A testy exchange between two elected city officials during a Wednesday night meeting spiraled out of control to the point where a police officer was summoned to the dais to remove Commissioner Jay Schwartz — on orders of Mayor Angelo Castillo, with the city attorney’s approval.

As you might suspect, in Broward local government involved something of minor significance.

Around 9:30 p.m., Schwartz proposed appointing a new member to the city Planning and Zoning Board — even though the item was not on the agenda.

Castillo objected on the grounds that Schwartz hadn’t followed the city code, which requires public re-advertising in a case in which a city appointee does not live in the appointing commissioner’s district.

Without raising his voice, Castillo told Schwartz: “Why don’t you meet with the city clerk and bring back an item, the way we always do it.”

Schwartz persisted, pointing his index finger at Castillo, talking over the mayor and asserting his claim that he could solely make the appointment.

“Stop interfering,” Castillo warned Schwartz.

‘You gonna toss me out?’

As three other stone-faced commissioners sat in silence, Schwartz persisted. “I’ll challenge the chair,” he said.

The interruptions continued, and Castillo was visibly frustrated. Schwartz goaded the mayor: “You gonna toss me out?”

“Please don’t bring it to that,” Castillo said.

Moments later, Castillo ordered a city police officer, acting as a sergeant at arms, to escort Schwartz off the dais and out of the meeting. (A police presence, common at city meetings, is to protect elected officials from disruptive residents, not to control elected officials’ conduct.)

This episode was immature, unnecessary and embarrassing. Schwartz’s behavior is indefensible. He was in the wrong, and he left Castillo with no choice. The is clear: “Any person making disruptive, impertinent or slanderous remarks, or who shall become boisterous while addressing the City Commission and refuses to stop, may be requested to leave the meeting by the Mayor.”

It does not bode well for the future of this commission, which at the same meeting welcomes Mike Hernandez, who was appointed interim commissioner as Castillo’s replacement until the fall election.

A history of bad blood

There’s a political subtext here, obviously, involving a history of bad blood between Castillo, a former commissioner who won the mayor’s race in March, and Schwartz, an ally of Castillo’s predecessor, Frank Ortis.

Schwartz’s prospective zoning board appointee was Henry Rose, an elected member of the South Broward Drainage District board.

Castillo told the ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą he opposes putting elected officials on city boards and prefers “civilian” appointees instead.

Another commissioner, Maria Rodriguez, proposed appointing Rose to the zoning board, but told us she withdrew it out of concern that his appointment was not properly advertised.

Rodriguez said Schwartz’s plan to bypass the code to appoint Rose could have been challenged in court as illegal.

Back in December, Schwartz maneuvered to block Castillo from being able to run for his old commission seat if he lost the March mayoral election.

Schwartz won re-election in March to the District 2 commission seat in a three-way race. This editorial board endorsed one of Schwartz’s opponents, Catherine Minnis.

We cautioned voters about Schwartz’s demeanor in that February endorsement, noting his intemperate remarks about whether Pembroke Pines might one day surpass Fort Lauderdale in population.

“I hope not,” Schwartz said. “I think we have too many people here to begin with.”

A breakdown in civility

The disruption on the dais follows similar cases of bad behavior in Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Park, Tamarac and at Broward County Commission and School Board meetings.

This coarsening of our culture started at the top with Donald Trump. The breakdown in civility in Congress is even more appalling.

A Thursday meeting of the U.S. House Oversight Committee after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., insulted a female colleague’s “fake eyelashes.”

The object of Greene’s wrath, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Tex., said Greene should not be allowed to “talk s–t” in a hearing.

Video of the meltdown welt viral. This is the poisonous example that federal officials set for people like Jay Schwartz in local government.

As for Pembroke Pines, taxpayers deserve civil, professional behavior from their elected officials, and this week’s disruption does not bode well for future harmony.

In an interview, Schwartz said Mayor Castillo “used poor judgment” and added, “I’m moving forward.”

“It’s unfortunate that it had to be done. It gave me no pleasure to do it,” Castillo said in an interview. “I hope Commissioner Schwartz regains his dignity.”

The next commission meeting is Wednesday, June 5.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Currently a UPS store, sandwiched between a hair salon and real estate firm, the storefront might — or might not — have been home to a private school that flopped.

The similarly named school that replaced it overnight might — or might not — be owned by a church housed in a Delray Beach office building.

In a summary provided to the Florida Department of Education, it reported five students, no accreditation, and that “early” enrollees are already working at college level by eighth grade.

Are they? Maybe. Maybe not.

Way too little accountability

Florida’s sweeping gives any parent in Florida roughly $8,000 in private school tuition to escape the surly bonds of a public system state lawmakers won’t adequately fund.

And that’s where it ends. of . No way to know how the public money is spent.

It’s just the way Tallahassee likes its voucher-funded private schools: shrouded in secrecy. Answering to no one.

Others like it, too. Step Up for Students, a third-party administrator for the state voucher program, last week reported it has been fielding a day now that applications are open for the coming school year.

