to another edition of commissioners corner here the city of sarasota my name is shelley freeland city commissioner for district three and here today is our distinguished guest house of representatives representative greg stube the from district seventy three how are you good very good thank you for making time to speak up says this for this episode particularly since the legislative session has been moved forward typically we begin later in the year and now we're starting in january correct two years ago we changed the the wall as to when we meet and so in alexion years which twenty sixteen will be an election year we actually me early so we're now in committee meetings now i go back up to tallahassee next week we have a special session actually that starts next week it'll run for three weeks three weeks in november will be in tallahassee a week in december and then the full legislative session actually starts in january this year typically in the off election years it will it starts in march so yeah everything's very front end loaded this year we're very point soon we should have a finalized map from the florida supreme court on congressional redistricting next week on monday we go into the senate redistricting and so all of the state senate districts will be redistricting based map this is the timing of this meeting is very good because the base map actually came out yesterday and there are six base maps that staff put together without the influence of legislators based on the different constitutional requirements in every one of those map from the state senate perspective very much impact sarasota and manatee county well that's what like to talk about just briefly and we've seen in the paper that you know potentially you know our district in sarasota could be divided at least twice what are your thoughts about that the first three i thought were very good from a compactness standpoint because it kept seriously the county hole which has been an issue for residents of sarasota county and then southern manatee county would then be part of sarasota county and we all know how much manat sarasota county work together on you know city issues transportation issues regional issues so that is something that i could see happening the other map so split sarasota in half and you would have southern there's several different one of them had lower part of sarasota county all the charlotte county and lee county in the senate district so it could be very it could be a very big change from what we're used to the congressional maps the map right now before the court split sarasota county and half congressionally so manty county southern hillsborough county and northern syria so to county would be in a congressional district southern syria so to county would be locked in with charlotte and some more rural counties in tom rooney's district the  do they affect your district they don't affect my house district at all ok they obviously affect the congressman that is overlapping on my district but it also impacts my decision in what i'm going to do in the upcoming senate race  it's obviously been wildly reported that depending on what the situation is if i'm in the district which i am now that i'll be running for the state senate in twenty sixteen so depending on how these maps get rearranged will directly affect that situation what are your current committee assignments i sit on the full appropriations committee which is great for this community because the full appropriations committee is the committee that appropriate the entire state budget everything from education to justice to transportation projects and i also sit on the full economic affairs committee so the economic affairs committee deals with transportation deals with economic development i cheer highway and waterways safety so anything that has anything to do with highway or waterway safety comes through my committee and then i also sit it's kind of unique because i don't have a health care background and he said to me before i got my legislature i actually sit on both in vice chair one of them i sit on both of the health care policy health care initiative and the tough struggle that we've had with funding for mental health support in our community particularly as it relates to our homeless crisis is there anything that's coming through that could provide some relief to us at the local level i'm working on some specific appropriations directly to mental health last year i did a a five hundred thousand dollar mental health appropriation for man's egoism manatee county to help on mental health funding unfortunately it made it through the process the governor vetoed that funding so the house has always been traditionally very port of mental health funding but it is very sad and i think it's something that needs to be changed the state afforded ranks forty nine or fiftieth right in the level of funding that we give to mental health funding and  i don't think that's appropriate with the size of the state that we have so i really do think that we need to very much look at what we can do in the mental health funding arena and see how we can funnel that down to our local districts and that we've had such a narrow conversation previously  it relates to mental health in terms of case management services but one of the their struggles that we've had from a local level is housing for our mental health population so that's another aspect of the mental health issue in terms of rehabilitating and helping individuals to become self sufficient is providing adequate housing for individuals that have mental health challenges yeah i and i have said before i would love to work on this i think it's something that's very important to the city a serious soda in the sarasota county and it's something that the city and the county talks about on a pretty regular basis as a need along with homelessness that is obviously very related to that so i think it's something that the state really needs to take a proactive support on i think there's a way and i'm happy to do it this year to put a specific appropriation request into a project here in sarasota county to specifically address that issue so hopefully maybe we can we can do that this year and get some funding for the numbers that have come in from an appropriations standpoint we have an additional i think the estimate is five hundred or six hundred million this year over last year so there will be a little bit more money the challenge is always medicaid because medicaid and romans continue to increase and i think the number i had saw was five hundred million increase  medicaid spawn spending so if we only have six hundred million additional in five hundred million as i was a loss for the increase in medicaid spending you know we don't really have a lot of flexibility is what we can do with some of those dollars so  hopefully we can work on this moving forward on happy to do it because the other challenge that we have from the mental health perspective as relates to local agencies working in the area of homelessness is the