Category Archives: Florida

The Florida Taliban

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Move over Texas Taliban, make room for the Florida branch. It seems there may be a religious test for appointment to judicial office in the Jeb Bush regime. If not a religious test, there's undoubtedly a strict ideological one. Info, but alas no sign of the source of the info, at TalkLeft, Improper Judicial Questioning in Florida.

Read the update.

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Money Grubbing in Florida

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Two small articles in the local section of the Miami Herald show the seamy side of the money-grubbing culture in Florida. In one case the state is trying to squeeze prisoners' families for every dollar it can get by requiring them to use overpriced telephone services to speak to prisoners—and just banned a magazine that carries ads explaining how to route around the overcharges. In another case, local lawyers claim that court reporters have been massaging the margins to inflate the length and cost of transcripts.

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Top Reason I’d Seriously Consider Moving Elsewhere for a New Job

Posted on January 8, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

EdWeek—Florida K-12 schools get a D+ for adequacy

Found via FlaBlog who notes mordantly,

Average annual rate of change in expenditures per pupil, adjusted for inflation (1991-2001) — Minus 0.4%

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Florida Weird News In Review — 2003

Posted on January 2, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I suppose given my location, I'm compelled to link to 2003 Florida Weird News In Review. Although if that's the authoritative list, it actually seems like we had a fairly tame year by Florida standards. Especially compared to the national list, 2003: A Dave odyssey, prepared by Miami's own Dave Barry.

I did, however, especially like this item from the Weird News in Review:

Criminal charges were dropped against a Callaway man accused of smashing his way into a neighbor's house and chasing a woman with a knife. A Panama City judge was convinced the man was temporarily insane from drinking jasmine tea.

Jasmine tea is one of my wife's favorites.

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Supreme Court of Florida Appoints Committee on Privacy and Court Records

Posted on November 25, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

The Supreme Court of Florida has appointed me along with a bevy of state law luminaries to its Committee on Privacy and Court Records. You can read the Administrative Order (.pdf) and the Press Release. There is also a useful webpage with background information.

The tension between online public access to court documents and privacy raises really hard questions for which I have no ready answers. As an abstract matter it isn't easy to say why if a record is 'public' in the sense of being available in the basement of a courthouse somewhere it shouldn't also be available online for all of us who find it hard to get to that basement. On the other hand, as a realistic matter, some filings – especially pro se filings in family law cases – have lots of sensitive (and basically irrelevant) personal information that could easily enable identity theft. Putting that data online exposes people to substantial risks that it would be good to shield them from.

Florida law on procedure and on technology issues often serves as a model for South American courts, and even for other states. By addressing this issue directly, the Supreme Court is shouldering this responsibility in an admirable fashion.

Judging from the press calls I'm getting, the part of today's order that will get people excited is the interim so-called “moratorium” (expiring not later than July 1, 2005) on the provison of certain information for posting online. But if you read the whole order, you see that the Supreme Court exempts large classes of judicial information from what it rightly calls a “limited” moratorium—so at least at first reading it is hard to see what legitimate interests will be seriously harmed by this temporary order.

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Democracy Be Damned: Fla Pols Won’t Fund Small Classes

Posted on November 24, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

The voters of Florida made it clear they want small class sizes in Florida primary schools, passing a state constituional amendment mandating shrinking class sizes over a ten-year period. Then the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, future presidential candidate, made it clear that he intends to subvert the voters' will because nothing, not even children or democracy, is worth raising taxes for.

Now comes the the Republican leadership in the legislature to say that they just won't even try to pay for small classes, because, really, what's the point in doing that unless the voters again make it clear that they really meant what they said. Better first to try to get the voters to repeal the constitutional amendment in the hopes it will all blow over. King says state can't pay for smaller classes. And, hey, lets make the next vote in a special election in August, when turnout in South Florida is likely to be at its lowest! “The people have to speak,” one of the legislative leaders said…ignoring the fact that they already did.

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