- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

Florida This Week is made possible in part by support from the Tampa Bay Times - [Rob] Coming up next, the governor signs, the extensive anti-riot bill into law and it takes effect immediately.

Legislative session nears the end.

And we'll look at what's happened so far.

And the bill in Tallahassee could substantially weaken newspapers in the state.

All this and more next on Florida This Week.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

This week Governor DeSantis signed the so-called anti-riot bill into law.

A law that goes into effect immediately and creates a whole new series of regulations regarding protests.

- [Reporter] Florida already has laws on the books prohibiting violence and property damage.

Those laws were used last summer against those who burned or looted stores in the wake of the George Floyd killing.

But the governor and legislative leaders wanted more laws.

So, now blocking a highway during a demonstration will no longer be a misdemeanor, it will be a felony.

A riot will be defined as a public disturbance involving three or more people.

The law grants civil immunity to drivers who plow through crowds of protesters, Confederate monuments and other statues will receive additional protection.

It also gives local officials the power to appeal if police budgets are reduced.

The governor called it "The strongest pro-law enforcement anti-rioting law in the country."

As the governor signed the bill, he was surrounded by prominent Republicans and received the backing of Polk County sheriff, Grady Judd, who said the law was necessary to protect Florida's family friendly reputation.

- This is the Florida we know and love.

We're a special place and there are millions and millions of people who like to come here.

And quite frankly, we'd like to have them here.

So we only want to share one thing as you move in hundreds of day, welcome to Florida but don't register to vote and vote the stupid way you did up North, you'll get what they got.

- Civil rights groups in Florida, Democrats have blasted the law as a violation of the first amendment, right to protest.

- We had invited Polk County Sheriff, Judd as well as Pinellas sheriff, Bob Kerrey to discuss the anti-riot bill.

Neither though was available for today's program, so we turned out to Deborah Tamargo, the president of The Florida Federation of Republican Women.

She's a Tampa native, a University of South Florida graduate and a former state legislator and Deborah, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Rob.

- So, let's talk about HB 1.

Was it really necessary?

Don't we already have enough laws on the books that cover violence when it breaks out if there's a protest?

- We thought we did.

And we were astonished.

We, the public were astonished last year to see our highways blocked ,our neighborhoods invaded and that the police were basically standing down and allowing it to happen and telling us we had no recourse.

The public is overwhelmingly in favor of this bill.

We are against riots, we are for protests.

There are means by which you can be licensed and approved to protest, there're rules.

You and I know them because we've been involved in charity events and political events and we've gone down and we've secured our permit.

And we stayed within the bounds of those permits.

We did not endanger people.

We did not block the emergency vehicles going to a hospital when seconds count if you're having a stroke or a cardiac.

We did not terrorize families and children who were in cars that were surrounded and people jumping on the cars and violating the real peace of the neighborhood.

So we did need to strengthen those laws, and property also, property belongs to us regardless of what the statue is, whether it's artistic or historic, it belongs to the taxpayers.

We all funded it at some point in time.

And I think we definitely need it to strengthen those laws.

And what has happened is that, you know they were allowing the protest without the proper permits and following the guidelines, and then they grow into riot and then they start aching each other on and ends up with the looting and the fires and the destruction of neighborhoods.

So we definitely feel like it was needed.

And we were glad to see it.

And like I said, it's not a controversial bill when the majority of your citizens feel there was something that needed to be done.

There was something missing - Deborah, when the governor signed the bill, there was an all White crowd of behind him.

There were no African-Americans in the crowd.

And part of this bill, as you pointed out protects monuments like Confederate monuments.

Why was it so important to protect Confederate monuments in an anti-riot bill?

- Well, it was important to protect property and that is a property of the taxpayers.

And those are decisions that need to be made by city councils, County, commissioners, government depending on where the monument exists.

And that is private prop... Well, not private it's public property and it should be protected regardless of whether it's a monument to a person or whether it's a fish at the aquarium that's being pulled down and graffiti written all over it.

So yes, it's public property, it belongs to us.

And there are means to deal with anything that you feel like is offensive.

- So Deborah, what would you say if a similar law was passed in China or Cuba?