potential threat of private information being released publicly through the public records law when institutions like law enforcement in municipal governments try to provide aid in the way of mental health locally we have what's called our h m i as our health management information system which many of our homeless coalition partners use in terms of an interim data funneling services making referrals and right now there is no exemption that allows private protected information to be pulled from those records which sometimes prevents us from working together in maximizing resources yeah and i think that's something that i don't think i have the space in my bill slots to do that this year but i certainly can do an amendment to a bill that's germane to an issue like that and we can move that forward or we could probably find another member to address that issue every year people don't realize how expansive our public records walls are in florida basically any piece of paper or e mail or anything that a local government has is accessible to the public which is great but in some circumstances like this there are privacy issues and health care issues that shouldn't be available to the public so every year there's exceptions that are filed in bills i have a couple this year that are running with other substantive bills but hopefully that's something that we can work on this year i'm happy to work on it with you guys will come i'm in the sunshine can talk about it for at least the past three years here in sarasota you've got a bill that's going to attempt to address that talked to us about it you know there's there's been a real epidemic in the state of florida and sauce just been serous soda but we've seen all over the state where there's actually attorneys and firms that will set people up in local government and then sue them for not complying with whatever their requests were and that wasn't the intent of the law the intent of the wall was to allow people publicly access to  documents that their public officials are working on so i think there's several things that arena that need to be addressed i mean the first and most important in my opinion is the attorneys fees provision right in that statute right now it just says shell so what happens is if there's the most minute breach of a public records violation or sunshine violation the people that are filing these lawsuits know that they'll get attorneys fees for the whatever it is that was violated because the statute s a simple change from shouting may they give the court discretion on the whether to award attorneys fees and circumstance i think will make a huge difference because in local governments will have a little bit more of an ability and flexibility to say ok well i don't think the judge is going to give them attorneys fees on this and they're actually going to think that whole issue needs to be addressed it doesn't seem to be even handed it in there is to be the case and it's really created a cottage industry in the state of florida where people do this and it's not benefiting our public entities at all because it's really not a situation where people aren't getting the information they need to just not getting it the way they want it and it's a small minute breach of the sunshine law and people file suit four and then there's the other gray area as to what constitutes a meeting and a public records laws then you can ask twelve people and get twelve answers and most of them are highly proficient but because they're business specific guidance there's a question as to what constitutes a meeting under the rule and that is going to be addressed in my legislation i've hit a little bit of a stumbling block because there appears to be and i have to look at all and research this issue but there appears to be some language in our constitution as a as to what constitutes a meeting so trying to define that further in statute may cause some problems but i do think that is an issue that needs to be addressed because of two commissioners show up it  group issue in sarasota or the public want you to come speak of something people are saying well that's a public meeting because both of you went there it should be noticed and that's not in my visioning the intent of the law at all and it's actually keeping people like yourself from going to public meetings or going to an event because if there's more than one of you and you guys are talking about something it could be perceived as a violation and that's just not right and what i think the community so as to not potentially create a violation you would probably have events where all the commissioners would show up and you guys are having to figure out who's going so that there's not an issue and that's just and a lot of times you can't control the agenda there is always a q and a at the end of past three or four years now it's an issue that i hit very hard when talk about the police so the campus carry legislation right now in the state of florida if you're a concealed permit here holder you can carry just about anywhere in the state there are several exceptions to that one of which being law enforcement offices one of which being a courthouse but one of those exceptions is colleges and university campuses and we have seen across our country that these gun free zones have been a target for terrorists for murderers for rapists to go to these places where they know that law abiding people are not carrying firearms and committing crimes we just saw what happened in oregon oregon where those ten people were killed was a gun free zone but the gun free law didn't prevent a murderer from coming on the campus and shooting people there was a situation on that specific instance where you had a military veteran who held the door and tried to keep this guy from coming in and got shot seven times i'm sure there were people there that had a valid concealed carry permit and had one of them being carrying at the time they probably could have stopped him before all of this atrocity occurred my thing is if we're able to carry in our businesses in restaurants and malls in parks everywhere else in our state why should our ability to defend ourselves and our right to the second amendment stop at the entrance of a college university campus and there are so many crimes that are committed on these campuses and i think they've really become a target because of the fact that they're gun free zones you don't see the shooters walking into a mall and doing what they're doing because they know that there's people there that are likely armed there's one point four million concealed permit carry holders in florida they violate the law six times or less likely than law enforcement officers so a concealed permit carrier holder is six times more safe and more law abiding than are certified long forcing officers and that's with twenty eight years of data so the facts are actually pretty compelling the challenge has been when people hear it they think that we're giving every student a firearm when they enter campus or every student would