him Wednesday on the way he’s twisted the Legislature into his personal band of cheerleaders.

Here’s how DeSantis’ hyper-online strategy suddenly went south

No case for urgency

Here’s what you need to to understand about legislative special sessions: They are meant to be reserved for emergency situations. That’s because special sessions wipe out most of the safeguards that ensure time for thorough analysis of a law’s potential impact, ample public input and time for lawmakers to amend and debate. Special-session bills are usually introduced, go through an abbreviated committee process and are then hustled onto the floor within a week’s time.

But DeSantis and his legislative minions have trampled that extraordinary authority into a ramrod, shoving useless, harmful or deeply flawed legislation into law before anyone realizes what’s going on. Nearly everything under consideration for rapid action this week falls into one of those categories; the only real exception being an expansion of relief (in HB 1) for victims of Hurricane Idalia.

Some of the bills are meant to be merely a Greek chorus of the points DeSantis plans to make Wednesday on stage, such as support for the state of Israel and condemnation of Hamas. Yes, such a declaration is timely — but Florida lawmakers are perfectly capable of expressing their own opinions. There are also “sanctions” against Iran that are highly unlikely to have any measurable impact, outside of an opportunity for DeSantis to pretend he’s already president.

Other bills ladle more cash into voucher programs — months after Florida’s school year has started — and dole out money for security measures at Jewish day schools. There’s nothing here that can’t wait for the regular session that starts in January, if it’s necessary at all.

By then, of course, DeSantis’ presidential hopes may be thoroughly extinguished. That’s why these bragging points are being so hastily manufactured.

The real emergencies

Contrast that to the issues being raised by a handful of Democratic lawmakers who are — let’s be realistic — also using the special session to make a point, rather than an actual difference.

But there is a critical distinction here. Their quick-action bills — most filed by Rep. Anna Eskamani, the irrepressible Orlando-based Democrat — address real emergencies that are impacting more Floridians every day.

And those bills were brutally stomped within hours of their filing, with House leadership refusing to even make them available for consideration.

Among those bills were opportunities to:

• Help Florida children being shoved, sometimes unfairly, off Medicaid rolls right now;
• Find ways to assist Florida tenants facing eviction and help workers searching for housing they can afford right now;
• Find relief for Florida property owners who are receiving massive property insurance hikes (or can’t find insurance at all) right now;
• And something that should be an urgent priority for any lawmaker proclaiming themselves to be pro-life — curbing gun violence in a state that has already seen more than 100 deaths from firearms in 2023 alone.

These all sound like things that can’t really wait until the 2024 legislative session convenes in January. Add to that an override of a bizarre DeSantis veto that blocks the state from accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid, and Florida voters have to ask: Why do their lawmakers care so much about the governor’s political fortunes, and so little about the real threats their constituents face?

It’s a deep disappointment to constituents who deserve better, and a cautionary tale to voters in other states who want to know what a DeSantis presidency might look like.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com

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.

It’s a limited-time opportunity. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 7. Mail ballots must be received by local elections offices by 7 p.m. that day to be counted. Depending on when you’re reading this and where you live, your opportunity to vote early may have already passed.

But you can still go to the polls Nov. 7. And if you’ll give us a few minutes, we’ll offer some reasons why you should.

Traditionally, all these elections are low-turnout; in some Orlando precincts, fewer than 10 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in 2021’s municipal elections. That’s a shame — not just because local officials can have such an outsized impact on residents’ quality of life, but because local voters can have such an outsized impact on the decisions their city leaders and legislators make.

In today’s troubled times, it’s a great way to remind yourself that your opinions and priorities count.

It’s also a way to thank those with the courage to step forward and offer their service on city-level councils and commissions. Presidents, governors, even members of Congress live their lives surrounded by layers of staff and earn substantial full-time salaries. But most of the candidates on Tuesday’s ballot are regular folks — juggling their campaigns (and, they hope, their official duties) with day jobs, child care, family duties, retirement activities and other challenges of daily living.

Throughout the 2023 campaign season, the Sentinel has interviewed many of them for our own endorsements. Before we summarize those, we have to say: What we’ve seen is truly impressive.

