October 2, 2011
Court corrects overreach on prison privatization
A circuit judge's clear-cut ruling in Tallahassee on Friday that Florida's massive plan to privatize state prisons is unconstitutional sent another powerful message to Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled Legislature. They are not above the law, and they are going to lose in court when they exceed the constitutional restraints on their authority.
Leon County Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford found that a plan to privatize 29 state prisons in South Florida is unconstitutional because lawmakers wrote the change into the state budget instead of passing separate legislation. Governors from both political parties and legislatures controlled by either Republicans and Democrats similarly have been overruled by the courts over the past 40 years for using the state budget to slip in significant changes to state law. That often happens when those policy changes can't stand up to public scrutiny or don't have enough support among rank-and-file lawmakers to be approved on their own merits...
LINK - TampaBay.com