That is that if you're taking part in a demonstration, turns violent and you're not part of the violence and everybody gets charged.

what would you say if a similar laws this was passed in China or Cuba?

- Well, there is no law in China or Cuba except what is dictated by the communists.

But I won't tell you what my father told me when I went to college.

And he said, "If you go to a party and there is drug use."

So marijuana back then was like some big drug passed around.

He said, "You need to extricate yourself.

Because if that party is raided everyone goes to jail and you lose your licenses, your professional license that you may have or other licenses that you have."

You know, the same when I was in high school, if you went to say a rave or a beer party, and it was raided, everyone's taken away I did not neither drugs or alcohol in high school or college.

So, but I understood what my father said.

And I did take his advice.

And I did walk into parties where there were legal things going on unsuspectingly and I quickly excused myself.

It's the, if you don't want to take the punishment, don't do the crime and don't even associate yourself with the crime.

- Deborah, Thank you so much for coming on Florida This Week.

- Thank you, Rob for having me.

(upbeat music) - Some law enforcement officials in Florida are concerned that the passage and signing of House Bill 1 may threaten first amendment freedoms and a citizen's right to protest.

That includes Andrew Warren, the state attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit in Hillsborough County.

He joins us now, Andrew Warren thanks for being here on Florida This Week, good to see you.

- Rob, likewise, thanks for having me.

- So, do you think, given what happened last summer in Tampa that is that several businesses were burned.

Some were looted, did we have adequate laws on the books last summer to deal with the protests?

Most of the protests were peaceful but there were some elements of violence.

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And you're absolutely right.

We did have plenty of laws on the books to address the people who were committing those crimes, the acts of violence.

We all remember what it looked like when people were burning down parts of our city and attacking law enforcement and looting stores.

And we are prosecuting those people.

I mean, that's what's been missing from this conversation.

When we hear proponents of House Bill 1 talk about, "Well we need to do this to hold those people accountable."

Well, we are holding those people accountable.

And we're doing it with the laws on the books that prosecutors use routinely day in and day out to prosecute people who commit crimes of violence and destruction - About how many prosecutions are you taking on regarding what happened last May?

- From that one night of widespread rioting, we've had close to 150 cases that we've been prosecuting.

Most of those have been within the state attorney's office but we also worked with federal law enforcement partners.

For example, the individual who burned down the champ store which was this image all seared in our minds, that person has been prosecuted and is now been convicted for those crimes.

We didn't need any new laws to do this.

We had the laws on the books to hold people accountable.

- The governor says, and his supporters say, "Look we don't want what happened in Portland or Seattle to happen in Florida."

Could something... And you know, Seattle and Portland officials aren't here to defend themselves, but could something like Seattle and Portland could have happened in Florida and do we need these laws?

- Well, I think there's always the possibility that something like that happens, but the key is, do these laws make it less likely that that happens?

Absolutely not.

You know, it's really frustrating because from the beginning, we've tried to have a constructive dialogue about why this bill is bad, why it's unnecessary why it's unconstitutional, why it's not a priority but we've seen proponents of the bill like the governor dismiss that criticism by saying, "Well, people who oppose the bill, they just want to defund police or they just want to let people commit riots."

That is misleading and frankly offensive.

I don't want to defund police.

And I've spent my career as a prosecutor holding people accountable for coming in crimes.

And it's worth noting that after that night of widespread rioting in Tampa, when the governor went on Cable News to talk about public safety, I was in the courtroom actually making sure that we have it.

- So if you were to look at the bill and there's a lot of moving parts to this bill, what would you say is most problematic about the contents of this bill, HB 1?

- Well, I think there are three main problems with it.

The first is that it doesn't address the needs of Floridians.

And at a time when there issues with our economy, in our healthcare, in our schools, it's just baffling that this is the number one legislative priority.

But just in terms of the content of the bill it doesn't give prosecutors any tools that we don't already have.

Like we've talked about already.

And it tears a couple corners off the constitution because it allows this just enough wiggle room to prosecute people just for being present at a violent public disturbance.

And what I mean by that is, if you have a hundred people together in three of them decide to start doing something bad, attacking law enforcement, rooting a store, whatever it is.

And the other 97 decide, I'm not going to join in with them but I'm going to stay here and continue to shout and hold up my sign, then under this law, they have committed the crime of participating in a riot.