Already, 380,000 Florida students are using vouchers, according to Step Up. Think of it as a largely invisible but sprawling school district, dwarfing even the 337,000 students enrolled in public school district in the United States.

The biggest number is 1

How much all this will cost taxpayers has been argued from the start. Is it the estimated by the Florida Policy Institute? The Step Up for Students estimated last September?

The more important number is 1: Why should taxpayers have to shell out even one red cent for black box schooling options just because they come wrapped up in voucher tinsel and shiny political hucksterism?

Lawmakers spent a chunk of the past session furiously patting themselves , a piece of legislation designed to shore up various weaknesses in the year-old program.

Among them: a dirty little laundry list of authorized additions to the taxpayers’ tab : $43,374 in voucher money for home treadmills; $30,436 on indoor trampolines; $226,584 for game consoles. Theme Park passes and paddleboards got the green light for purchase too.

Among other things, the proposed legislation would have restricted voucher spending to academics.

Home schoolers lawmakers , and DeSantis signed the accountability-defying bill May 9. We regret to report that this bad law, including all 12 Democratic senators, many from South Florida.

The next day, Step Up reported more than 290,000 vouchers had been approved for the coming school year.

What makes good schools

Good schools are not good because they are private or public. They do not succeed because they are the apple of Betsy DeVos’ eye, and they are not bad because they are the bane of teachers’ unions.

Good schools are good because they are infused with oversight, parental involvement, resources and transparency.

Without transparency, what’s a parent to make of that UPS storefront maybe-school?

Without oversight, how does a parent vet the dozen new “pop-up” local Palm Beach County private schools with little or no track record, the three dozen schools reporting few to no kids and more than a dozen others with no clear documentation of ever being incorporated?

Are their teachers adequately trained?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Do they have money to stay open through a school year?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Not all reported they were taking voucher money at the time they submitted what are essentially Cliff’s Notes to the Department of Education for inclusion in a statewide directory of private schools. That doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.

​​But there’s also no reason Florida can’t swap data for dollars: In exchange for state largesse, why not mandate private schools that accept vouchers file a detailed, publicly available annual report?

Why not require data on revenue, expenses, salaries for top executives, kids’ test scores, the number of certified teachers and whether auditors think the school is at risk of closing for lack of money?

If the goal is returning educational power to parents, why shouldn’t they be given information, the most powerful tool of all?

And if pols and policy-makers balk at this type of bottom-line transparency, should we believe that they have school kids’ best interests at heart?

Maybe not.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Florida TaxWatch as the business-backed policy research group released flagging nearly $1 billion in questionable spending throughout the state that Gov. Ron DeSantis should consider vetoing ($854.6 million in 450 separate projects, to be exact).

The projects range from a $1 million expansion of the Bay of Pigs-Brigade 2506 Museum and Library in Miami’s Little Havana to $500,000 for an outdoor music venue at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

The fattest turkey of all on the TaxWatch list is $39 million for the University of Florida to acquire nearly 3,000 acres of land west of Gainesville for a golf course and other improvements. Taxpayers would never know the project’s true purpose: It appears in the education part of the budget as the “Hickory Sink Strategic Ecosystem.”

Every community has constituencies that want some of this money, and TaxWatch emphasized it was not doubting the worthiness of projects. They range from museums to road repairs to suicide prevention to security at Holocaust centers.

The ‘sprinkle lists’

Rather, TaxWatch said, such spending arbitrarily circumvents public review or a state agency’s funding criteria. Many projects sprang to life in the final hours of the legislative session in so-called “sprinkle lists, last-minute additions to the budget blessed by the obvious favoritism of a few powerful lawmakers in a back room of the Capitol.

TaxWatch is right about one thing: The Florida Legislature needs all the scrutiny it can get.

Transportation is an area where lawmakers were especially greedy, including swiping $250 million from a previously approved five-year road program, which caught its attention. The group urged DeSantis to scrutinize dozens of projects it said were already getting state money but which surfaced again, in sprinkle lists, to get a second helping.

One such project, for $500,000, is for Fort Lauderdale to make resiliency and traffic improvements on part of Breakers Avenue on the city’s beachfront.

A measure of relevance

This annual review gives TaxWatch a measure of relevance, as its “turkey watch” has long been vilified as a gimmick by legislative leaders in both parties for challenging the right of legislators to decide the best ways to bring money back to their districts.

The organization is supported by some of Florida’s biggest corporate interests, such as Publix, FPL, Lykes Bros., TECO and the Florida Retail Federation.

The group said its own members are not spared scrutiny, but one project that avoided the “turkey” tag is $3 million for the Lemieux Center for Public Policy at Palm Beach Atlantic University, named for former U.S. Sen. George Lemieux at a small, private Christian school.

Lemieux, a lawyer, is immediate past chairman of the TaxWatch board.

TaxWatch said it scrutinizes spending at public colleges and universities, which have well-established funding formulas, and that private schools do not.

