To Tallahassee and Back: Deadlines? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Deadlines!

Well, that may not be quite what Gold Hat said to Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but it captures the essence of the famous line.  In Tallahassee, deadlines are extremely important.  It literally takes an act of the legislature to waive a deadline, a feat that is not so easily accomplished.

One of the biggest deadlines pertains to the end of the legislative session itself.  The respective chambers have the ability to set rules regarding how the session will be carried out.  In other words, the speaker or president can name the starting and ending time of the daily session, but what they can’t do is change the start or ending date of the entire session itself.  The Florida Constitution states that the session begins on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March and runs for sixty consecutive days.  Once midnight on the 60^th day arrives the session must end unless the body as a whole votes to extend.

The first time I experienced this was during Representative Fasano’s second year in office.  It was the final night of the 1996 legislative session and midnight was fast approaching.  The true work of the chamber was finished but the ceremonial portion was not.  Usually retiring members are given the opportunity to give farewell speeches before they finish their legislative career.  As the midnight hour approached the House voted to extend itself in session for two hours, if memory serves me correctly, so that those members who wished to say goodbye could do so.  As the 61^st day of the session began at 12 AM, few people really wanted to listen to goodbye speeches.  I recall images of members, drained and exhausted, struggling to listen as some of their colleagues bade them a fond farewell.

Prior to the age of digitization, the legislature ran on analog clocks.  You may recall them, the kind with hour, minute and second hands?  An early friend of mine in the legislative process, Marvin Clayton (now deceased) told me about the days of session when the analog clock was the only timekeeper.  Without computers to track time to the second, the leadership would refer to a simple clock hanging on the chamber wall to determine how much time was left in session.   He told me that one year, with midnight fast approaching and some big deals still unfinished, that clock on the wall continually found itself wound backward to allow the legislature more time to get the deal done.  I don’t recall how many times he said it was rolled back but it was enough to end the session at midnight (midnight in Sacramento that is, not Tallahassee).

Of course computers would not allow such behavior to occur in this day and age.  That doesn’t mean the clock still can’t be used to one chamber’s advantage over the other.   I recall an incident in the not-too-distant past when one chamber passed a priority bill of the other side, with some of its own priorities tucked into it, and then adjourned for the year.  The other side was forced to make a decision: either take up the package as is or amend it and send it back.  Sending it back would have amounted to the same thing a not acting at all since there would be no opportunity for the other chamber to act on it once again.  It may be brass knuckles politics but it is how things sometimes get done.

Right now the deadline clock is ticking on the state budget and a host of other bills awaiting the governor’s consideration.  And then will come deadlines for filing bills for next year…amendments…2014 legislative session…Deadlines?  We don’t need no stinkin’ deadlines! 

If you have any questions about legislative deadlines or any other aspect of the lawmaking process, please feel free to leave me a comment.  I will gladly answer as quickly as I can.