That is an overly broad definition that criminalizes the mere attendance at something.

And that's where it runs a foul of the constitution.

- The bill was passed, but still there have been really no significant efforts to kind of look at the police and try to make them more accountable here in the state.

What are you doing at the state attorney's level?

And we only have 30 seconds.

To maybe like create a better relationship between the law enforcement community and the black community.

- Well, right after the riots and protests of last summer, we got to work.

We redoubled our efforts, working with the African-American community here in town.

We created a racial justice working group with members of the community to identify very specific problems that we could solve.

This is an ongoing problem and it requires ongoing solutions to it.

We have to continue to work together to improve relationships between police and the community.

And to continue to reform our criminal justice system.

No single law is going to change it.

It's going to require a lot of work, a lot of effort.

And that's what we've been doing for the past four years.

- Andrew Warren, thank you for coming on the program.

- My pleasure.

Thanks so much, have a safe weekend.

(upbeat music) - The coming week is do or die for many key bills in the state legislature.

That includes proposals to change the voting laws as well as rules for vacation rentals.

Steve Bousquet is a columnist, the reporter for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Steve previously spent three decades covering Florida politics for the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald.

Steve, welcome back, good to see you.

- Thanks Rob, good to be with you.

- So Steve, at the end of the week the governor and the Seminole tribe announced that they had reached some sort of gaming agreement.

Tell us, put this in perspective, how significant is the announcement of the agreement?

- It's very significant because the two previous governors Rick Scott and Charlie Crist couldn't get this to happen.

Every year you have this discussion in Tallahassee about the gambling and nothing ever seems to happen.

This is a proposal for a five-year agreement.

That'll bring $500 million each year to the state treasury and it will illegalize sports betting in the state and do a lot of other things.

It still has to be approved by the legislature, but there's rejoicing, I'm getting... My inbox is overflowing with congratulatory things from the tourism industry and even from democratic politicians.

- So the governor at his press conference this week, Grady Judd the sheriff of Polk County said that Florida is a family friendly state.

For years groups that were known as kind of the family friendly lobby have lobbied against expansion of gaming.

Is this an expansion of gaming?

And is there likely to be pushback when the special session comes up in May?

- Yes, I think there's definitely going to be, my opinion Rob, this is an expansion of gambling.

This legalizes sports betting, which is already legal in a lot of other States, betting on USF basketball games betting on UCF football games, legally on the internet and so forth.

And so it's a big expansion of gambling.

If it wasn't, where's all this money coming from?

I mean they use common sense.

And so there are powerful forces in the state, Disney, sectors of the business community, the Christian religious community that thinks that there's plenty of gambling in this state as it is, there's gambling on almost every corner.

And there's selling lottery tickets in every convenience store.

So we are going to have, and should have a robust debate about whether this is an expansion of gambling.

- The Florida Supreme Court this week Steve, threw out a measure that was headed for the ballot next year that the proponents wanted it to be on the ballot.

It would have legalized recreational marijuana.

The Florida Supreme court said, no.

Why did they say no?

And what does it mean for them to say no?

- They said the ballot language was misleading because it used the word "Permits", permits adult recreational use of marijuana when it still would be illegal under federal law.

Okay, be that as it may.

This is, this is really a disappointing thing because this just postpones the inevitable, other States are legalizing adult marijuana use, it is going to happen sooner or later in Florida.

There was a bill in the legislature this year by Jeff Brandis of St. Pete, didn't go anywhere.

Legislature doesn't want to touch this issue.

Ashley Moody, the attorney general had petitioned the court to knock this thing off the ballot.

So it's a political victory for her.

It definitely would have had a significant effect on the turnout next year.

I think because this polls very well recreational use of marijuana by adults.

So it's not going to be on the ballot.

And there's a lot of disappointment by the advocates over that development.

- Steve, one last question.

We only have a minute, what's going on with voting?

Are we headed in the direction of Georgia and that is making it harder to vote by mail?

- Yes, I mean, it's not the bill they're considering passing in Tallahassee is not as extreme or draconic as Georgia but voting rights advocates say it's still pretty terrible.

It restricts the use of drop boxes which was such a convenience in 2020.