Every year TaxWatch rolls out another long list of turkeys, and every year the political favoritism seems more blatant and more expensive.

The numbers don’t lie. Project requests totaled more than 2,700 this year and 1,600 were funded, equal to 40 projects for each of 40 state senators.

TaxWatch said the state now pays for firehouses and fire trucks in cities all over the state, and the number of requests alone is far too great for any systematic review.

Term limits to blame

Once again, a prime culprit appears to be term limits, approved by Florida voters in 1992.

TaxWatch officials said inexperienced lawmakers unquestioningly follow their leaders and perpetuate a practice that, however questionable, is widely accepted by members in both parties.

“It’s the slow drip of culture change,” said TaxWatch executive vice president Jeff Kottkamp, a former lieutenant governor and House member. “We’re starting to get to the point where members don’t know any different.”

TaxWatch is urging DeSantis to consider vetoing $400,000 to close the “kosher meal gap” in Broward, a $500,000 grant for a veterans’ suicide prevention program in Palm Beach County, and a $100,000 analysis of the life cycle of gas-powered leaf blowers by the Department of Environmental Protection.

The debate over who is best to judge a community’s needs will never end. But the time is long past due for the Legislature to restore some fiscal sanity and public accountability to these annual handouts, which have approached $3 billion in each of the past three years.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Millions wondered how something so ghastly could happen. Far from a mystery, it was another example, albeit an extreme one, of how a charismatic cult leader makes his followers forsake all else — even their own lives.

Many dictatorships and millions of wartime deaths have owed to such evil genius. The United States is up next.

‘Only on Day One’

Donald Trump has transformed virtually the entire Republican Party into a personality cult, rather than the responsible instrument of principles and policy that it once was.

Only he matters. He jokes about being a dictator if he’s elected again “but only on Day One.”

Trump has not only survived, but prospered from a torrent of personal, commercial and political scandals, any one of which would have destroyed anyone else’s political career. It’s a damning indictment of America.

A political cartoon shows Joe Biden being told: “The bad news is, a guy facing criminal charges who cheated on his wife with a porn star is beating you in the polls. The good news is, that probably says more about our society than it does about you.”

Having tried to overthrow the 2020 election, Trump will not commit to accepting the outcome on Nov. 5.

His cascade of lies, indictments and moral outrages seems to have strengthened his hold over the cult.

Sucking up, shutting up

The vast majority of Republican officeholders, who should set a better example, worship him outright or cower in silence.

Sen. Rick Scott went to Trump’s trial last week in a show of loyalty, but long before that, he and a dozen Florida House Republicans voted against certifying Biden’s election. (In an editorial at the time, we called them “the Sunshine State seditionists.”)

Even now, Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples, said to be on Trump’s vice presidential short list, who will not commit to respecting the outcome if Trump loses fairly again.

So it’s significant when someone breaks away from the MAGA pack, as Georgia’s former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan did.

, Duncan said he would vote for Biden and that other Republicans should, too.

“I’m voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan wrote.

He said it’s “dead wrong” for Republicans to believe they’re obligated to support the party ticket, no matter what.

“Yes, serious questions linger about President Biden’s ability to serve until the age of 86,” he wrote. “But the GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden.”

Trump, he said, “has shown us who he is. We should believe him.”

Integrity above all

Other Republicans who recognize integrity as the one indispensable quality of a president should follow Duncan’s advice, rather than symbolically waste their votes, as ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will do by writing in another Republican.

Ryan said Trump lacks “the kind of character” a president should have, which is certainly true, if grossly understated.

To vote for anyone else, whether a Republican or an independent like the conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or to not vote at all, is to concede that either Biden or Trump will be the next president.

The Electoral College makes it impossible for any independent candidate to be more than a spoiler, as Ralph Nader did in 2000 when he effectively handed the election to George W. Bush after the Florida recount with Al Gore.

Depths of dishonesty

If Ryan thinks Trump lacks the character to be president, he should help elect Biden — and hope, as Duncan does, for a Republican Congress to keep him in check.

He should remember what retired Gen. John Kelly, one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, said of him: “The depth of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. … He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

Long before that terrible day in Jonestown, Jim Jones had cult members rehearse how they would drink a poisoned beverage to commit what he called “revolutionary suicide,” a term he didn’t invent.

It is no exaggeration to say that America could commit revolutionary suicide on Nov. 5. Geoff Duncan has told us how to avoid it.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Required for the first time to disclose more personal financial information under a new Florida ethics law, scores of mayors and commissioners have quit rather than reveal the details of their finances.

It’s overreach, they say. Many are challenging the law in federal court. Delving into specifics of a person’s stock portfolios, personal debts, partnership income and the names of those who bought property is a bureaucratic form of TMI — too much information.

If too much information is the grievance, what are we to make of local elected officials, board appointees and key government workers who for years flouted state law by failing to provide a financial equivalent of name, rank and serial number?