That’s why we encourage voters to research candidates for themselves — reading news stories, reviewing candidates’ websites and talking to their neighbors about their choices.

Here are our picks:

State House District 35 special election

Republican and Democratic voters will choose their nominees for a January special election to replace former state Rep. Fred Hawkins in a district that includes parts of Orange and Osceola counties.

Endorsement: For House District 35, Democrat Marucci Guzmán by a hair

Democratic primary: Marucci Guzman, a tireless community advocate who is the driving force behind multiple nonprofits and was a finalist for the Sentinel’s 2022 Central Floridian of the Year, is our choice, but only by the narrowest of margins — mostly because of her potential strength against the likely Republican nominee. Any of the three candidates would be a stellar choice.

Republican primary: No recommendation. On the other side of the ballot, all three candidates seem to have made the same cynical choice: Focus on national politics, laced with as much Trumptosterone and DeSanctification as possible, while steering clear of inconvenient questions about what they’d accomplish if elected to the state Legislature. That leaves the way clear for a deceptive pivot, post-election, to appeal to Democratic and nonpartisan voters. Republican voters in District 35 deserved better than this pending betrayal. And all voters should remember this shameless pandering in January.

Orlando City Council

Endorsement: Orlando needs Mayor Buddy Dyer’s skillful leadership

Mayor: Buddy Dyer. Over the past 20 years, Dyer has served as Orlando’s mayor with vision, warmth and honor. He’s been the city’s emotional leader in times of heart-rending crisis and often serves as a voice of reason when dissension threatens to derail critical progress. He is sometimes criticized for being too heavy-handed, but his vision has also been the driving force behind projects such as SunRail and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. He’s earned a sixth (and he says, final) term as mayor.

Endorsement: Patty Sheehan has served Orlando City Council’s District 4 well

District 4: Patty Sheehan. Like Dyer, Sheehan has spent two decades serving Orlando voters, and her tireless advocacy for her downtown-anchored district has been a key driver in preserving the city’s focus on historic preservation and retaining a sense of community in the heart of a modern downtown. Voters should keep her on the job.

Endorsement: In Orlando City Council District 6, Bakari Burns merits re-election

District 6: Bakari Burns. District 6, which spans some of Orlando’s most historic yet underprivileged neighborhoods, has made considerable progress during Burns’ first council term. His health-care background gave heft to his demands that District 6 get its fair share of pandemic-fighting resources, and his plans for the future include projects, large and small, that should serve District 6 voters well.

Oviedo

Endorsement: Megan Sladek’s independent thinking a good match for Oviedo’s challenges

Mayor: Megan Sladek. In her first two terms as mayor, Sladek has proven herself to be one of Seminole County’s most innovative thinkers, and someone who isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo. Her vision could be key in attracting more innovative industry and expanding the city’s tax base. She should stay on the job.

Endorsement: Oviedo residents should say ‘yes’ to police funding, economic development

Referendum on city police station: Yes. Oviedo’s police department is clearly bursting at the seams. It’s a shame the city didn’t move ahead with this project when voters first approved it in 2016, but the need hasn’t gone away.

Referendum on economic incentives: Yes. This re-authorizes council members to approve incentive funding, a responsibility they’ve handled well in the past.

Lake Mary

No endorsement: In Lake Mary, voters face a difficult choice between Duryea, Renteria

City Commission District 2: No recommendation. This race pits Lake Mary’s longest-serving commissioner against a repeat challenger who still doesn’t seem to grasp the complexities of city government, which makes us doubt her ability to fulfill her promises of greater transparency. Normally that would tilt our decision in favor of the incumbent, but he barely appears to be campaigning and has offered voters little idea of his plans if elected.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at 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.

Florida lawmakers probably saw the same reality, even though many of them still publicly resist the scientific reality of rising sea levels and remain bound to a dogmatic devotion toward fossil fuels. They also must have looked forward to boasting about their support of programs that would bring hundreds of millions in federal aid to Floridian families with a negligible impact on their own budget machinations.

It was a rare moment of pro-consumer triumph that reached across the aisle — across the nation, including Florida.

