ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — Ten states in the U.S. currently have full-time legislatures. In Florida, legislators are now considering changing their part-time elected jobs into full-time positions as well.<\/p>\n
The idea came up after legislators failed to pass a state budget on time for the second straight year. Local lawmakers have mixed views on a full time legislature. But this discussion is in the very early stages.<\/p>\n
Florida’s regular 60-day legislative session this year ended on March 13. And once again, they failed to pass a state budget on time.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers will likely be called back in a special session next month to get the job done. They are now weighing the idea of becoming a full-time legislature.<\/p>\n
“I really think that we should re-evaluate just the whole way that we are set up as a system,” Rep. Michelle Salzman said. <\/p>\n
“It’s unfair, or unrealistic, to expect a lawmaker, one that is term limited to eight years to come and know everything, and only be there a few months at a time, and go home and run for office, and come back and be there for a few months and know everything,” she said. <\/p>\n
State Rep. Alex Andrade isn’t so sure a full-time legislature is the answer.<\/p>\n
“I think an aspect of a part-time legislator that’s good is that it keeps us grounded back home,” said Andrade. “We are supposed to be spending the majority of our time back in our home districts and this set-up still allows us to do that, to maintain a footing in reality.”<\/p>\n
Former lawmaker Douglas Broxson served in both the House and Senate. He says if things were to change, they would have to consider boosting pay.<\/p>\n
“We discussed increasing the pay of a member, which is currently at $29,000 a year, which is really against the constitution because the minimum wage for all employees is $15,” Broxson said. “And we were way under minimum wage but I don’t see there’s an aptitude to move to any time of full-time recognition or pay.”<\/p>\n
Salzman says she hopes to see the idea of full-time legislature looked into.<\/p>\n
“I would love to see that evaluation happen,” said Salzman. “But we just have to be mindful that what ever we do, it needs to be something that’s meaningfully considered and that would positively impact the communities that we serve.”<\/p>\n
Now again, this is just a discussion. Nothing formal has been written. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — Ten states in the U.S. currently have full-time legislatures. In Florida, legislators are now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-213641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}