The plain vanilla questions of Florida’s Form 1 apply to certain government employees and appointees. Until this year, it also applied to the same local elected officials now balking at new and stricter money revelations required by the more robust Form 6. The Legislature changed the law last year.

Flouting the law

With Form 1, there’s no need to divulge how many cars are in the family garage, or the unpaid MasterCard balance. Just a person’s source of income (but no amounts), property ownership, business interests and major debts.

There has been no mass exodus over filling out those forms. Instead, they are too often ignored.

ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Lantana Mayor Robert Hagerty was fined $1,500, the maximum allowed, in 2021. Ex-Riviera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters was fined $150 in 2018.

ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą South Bay City Manager Corey Alston did not file Form 1s in 2009 or in 2012, the year he was arrested on multiple theft charges for persuading three commissioners to pay him $25,000. He struck a plea deal and served probation, but never paid the state his $2,200 in fines.

Fines for slow filers and non-filers of the bare-bones disclosure topped $220,000 in Palm Beach and Broward counties alone between 2020 and 2022. Older fines totaling at least $105,000 have been turned over for collection. (Good luck with that, Florida.)

Excuses for non-compliance

Few explanations would pass muster with a fourth-grade teacher: “I didn’t know it applied to me.” “It got lost in the mail.”

You can empathize with elected officials, some of whom serve without pay, who protest they are not crooks and thus scrutiny of their finances is overkill, and still appreciate the potential conflicts, financial temptations and slippery-slope decisions they face.

Few would lead to criminal acts. But too often, the road to bad laws and lousy policy runs through a politician’s pockets. Information in financial disclosures can help to flag that, or derail it.

The same goes for non-elected officials. Scroll through a sampling of scofflaws who racked up $25-a-day fines until they hit the $1,500 cap and a picture soon emerges of why Florida adopted broad disclosure laws.

Board appointees and key government workers abound, including those with a say in everything from whether you can fence in your backyard to whether 500 homes are going to sprout in the green space next door.

Is a zoning board member employed by the developer hoping to build those 500 homes? Does the company also hold his mortgage? That’s exactly the kind of information people need, and exactly the kind of information the skinny Form 1 may provide.

But board members voting on code enforcement, architectural review, zoning appeals and community redevelopment in multiple towns have all racked up fines for not revealing their basic monetary interests or blowing off deadlines.

Like a speeding ticket? No

It’s not as though the state Commission on Ethics, which levies the fines, is setting the best example. The Commission last month erased a $1,500 fine incurred by one of its own members, Freddie Figgers of Lauderhill, who failed to file his financial disclosure nearly two years ago.

The ethics panel’s attorney compared failure to file with a speeding ticket. No it isn’t. People pay their speeding tickets because they know their license will be suspended if they don’t.

Keeping information from the public and being willing to rack up fines to do so shouldn’t be waved off as a traffic infraction or legal department afterthought.

Financial disclosure, which voters , is the very first service that Florida’s public servants owe the public; a concrete commitment to honest governing that starts with putting all their cards on the table.

Even the ones they would rather keep up their sleeves.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

What’s more worrisome, as we’ve said before, is the voluminous silence from the state’s leading lawyers. They should know and fear the most about what happens to democratic government when courts become echo chambers of governors, presidents or parliaments. Consider Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar and other dictatorships.

Israeli citizens took to the streets, week after week, to protect their supreme court.

The Florida situation is worse than we knew.

Silenced opposition

George Felos, a Dunedin lawyer with particular expertise in privacy, the constitutional right that the court eviscerated last month, tried to speak up.

He wrote a letter to the Florida Bar News, the monthly newspaper issued by the Florida Bar, finding fault not only in how the court glibly abandoned privacy but also with how several justices injected personal beliefs into the case. While narrowly approving an abortion rights initiative for inclusion on the Nov. 5 ballot, several justices hinted at eventually foiling it by declaring fetal personhood.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą printed a shortened version of that letter on this page Friday.

The Florida Bar News’ editor, Mark Killian, refused to print Felos’ letter. He also said it would not be acceptable as a paid advertisement.

“While we value different perspectives and constructive criticism,” he emailed Felos, “your letter contains personal attacks on sitting justices by impugning their motives by name.”

That was censorship.

Are Florida’s justices so high and mighty that they can’t be criticized? Are their motives beyond questioning? Why have retention elections every six years if those who know the most about the justices and the law aren’t free to say what they know?

No criticism by name

We asked Killian to answer some questions about his decision. He didn’t reply, so we asked the Bar’s lead spokesperson, Jennifer Krell Davis, whether the agency has any policies, overt or implicit, to discourage criticism of the court.

“In his letter,” she replied, “Mr. Felos directly criticizes the justices by name, saying they have allowed personal beliefs to sway their decisions. We consider that a personal attack on their integrity as jurists.”

Apart from his letter, she said, in answer to another question, “The Florida Bar News does not have any record of receiving any letter submissions criticizing any specific Supreme Court decision or justice since January 2019.”

That’s when three retirements enabled DeSantis to begin radicalizing the court. Florida’s 110,000 lawyers have gone silent in the only publication they all read.

