The insti-crisis: Florida lawmakers take months on malpractice reform, but they quickly authorize additional funding for prisons.

o this is the way public policy-making works in “conservative” Tallahassee.

Lawmakers spend literally months dithering over the fine details of a medical malpractice “reform” package that, in the end, may neither lower malpractice insurance rates nor protect victims of bad medicine.

And then in the space of just a day or two, the governor requests, and the Legislature quickly authorizes, an additional $66 million for the state prison system.

Just like that.

Oh yes, and as a sweetener, lawmakers rewarded the Department of Corrections’ poor planning by giving officials permission to skip the state’s pesky bidding requirements for construction projects.

These 2,000 or so new prison beds need to be built quickly - there’s simply no time to follow proper procedures and make sure the taxpayers’ dollars are being well spent.

But not to worry, Bush administration officials crossed their hearts and absolutely promised that there would be no sweetheart deals made as Florida embarks on yet another expensive building boom to keep up with its growing prison population.

“It’s really setting a bad precedent,” complains state Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua. “It’s dangerous to let a state agency say ‘we screwed up and now we have a crisis’ and now they get to circumvent state policy for bidding. These numbers didn’t just pop up yesterday.”

On the plus side, at least the Legislature had the good judgment to refuse Bush’s “emergency” request to spend additional money to begin construction of a “private” prison.

Given the spotty track record of privatization in the corrections “industry,” that’s not a decision lawmakers want to make on the fly and with few questions asked.

So why the crisis atmosphere?…{{link http://gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030815/EDITORIALS/308150004/ MORE}}

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