be allowed to be able to carry a firearm to have a concealed carry permit you have to be over the age of twenty one so the majority of undergraduate students when you meet the age requirement you have to go through a litany background checks you can't have a history of mental illness you can't have a history of drug abuse you can't have a history of domestic violence you can't have committed a crime and you have to go through a firearms training course what i have seen and some of the reactions from people that i get e mails from and phone calls from is they don't actually understand who it is that would be permit to carry on a college campus  safeguards are in place in terms of i mean with all of the requirements that we are aware of you know there are still to be there are still appears to be gaps in terms of possibly the mental health issue or the training issue because those are things that happen at the onset but there is no way of following up to ensure that we still have the same level of protection if you end up i mean if you end up getting a felony then of course you get the notice in your right to carry is revoked but on some of the other areas where there's less oversight are there safeguards in place that kind of helps ease the concern of the  you violate any of those provisions that you have to have not have before you get a permanent so let's say you get a domestic violence injunction against you you lose your permit any crime that you commit you lose your permanent you get baker acted you lose your permit but the facts of twenty eight years of data it's very rare it actually occurs point zero zero zero two percent were concealed permit carrier holder actually violates the law and has a license revoked it's very very rare do you have any idea how many c the state of florida one point four million annually no that's total it's total yes not an end because once you have it it's ten years it's eight years you renew but if you were to violate one of the prescriptions in the background check you would it would be immediately revoked right now medicinal marijuana marijuana medical yeah that's an interesting issue so two years ago the legislature by a very large majority passed a what's been dubbed charlotte's web bill it's basically an oil that young children flick did with epilepsy or seizures can have and i've actually met with some of these parents and some of these kids it's amazing to see the difference of what they were like before taking the medicine and what they were like afterwards some of these kids would have twenty seizures in a day and after taking the medicine they only have once a month or two a month i mean it makes a big dramatic change and their symptoms that they have from the diseases that they have so we passed out two years ago it has still been going through this ungodly administrative rule making process the rules have been done we're at a point now where the department department of health has to pick five different vendors that will be able to produce sell and distribute this medicinal marijuana specifically for children afflicted with these diseases it doesn't allow adults with certain afflicted diseases to be able to take advantage of it so i have filed a bill that would allow adults that have i believe it's eight different specific diseases cancer lou gehrig's disease epilepsy that there has actually been research  show that the c b d in the medical marijuana helped the symptoms of to be able to obtain it and there is not this vertical integration that we see in the charlotte's web there's not only five people that would be able to distribute and produce it as long as they go through a very robust regulatory framework to be able to get approval from the department of health to produce distribute maintain it and sell it then they would be able to do it under the under the process that i have in place in my bill what are the local or zoning restrictions or restraints that municipalities have in terms of ensuring that those locations for picking up the medical marijuana are faith in terms of our available populations our children our elderly you know communities what safeguards can we under home rule put in place and make sure that those concerns are that's a great question in my bill i allow every local government to make that determination for themselves so under my bill you would have the authority to decide where you would want to process where you'd want you would be able to restrict where in your city if at all if they didn't want to then they didn't have to have it but i give full authority to the local municipalities to establish rules for that process in my bill in the amendment if it were to pass i don't think that the local governments would have that authority because it would then be a constitutional right and you as a lawyer understand that as well as i do if you have a constitutional right in the local governments are trying to friendship on that see the crown's up you see the hotels that are coming we see all of the traffic that's particularly downtown forty one in that area we are working with the photo department of transportation in terms of trying to create some remedies what from a transportation standpoint can you see coming down the pike that could give us some relief on the local level yeah i mean i was a lot of things i sit on the economic affairs of those transportation a similar approach that does transfer to in funding i was very instrumental in getting the funding for the seventy five university change and that was an eighty three million dollars project that we were able to it was even on the five year work plan and we were able to get funding for it and move that project forward in a way that's driven in that area now can see all of the huge changes that are being made to that court or same here if there's projects here that we can help with i'm more than willing to try to help as much as we can because you and i grew up here so when i graduated high school university avenue ended at the interstate so just in the period of time that i graduated high school to now you have seen such a huge growth and manatee in sarasota county such a huge growth i mean every time you drive down forty one here and see the hotels going up i mean it's a big difference from specially seeing as i grew up here and  changes so we're certainly going to have to deal with these infrastructure issues with the traffic issues that are going to come from this every year we have more and more people visit the city sarasota and sarasota county so this isn't a problem that is going to get better but it's going to get worse and we certainly need to address that with funding projects and transportation projects so if there are specific things that the city or county has identified that we can help from the state perspective with funding from the florida department of transportation i think it's something that i would be happy to help with i think it's something that d o t would recognize as being an issue too because they see it from a state perspective they