Ethics reform was the No. 1 priority this session for incoming Florida Senate President Don Gaetz.
He was able to convince the Senate this week to join him in passing a bill that, it is said, could do more to clean up state government than anything that has come along in the last 38 years.
“If the session ended tomorrow, I would be very pleased with the results,” Gaetz said Friday.
Not only did Senate Bill 2 pass by a 40-0 vote, Gaetz said, but every senator signed on as a co-sponsor.
“Every single member of the Senate wanted their name next to mine on this piece of legislation,” the Niceville Republican said. “It’s a very good sign that we were able to earn the support of every single senator for legislation which in previous years had never gotten off first base.”
S.B. 2 and a companion, Senate Bill 4, call for sweeping changes. Among them is a provision that would prevent a member of the Legislature from becoming a lobbyist until two years after he or she has served as an elected state official.
A provision in the version of S.B. 2 that went to the floor would have left lawmakers currently in office exempt from that regulation until the end of their ongoing term.
Okaloosa County Commissioner Dave Parisot and some others protested the provision, which was added late as an amendment. In the end, senators removed the language before Tuesday’s vote.
Parisot commended the Senate for removing the language he found offensive.
“If Sen. Gaetz had a hand in doing that, I will have to commend him,” Parisot said.
Gaetz wasn’t in the mood to share the love.
“It was amusing to get a lesson on ethical controls from Dave Parisot, and as it turned out his input had no bearing on what happened,” he said.
Gaetz has been critical of the County Commission and ethics lapses that have occurred throughout county government.
He said Friday he was inspired in part to introduce ethics reform “in a negative way, by many of the events that occurred in my home county in the last four years.”
Gaetz said the language Parisot criticized was removed as one of “four or five amendments taken up on the floor for technical clarification.”
The state House, headed by Speaker Will Weatherford, is working on an ethics bill of its own.
“I have complete confidence we will see a strong ethics bill pass the House,” Gaetz said.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.