The Palm Beach Post offers this report. This bill does one thing I approve of and another that I disapprove of. I think state centralization and the creation of uniform rules are wonderful. They resolve all kinds of uncertainties and potential equal protection issues.The problem is that this consolidates power in the hands of a single official who is a political appointee of the governor, and likely to do the governor’s bidding. Not that the alternative in Florida is very good. On the local level, partisan officials control the process as well. The reason that the Republican-dominated Florida legislature wants this change is to put more power in the hands of a state Republican appointee over the Democratic appointees in many of Florida’s larger cities. I’ll have more to say soon about how to resolve these kinds of serious, systemic problems.