see the areas of the state that are really growing and the economy is bursting is one of those areas and one of the things that we deal with particularly from state standpoint is the timing as to when projects can begin if they're primary streets if they're state roads then we don't work on our local timetable we work on the states timetable and many of our community doesn't understand that we don't get to say when construction starts and begins with specificity for projects that have state connection and so if there are ways to decrease that amount of time for projects to occur and i know we're just a piece of the pi and it comes to the state that's another thing that could help in terms of trying to identify priority as to what projects we can fund the other isn't getting your local legislators involved the most things is a positive aspect to something like that i mean especially if you have i mean you have four members of the house that represent a part of sarasota county and you have a senator who very much will advocate for the local issues at the state level and it really does help put things on the florida department of transportation's radar as to ok this is something that's important to the representatives and the senators in that area maybe we need to spend a little bit more time to make sure that this thing is moving the way and used them and i think we've done a good job from a regional perspective there n p o in terms of trying to coordinate projects that are cursed systematically so that sarasota happens in many captains and then st pete happens so that from a regional standpoint projects are occurring in concert and that kind of help speed up funding as well so we're doing our best to coordinate and collaborate designation on the driver's license that is more than just a designation it connects the veteran with services can you talk to us about that yeah i served in the military i was on active duty for four and a half years and one of the real challenges especially that the younger generation of our veterans face is when they come back from iraq or afghanistan or they come back from active duty they don't know where they can go for services so let's say they know they have an issue with p t s d or they have a certain disability that they would like to get help with they don't know where to go i mean i didn't i was from here and i didn't know where the local v f w was or the local v a clinic or that there was all these community organizations that are out there really trying to help veterans and circumstances to integrate back into our community so working with the goodwill veterans task force are certain for the last couple of years we really identified that as an issue in the challenge for the community was how can we get this information we have all these great services available sarasota how do we get that information to the veteran well two years ago i co sponsored a bill that allows you to put a v designation on a driver's license so i thought well if we already have that information why don't we ask highway safety when you go in to get your driver's license or renew your driver's license are you a veteran yes would you like to give would you like to receive information that's available to you locally in the community yes can you give us your address to be able to do that if they ask those questions which now they are required to do and you say yes that information will then go from the highway safety office to the state florida department of veterans affairs to come back down to every county's local claims office they will then coordinate with a goodwill minnesota to get that packet of information specific to that veterans community out to them so within two or three weeks of you moving here or relocating here you're going to get that packet of information of the things that are available to you and i think that's going to make a huge difference of being able to have veterans connect with things that they can use in the community and the next step on top of that that's also going to be in the bill that has been a challenge is these veterans i mean i did i was an infantry officer and then i was a jag officer but we have veterans who drive trucks veterans who are firefighters who are military police who have all who are nurses we have all these certifications in the military and then when they get out they already know how to be a nurse they already know how to be a truck driver they already know how to be a police officer but what they got trained in the military doesn't translate to being a police officer for the sarasota p d they have to re go through the academy they have to re go through the training that they've already done so one of the things that we're adding into the bill would allow these people who are to have military certifications in a specific they're having to go back through that training program just allowing them to take the state law enforcement exam or allowing them to take a nurse's exam and if they can pass the requisite issues and pass the requisite training for the past  it certifications they can just get them instead of having to go and start all over again so there's a lot of things that we're working on and as it relates to that to really allow veterans to get reintegrated into society when they return  one of the things that we've also addressed or attempted to address at the local level in the county level as well is the challenge of affordable housing in our communities not only as a relates to homelessness and vacancy but this is different as it relates to working professionals who work in this community who commute from outside communities because they can't afford to live here is there anything from the federal or state level that you are aware of that would give us some tools or some leverage in terms of trying to make those things happen here at a local level you know i haven't seen anything i have obviously read all the challenges of the local governments are facing and the county is facing on this issue i certainly think there are things that we can help with i don't know what those answers are so i'm certainly open to ideas and things that people in the community have that we address this issue because from what i've seen it's very difficult for individuals to find housing if they're lower to median income to support their family and also be living in the community that they work so i certainly understand that challenge and i think that's something that in the next a couple of years or in the next couple months that we can work on anything else to spray fleeing get a few seconds left that you think it's going to happen in tallahassee that's going to impact us locally here well the biggest thing right now we've talked about is the redistricting  mean until that all gets figured out and goes through the courts and we all know what district we're in and how that's all going to shake out i still think that's a big question mark and will be pretty much what we deal with for the next several months and then from the funding aspect