From one angle, it’s easy to see why. The Bar officials’ objections closely track language in Florida’s Code of Professional Responsibility (Rule 4-8.2), which inhibits criticism of judges. Lawyers can be reprimanded, suspended or even disbarred for violating the code — and it’s the Supreme Court that decides their fate.

But the rule that hangs over their head is not an absolute prohibition. Here’s what it says, with some key words italicized: “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge…”

That allows for judgment calls. If Felos or any other lawyers are willing to stand behind what they want to say about a judge’s qualifications and conduct, they should be allowed to express it. And the Bar’s newspaper should print it.

The reasons given Felos could conceivably lead to disbarring a lawyer for expressing the well-founded and widely held opinion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is unethical.

Consider the source

The Bar’s timidity owes to it being an agency of the Supreme Court itself.

That derives from the Supreme Court’s constitutional powers to adopt rules for the courts and to license and discipline lawyers. Bar membership has been mandatory for all lawyers since 1950.

The profession would rather be under the court than the Legislature, a threat that lawmakers have made on occasion to keep the lawyers quiet.

Threat of legislative control muted the Bar’s opposition to a 2001 law that weakened its influence and allowed the governor to appoint all nine members of each Judicial Nominating Commission. That effectively eliminated judicial independence, which is essential to the honesty of the courts.

With the Bar being a dutiful agency of the court, there’s no other statewide entity to speak out for the independence of the judiciary when it is so seriously threatened — as it was in 2001, and as it is now. Those who still care about that should consider organizing an independent voice.

We don’t recommend putting the Bar under the Legislature’s governance. That would be no better, and quite likely worse.

But there surely need to be more lawyers speaking out like George Felos.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Better yet, he should flatly promise that he won’t. Having “no plans” leaves wiggle room to change his mind.

There is a way, however, for the Legislature’s leaders to close that door.

They could do it, and should, by promptly sending him the next fiscal year’s budget to sign or veto. It has been in their hands for two months now.

The budget as a weapon

So long as the $117.5 billion spending bill is vulnerable to his vetoes, it’s useful as a political negotiating tool to force legislators to do whatever he might want of them.

The budget is packed with local projects that matter greatly to their sponsors.

Once the budget is signed, all that leverage is gone.

DeSantis possibility in March on a podcast with Sean Hannity, saying he wanted to empower Florida law enforcement officers to arrest undocumented immigrants, as Texas would be doing under a new law that federal courts have blocked temporarily.

While saying he has “no plans” now, DeSantis also said “of course I’ll do more immigration,” which he’s confident legislators would approve.

“But as of now, we’re moving forward with the budget,” he said.

After two months, nothing

As of now, nothing is happening on the budget. Although the House and Senate approved it on March 8, House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo still haven’t gotten around to sending it to the governor.

That’s the last step, an essential one under the Constitution, before a 15-day clock runs on the governor’s decision to sign it, veto it or veto specific line items while approving others.

It’s a public document, so DeSantis and his staff know what’s in it. It can be presumed that he’s already decided what he likes and what he doesn’t.

There’s no good reason for him not to act on it and a very good reason why he should.

The sooner the better

The state agencies, school boards, counties, cities and assorted nonprofits that depend all or in part on state money need to plan for what they’ll have and how to spend it before the next state fiscal year begins July 1. The sooner they know, the better. (For cities, counties and school districts, the fiscal year begins Oct. 1.)

But so long as he doesn’t act on it, all 160 legislators have an incentive to be nice to the governor, who vetoed $510.8 million of their projects last year. He didn’t state a reason for any of those vetoes, even though the Constitution’s plain text requires that he explain them. It was doubtful they were legal, but the Legislature didn’t challenge them.

The Legislature’s minority Democrats are fearful of a special session, and rightly so. They worry that it would be used to muddy the November ballot with deceptive alternatives to Amendment 3, the initiative legalizing non-medical marijuana use, or Amendment 4, the abortion rights initiative.

Dirty tricks are always an inherent danger in any short special session.

Florida isn’t overwhelmed with undocumented immigrants. The ones here now are essential to three pillars of the state’s economy: agriculture, construction and hospitality. The anti-immigrant laws he’s already passed have impacted employers, particularly in agriculture.

In his ambition to get elected president someday by being tougher than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott or former President Donald Trump, DeSantis has signed laws increasing jail terms for driving without a license, denying licenses to undocumented immigrants, and preventing cities and counties from honoring ID cards issued to them elsewhere.

Any new law prompting mass police arrests would not only hurt Florida’s industries even more but would also lead to innocent people being thrown in jail.

Excessive police power

The Legislature has already given DeSantis too much police power, especially considering how he has been sending state law enforcement officers to the Texas border and plans to use the Florida State Guard — for which no real need exists — to intercept migrants at sea.

The Miami Herald that one of the State Guard’s recent recruits is a former Miami police captain “whose long history of citizen complaints, alleging beatings, false arrests and harassment made him notorious in the city he swore to protect and serve.”