And it's going to result in many more voters signatures being challenged.

There's no question that this is a partisan driven thing by the Republicans.

I suspect it will be litigated after the session ends and the fight is going to go on intensely next week - Steve Bousquet.

Thanks a lot, always great to see you.

- Okay, Rob, good to be with you.

(upbeat music) - A bill in the Florida Senate would change publishing requirements for those paid legal notices that you see in newspapers.

The bill would allow governmental agencies to choose between paying for the Print Ads or for Internet-Only Publication.

And this could have an effect on newspapers revenue.

They count on the revenue received from the legal notices.

Rick Edmonds is the media business analyst for The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

He's been a reporter and an editor at newspapers such as the Philadelphia Enquirer and the St. Petersburg Times and knows the business of print journalism.

And Rick Edmonds welcome to Florida This Week.

Good to see you.

- Rob, good to see you again.

- So there is an attempt to cut back on the ads that local governments are required to put in newspapers, so first of all, why, why do those ads exist in the first place?

- Well, to let the interested parties somebody who wants to attend a meeting or somebody with a potential interest in a bond transaction or various things to get announce in those ads, just to be aware of what it is and when it happens and where to go if they wanna have some input.

- How significant are these ads as a source of revenue for the newspapers across the state?

- Well, they're important and given the state of newspapers now, every little bit helps but that's really one of two areas in the classified franchise which used to be huge for newspapers.

That's still relatively healthy so legal bonuses and obituaries.

And I think if you look at the Tampa Bay Times, Wednesdays, Sundays you'll see a lot of acreage taken up with those two categories.

- So if this legislature has not yet made a decision but if this revenue were to disappear what would happen to newspapers?

- Well, it'd be one more negative in advertising climate that's been, been quite negative for a long time and there's steady decline, I'm gonna say in the range of eight to 10% a year and the print advertising base, at least.

And that's been going on year after year after year.

So it's really getting whittled away.

It's not down to nothing, it's still on overall and important source of revenue, even as this papers get more digital, but it's weakening.

- I've seen some legislators say, "You know, this is a new world.

We ought to just use the internet to print these ads.

And people wanna know about a bond issue or if they wanna know about a land change, land use change, they can find it online.

And that's the way it should be.

- Yeah, in a general way that's certainly a point that demands consideration and it gets to be fairly arcane debate between digital advocates and the newspapers represented by The Florida Press Association.

There's still some sense and some research that shows more people see it if it's in the paper, as well as digital.

And in the current system, you can find it either place if you're looking in the right place.

- Yeah.

All right, so I wanna ask you about the big picture though.

I mean, if revenue is in decline for newspapers, have newspapers figured out, especially local and regional newspapers, have they figured out how to be sustainable in this new digital age?

Is there any model out there?

Because somebody has got to watch county government, city, government, state, government, and business and know what they're up to and be the watchdog for the public.

- Yeah, exactly.

And to your last point, one of the many pronouncements that regional local papers are dead came in Ben Smith's first column from the New York times in March.

And it was only weeks after the COVID crisis was upon us.

And I really don't think alternate sources of news were equipped to cover the full dimensions of that crisis.

To your first question though, yeah, there's a lot of effort underway to develop a new business model.

Most notably digital-only print subscriptions, sorry, digital-only paid subscriptions.

Boston Globe has more than 200,000 now, Star Tribune in Minneapolis more than 100,000 and a lot of other outlets, including the ones we know in Florida are working hard at it.

And that's not the only thing.

There are other revenue sources, events as one, direct marketing for advertising clients that need some help with their websites and email programs.

So it's not a hopeless situation by any means, but I think it's fair to say that the declines are still worse than the new new things coming along.

- Well, I sure hope newspapers figure a way out of this and Rick Edmonds, thanks for coming on Florida This Week.

- Rob, Good to be with you, thanks.

(upbeat music) - Well, finally, about a year ago, one of our favorite musicians, St. Petersburg's own Dave Scheiber teamed up with ER nurse Avery Parks to sing a tribute to the nurses and doctors and healthcare specialists who have risked themselves in the fight against COVID-19.

Here it is.

Stay safe, we'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Florida This Week is a production of WEDU who was solely responsible for its content.