Then Gov. Ron DeSantis crashed the party and, for those in this state, brought it crashing down, blocking the ability of families and local governments to tap into federal funding intended for rebates and other incentives.

Floridians stung by DeSantis veto that cost $346M in energy-saving programs

That has left Florida’s congressional delegation grasping for a way to rescue the state’s share of this funding before it flows to less foolhardy entities in other states. U.S. Rep. Darren Soto has taken the lead on that effort, and is working every angle to rescue the rebate programs. It should also inspire the state’s most rational Republicans — including Wilton Simpson, commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and state Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, whom DeSantis double-crossed with one of his most pointless vetoes — to get up on their hind legs and fight for Floridians.

Rebates: What’s at stake

In recent months, the Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher and Jeffrey Schweers have done a great job documenting the cost of DeSantis’ vetoes and other actions. Among the federal programs DeSantis has blocked access to:

• Home electrification and appliance rebates, which could be worth as much as $22,000 to many Florida homeowners. The rebates will be administered through one of two programs. One targets low- to middle-income households with rebates for electric heat pumps, wiring upgrades and more efficient water heaters, dryers and other appliances. A second program rebates consumers who upgrade energy-efficient doors and windows and air conditioners. If Florida doesn’t meet the cutoff date for applying, the $346 million allocated for the state will be split among other applicants. That would be a particularly brutal slap against homeowners who are still rebuilding after three major hurricanes, Soto says.
• Support for local governments and state agencies that include electric vehicles in their fleet, which could save up to $277 million in fuel costs statewide over the coming 15 years. That’s a big enough hunk of money to have a potential impact on individual property tax bills. DeSantis’ veto of SB 284, Brodeur’s unanimously supported bill that encourages buying EVs and other energy saving measures, killed that opportunity for Florida.
• Rebates through the 2022 Solar For All program, which would give low-income Floridians a boost to install the bill-cutting panels on their own roofs. This one is a little more politically fraught, because it crosses Florida’s biggest, most powerful utilities, and relies on Simpson to apply for the funding. But lawmakers should at least open the door to the possibility.

DeSantis’ vetoes aren’t the final word. But deadlines for the state to apply for funding are fast approaching. Soto and the rest of Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation (including Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who is demonstrating an appetite similar to Soto’s for working hard and smart on behalf of his constituents) tried one strategy — an amendment to the original legislation that would allow other groups, including local governments, to go after funding in the handful of states that have blocked access. That was blocked, but he’s currently drafting standalone legislation that would accomplish the same thing.

“We’ll take every opportunity,” he told the Sentinel this week. “The clock is ticking.”

Reaction: The good fight

That’s what fighting for Florida consumers looks like — and Florida’s savviest Republicans in Congress should seize on this chance for bipartisan championship. That could include Bill Posey of Melbourne, Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami-Dade and Mike Waltz of Flagler Beach, who is married to Julia Nesheiwat, DeSantis’ first “resilience czar” (appointed back when the governor acknowledged the reality if not the reason for global climate change).

It may still be a heavy lift in Congress; why should members from other states rescue Florida and other holdout states from their own folly? But holding onto Florida’s congressional seats will be critical for GOP lawmakers who are serious about keeping their razor-thin margin of control over the House. If anyone can get it done, it’s Soto.

There is a better, faster solution, and it starts next week: Lawmakers can simply override DeSantis’ vetoes in the special session that starts on Monday.

It would take a lot of courage, but it’s the best path. Many will probably argue that the Legislature could reauthorize access to the federal grants in the regular session that starts in January, but that risks triggering another veto. Without another special session dedicated to an override, Florida will miss all the federal deadlines and its share of funding would flow to other states.

A veto requires a two-thirds majority. But it’s the final say: DeSantis can’t veto an override. This would give Florida’s legislative leadership a prime opportunity to reclaim the power that the state constitution says is theirs by right — and use it to defend the state’s beleaguered, bewildered consumers.

It won’t erase six years of idolatry to DeSantis’ reckless agenda (which is packed with hypocrisy on the subject of federal funding). But it would demonstrate a long-overdue recognition of the fact that Florida lawmakers are entrusted with the responsibility to put their constituents first. That would be worth celebrating.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at 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.