He is Javier Ortiz, 44. The city had fired him but rescinded the order on the condition he give up his issued weapon, take a nighttime desk job and commit to an early retirement.

That followed investigations by the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into nearly 70 complaints, including 18 allegations of excessive use of force. The city settled some of them for nearly $600,000, the Herald said. His record is redolent with racism.

His recruitment reflects badly on DeSantis’ management of the powers he already has, and is another reason why a special session is a sleeping dog that should be left alone.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email us at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

His legislative career was noteworthy less for any accomplishments than for taking $152,000 from Brevard Community College to write a book and $75,000 to be a lecturer at UF.

Once again, Haridopolos is the center of attention for all the wrong reasons. He’s having a seat in Congress gifted to him by its retiring occupant.

But democracy may intervene and mess up this cozy backroom deal.

It’s the people’s, not Posey’s

Two other Republicans and two Democrats also filed for the District 8 seat that retiring Rep. Bill Posey wants to bequeath to Haridopolos as if it were an heirloom, not a seat that belongs to the people.

In this deep red district in Brevard County on the Space Coast, Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1, and Haridopolos’ toughest potential rival, state Sen. Debbie Mayfield, did not run because she thought Posey was staying in Congress.

Posey was a declared candidate for a ninth term until the very last day of qualifying. Then he withdrew and Haridopolos filed papers shortly before the noon April 26 deadline; Posey endorsed him. By then, Mayfield, who is term-limited in the Senate, had filed to run for an open seat in the Florida House.

She told Florida Today she was considering running for Posey’s seat in Congress if he decided not to run again. But, she said he had told her he meant to run and had already filed his paperwork.

The Haridopolos endorsement is the political equivalent of a hidden ball trick.

Cozy coordination

Posey referred to “circumstances beyond my control” that required him to quit the race. But he also admitted to coordinating with Haridopolos, who had been his congressional campaign finance chairman.

He said “I have been mentoring him to replace me” and that “during the past week, Mike decided he was ready for Congress.”

The better question is whether District 8’s Republican voters agree he’s ready. His two primary opponents, Joe Babits and John Hearton, appear to be just as right-wing as Haridopolos or Posey, who has a 100% approval rating from the right-wing Heritage Action for America.

The setup Posey engineered should be a campaign issue. Voters can remind Haridopolos (and Posey) that they decide who represents them in Washington, not a couple of political pals.

It’s rare, but not unprecedented, for politicians to treat an office as a legacy. A Michigan congressional seat was in John Dingell Sr.’s family for 90 years. When he died, his son John Dingell Jr. won the seat, which his wife Debbie won after the son retired in poor health. She represents a different Michigan district now. But at least there was no subterfuge involved in those successions.

It’s happened before

In a Florida example reminiscent of this one, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, effectively handed her congressional seat to a local sheriff, Richard Nugent, who qualified on the last day, just before she announced that she wouldn’t run again in 2010 due to unspecified health problems.

Nugent won easily, but two other credible Republicans likely would have run had they known Brown-Waite would retire. They were Nancy Argenziano, chair of the Public Service Commission at the time, and then-state Sen. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey.

Although the Posey-to-Haridopolos handoff looks unseemly, it’s not impossible to conceive of a law that would thwart such conniving. One way might be to reopen the qualifying period whenever an incumbent decides to drop out or not file.

Although Haridopolos is the only candidate with legislative experience in the 8th congressional district, that résumé commands few bragging rights. His Senate presidency (2011-2012) was undistinguished. His first achievement was to propose a constitutional amendment to undercut Obamacare. It lost at the polls with 51.5% of the vote against it. His brief run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2012 went nowhere.

Haridopolos backed former Gov. Rick Scott’s clumsily conceived plan to privatize more state prisons in 2012, but other Senate Republicans blocked it — an embarrassing defeat for a Senate president by his own party.

The $152,000 contract with the community college, before his Senate presidency, was to write a book about the rise of the Republican Party in Florida. The few critics who saw the only copy panned it as superficial.

Haridopolos later rewrote it with a co-author, Peter Dunbar, who had been a respected member of the Florida House, and it was re-published in 2019 as “.”

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

A remarkable scene unfolded Monday night at Fort Lauderdale High School.

More than 200 parents — some with adorable little kids in tow — turned out to emphatically oppose a school district proposal that would drastically change one of the brightest successes in Broward public education: Virginia Shuman Young Elementary.

VSY, as it is known, has a popular Montessori preschool program, and its devoted constituency includes young, upwardly mobile families in the nearby Victoria Park neighborhood just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale.

But as part of the school to close some schools and repurpose others to curb a severe and costly problem of under-enrolled schools, a wildly popular Montessori program at Virginia Young would shift to nearby Bennett Elementary, several miles away.

Fears of disruption

That has set off serious alarm among many parents, who expressed anxiety that any change would be highly disruptive to children in their first years of public education.

District officials gave this explanation for the change: Nearby residents can’t enroll their kids at VSY because it’s so popular so they turn to private schools (in other words, VSY is literally a victim of its own success).

That’s only part of this controversial proposal. By revamping VSY — which, by the way, is A-rated and fully enrolled — its student population would have to comply with new geographic boundaries, which in turn would affect boundaries at another nearby A-rated school, Harbordale Elementary.

This is very difficult work in a county with 241 schools. Closing a school, or changing its mission, has a a chain-reaction effect on two, three or four more nearby schools.

But it was immediately obvious by the intensity of emotion that the Broward school district had created a huge public relations problem for itself.

Parents who really care

The outpouring of support for VSY was a shining example of what is right with public education in Broward: Motivated parents are fiercely supportive of their kids receiving a quality education in a diverse, inclusive learning environment. This was a level of parental involvement that principals and teachers crave.

Broward should do everything it can to reproduce the VSY experience all over the county — not threaten to dismantle it.

The proposed school changes are still evolving, and Monday’s three-hour meeting at Fort Lauderdale High is one of several town halls across Broward to receive public input.

But after Monday’s town hall, we can report with 90% certainty that the support for Virginia Shuman Young Elementary will mean that its Montessori program will stay in place. (Any changes approved by the School Board would take place in the 2025-26 school year.)

As we said in a March editorial, it’s imperative for the district to communicate clearly and completely with the public, because anything less would stoke suspicion and resentment. Unfortunately, the scene at Fort Lauderdale High showed that’s exactly what’s happened.

On the X social media platform, ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą education reporter Scott Travis a two-minute clip in which parents loudly jeered talk of moving the Montessori program, drowning out a district official.

How well did Virginia Shuman Young families like the idea to move their Montessori program over to Bennett Elementary? This video clip should give you an idea.

— Scott Travis (@smtravis)

Parents and kids of all backgrounds and cultures, many clad in bright blue VSY T-shirts, had to argue their case forcefully and quickly.

Silenced in 60 seconds

Each speaker had one minute to speak, after which the district in some cases shut off the microphone. They were silenced in 60 seconds, which only infuriated them even more.

When long-time public school advocate Mary Fertig’s mike was turned off, she shouted: “You can cut my mike, but you cannot silence us!”

Fertig analyzed the district’s proposal and said it disproportionately affects schools east of I-95, and in Fort Lauderdale especially. Broward’s largest city also is home to some of the county’s most prestigious private schools.

“You need to stop. You need to start over with community outreach,” Fertig told Broward’s newly appointed superintendent, Howard Hepburn, and the two School Board members present, Sarah Leonardi and Allen Zeman.

‘A sales pitch’

Some parents blasted the district for not providing more substantive data to support its proposed changes. One unimpressed dad called it “a power point and a sales pitch.”

Six-year-old Julian Jaiven stepped up to the mike, which had to be lowered several feet for him.

“I don’t want to leave VSY. Montessori is the best,” he told the grownups.

Another boy asked why Bennett Elementary can’t “make their own Montessori.” (One main reason is that it’s phenomenally expensive.)

“It doesn’t make sense to include VSY,” said Erin Gohl, a parent leader at the school. “You are trying to create school communities that attract families. Look at what you have before you. Replicate, don’t dismantle.”

That was sound advice. “Redefining” the nation’s sixth-largest school district requires real communication and real solutions. Broward has a long way to go.

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą 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. To contact us, write to letters@sun-sentinel.com.

With only rare exceptions to save a mother’s life, eliminates abortion-related health care for millions of women in the southeastern U.S. who now must travel as far as Virginia for abortions.

known as the “Heartbeat Protection Act,” passed in the 2023 legislative session and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it on April 13, 2023. Its impact was delayed for a year due to legal challenges, and it took effect May 1 of this year.

“We live in a time where the consequences of our actions are an afterthought and convenience has been substitution for responsibility,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, has said, “and this is unacceptable when it comes to the protection of the most vulnerable.”

The six-week ban is the focus of intense criticism in Florida and beyond. Its passage is seen as a prime motivation for a proposed constitutional amendment in November ensuring the right to an abortion up to viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Here’s how all Florida legislators voted on SB 300. Most of them are up for election this fall, and this vote is sure to be an issue in some districts. A yes vote was a vote for the six-week ban, and a no vote was a vote against it.

No Democrats voted yes, and nine Republicans voted no. Seven Republicans did not vote. Area legislators are shown in bold.

Bryan Avila, R-Hialeah; Dennis Baxley, R-Lady Lake; Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton; Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island; Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford; Doug Broxson, R-Gulf Breeze; Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills; Colleen Burton, R-Lakeland; Jay Collins, R-Tampa; Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach; Ileana Garcia, R-Miami; Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach; Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota; Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart; Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater; Travis Hutson, R-St. Augustine; Blaine Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill; Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers; Debbie Mayfield, R-Melbourne; Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples; Keith Perry, R-Gainesville; Ana Maria Rodriguez, R-Miami; Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City; Tom Wright, R-New Smyrna Beach; Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville.

Senators voting no (13):

Lori Berman, D-Delray Beach; Lauren Book, D-Davie; Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami; Tracey Davis, D-Jacksonville; Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens; Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton; Rosalind Osgood, D-Fort Lauderdale; Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood; Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach; Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg; Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee; Linda Stewart, D-Orlando; Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando.

Senators not voting (1):

Victor Torres, D-Orlando.

Representatives voting yes (70):

Shane Abbott, R-DeFuniak Springs; Thad Altman, R-Indialantic; Danny Alvarez, R-Riverview; Carolina Amesty, R-Windermere; Adam Anderson, R-Palm Harbor; Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola; Jessica Baker, R-Fort Meade; Doug Bankson, R-Apopka; Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona; Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade; Mike Beltran, R-Riverview; Kimberly Berfield, R-Clearwater; Dean Black, R-Jacksonville; David Borrero, R-Sweetwater; Adam Botana, R-Bonita Springs; Robbie Brackett, R-Vero Beach; James Buchanan, R-Osprey; Demi Busatta Cabrera, R-Coral Gables; Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland; Linda Chaney, R-St. Pete Beach; Chuck Clemons, R-Newberry; Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville; Tiffany Esposito, R-Fort Myers; Tom Fabricio, R-Miami Lakes; Juan Fernandez-Barquin, R-Miami; Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay; Alina Garcia, R-Miami; Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island; Mike Giallombardo, R-Cape Coral; Michael Grant, R-Port Charlotte; “Griff” Griffits; R-Panama City Beach; Tommy Gregory, R-Lakewood Ranch; Fred Hawkins, R-St. Cloud; Jeff Holcomb, R-Spring Hill; Berny Jacques, R-Seminole; Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach; Randy Maggard, R-Dade City; Patt Maney, R-Shalimar; Ralph Massullo, R-Lecanto; Stan McClain, R-Ocala; Lawrence McClure, R-Dover; Lauren Melo, R-Naples; Kiyan Michael, R-Jacksonville; Toby Overdorf, R-Palm City; Bobby Payne, R-Palatka; Daniel Perez, R-Miami; Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers; Rachel Plakon, R-Lake Mary; Susan Plasencia, R-Orlando; David Porras, R-Miami; Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast; Alex Rizo, R-Hialeah; Spencer Roach, R-North Fort Myers; Will Robinson, R-Bradenton; Bob Rommel, R-Naples; Joel Rudman, R-Navarre; Michelle Salzman, R-Pensacola; Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe; Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island; David Smith, Winter Springs; John Snyder, R-Stuart; Kevin Steele, R-Dade City; John Paul Temple, R-Wildwood; Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City; Dana Trabulsy, R-Fort Pierce; Chase Tramont, R-Port Orange; Keith Truenow, R-Tavares; Kaylee Tuck, R-Lake Placid; Taylor Yarkosky, R-Montverde; Brad Yeager, R-New Port Richey.

Representatives voting no (40):

Bruce Antone, D-Orlando; Kristen Arrington, D-Kissimmee; Robin Bartleman, D-Weston; Christopher Benjamin, D-Miami; LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Ocoee; Daryl Campbell, D-Fort Lauderdale; Mike Caruso, R-Delray Beach; Joe Casello, D-Boynton Beach; Hillary Cassel, D-Dania Beach; Kevin Chambliss, D-Homestead; Lindsay Cross, D-St. Petersburg; Dan Daley, D-Coral Springs; Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa; Lisa Dunkley, D-Sunrise; Tae Edmonds, D-West Palm Beach; Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando; Gallop Franklin II, D-Tallahassee; Ashley Gantt, D-Miami; Karen Gonzalez Pittman, R-Tampa; Peggy Gossett-Seidman, R-Highland Beach; Mike Gottlieb, D-Davie; Rita Harris, D-Orlando; Dianne Hart, D-Tampa; Yvonne Hinson, D-Gainesville; Christine Hunschofsky, D-Parkland; Sam Killebrew, R-Winter Haven; Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point; Johanna López, D-Orlando; Vicki Lopez, R-Miami; Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville; Michelle Rayner-Goolsby, D-St. Petersburg; Felicia Robinson, D-Miami Gardens; Rick Roth, R-West Palm Beach; David Silvers, D-Lake Clarke Shores; Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton; Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee; Susan Valdes, D-Tampa; Katherine Waldron, D-Wellington; Patricia Williams, D-Pompano Beach; Marie Woodson, D-Hollywood. 

Representatives not voting (9):

Fabian Basabe, R-Miami Beach; Chuck Brannan, R-Macclenny; Kimberly Daniels, D-Jacksonville; Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami; Traci Koster, R-Tampa; Fiona McFarland, R-Fort Myers; Jim Mooney, R-Key West; Paula Stark, R-St. Cloud; Cyndi Stevenson, R-St. Johns.

Source: Florida Legislature

The ĂŰÍĂÖ±˛Ą Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion 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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.