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Visit FeloniousFlorida.com to hear the complete new season, as well as Seasons 1 and 2.

Here’s a look back at Spring Break’s of the past.

This is not good government, and it’s easy to see why lawmakers kept the proposed legislation under wraps so long: They look like yet another remake of the same old song. Insurance companies get another $1 billion bailout fund. Consumers get policies that, on balance, will offer less protection against loss and potentially more hoops to jump through before claims are paid. Many will be forced to pay more, in a state where homeowner insurance rates already are increasing 33 percent every year, compared to 9 percent nationally.

Solutions without sunshine

It’s a sorry response to an undeniable crisis — one that has only been worsened by the double impact of Hurricanes Ian and Nicole. Twelve more companies have stopped writing policies. The state’s $13 billion reinsurance fund, a subsidy to help carriers pay claims in bad years, will take a financial hit. All policyholders will pay to replenish it.

This crisis threatens the state’s real estate market. It puts Floridians at risk of being unable to rebuild after a storm because their damages exceed what companies will pay.

Given the complexity of insurance, a functioning Legislature would start by getting the most reliable information possible about the problem.

That’s not going to happen.

Instead, the public and most legislators will have the weekend to read long, detailed bills Members of the public will have a few hours of committee time, at most, to weigh in —- time they will have to share with high-paid lobbyists from the insurance industry and trial attorney groups. Lawmakers will have to prepare for floor debate as early as Tuesday. As state Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, “We will get a baked pie. Then we decide if we want a piece.”

All the bakers are Republicans. The GOP now has supermajorities of more than two-thirds membership in both chambers, and the bills they will be debating are pretty much identical. So there’s little chance that they will improve.

Special interests win

Here’s what we know is in the legislation at this point.

Start with the positive: Under the proposed legislation, (HB 1A/SB 2A) insurance companies would face slightly shorter deadlines for investigating and paying claims. The bill sets aside money to monitor their performance, as well as the financial health of companies authorized to write policies in Florida.

But insurance companies would get another $1 billion taxpayer-backed reinsurance fund to help cover them from losses. The bill appears to include a raft of new excuses to avoid paying claims, and the ability to create new hoops for property owners to jump through.

It would be harder to get policies through state-run Citizens Property Insurance, and eventually, all Citizens policyholders would also be required to buy federal flood insurance (which is, on its own, not a bad idea). But many policyholders would be forced out of Citizens if they receive offers from private insurers that are no more than 20% higher than Citizens rates — with no ability to return if their premiums are later increased.

As for the rampant fraud that insurance companies claim is eating them alive? Maybe that is buried somewhere in the fine print, but we can’t find anything about devoting more state resources to investigating scam artists or increasing the punishments for fake claims.

Finally, there are no big, innovative ideas in this bill —- such as requiring any company that writes insurance in Florida to offer all lines of coverage, not just lucrative auto policies.

Floridians deserve better. But this is what they’re getting: More of their tax dollars dedicated to propping up insurance companies. No guarantee of lower premiums —- and for many ratepayers, the near-certainty that they’ll be forced to pay more. More stumbling blocks for those trying to access the coverage they’re paying for, and more ways for insurance companies to wriggle out of paying claims.

A few scant hours to express their outrage and confusion before the train pulls out of the station. A few more hours of floor debate.

They deserved more. This bill doesn’t deliver. That’s a shame.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

It’s clear that Gov. Ron DeSantis will have to answer for the dubious legality of his cruel stunt that dropped two state-funded planeloads of migrants on the Massachusetts resort of Martha’s Vineyard.

At the very least, he appears to have violated a state budget provision that allowed him to spend public money on this travesty in the first place. But the larger question is whether crimes were committed — including, potentially, human trafficking or kidnapping of the 48 vulnerable, impoverished souls who became pawns in the governor’s game.

They did nothing wrong and all available evidence suggests they were in this country legally. To protect its claim to be the world’s beacon of liberty and virtue, the United States owes them justice.

That means DeSantis, other state (and potentially federal) officials must be held accountable to the full extent of the law. We believe the best way to accomplish this is under the auspices of a federal grand jury, and call on the U.S. Justice Department to pursue that course of action quickly and with vigor. Other groups agitating for an investigation should direct their resources toward a coordinated quest for the truth.

The alternative could be chaos — which will only benefit the governor and sow confusion among voters, who in about six weeks will deliver their own verdict on DeSantis’s political future.

A true outrage

We appreciate the outrage and disgust over the governor’s latest abuse of his power to strike against his perceived enemies — magnified by the fact that this particular group of “enemies” had the legal right to be in the United States. Official records and reporting across multiple outlets suggests that most, if not all, of the migrant families and adults on the Martha’s Vineyard flight were seeking asylum from the meltdown wracking Venezuela — people who “have led lives inflicted by violence, instability, insecurity and abuse of trust by corrupt government officials that most Americans could hardly conceive of,” according to a lawsuit filed this week on their behalf.

How ironic then that they fell victim again to a breathtaking abuse of their autonomy and dignity as human beings, reduced to political playthings. The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts, describes a scheme in which operatives trolled outside shelters “pretending to be good Samaritans,” offering gift cards and promising help with housing, jobs and other needs in Boston while they awaited asylum hearings. DeSantis has insisted the migrants were not tricked — and that they knew they were headed to Martha’s Vineyard. So far, nobody who doesn’t work for him has backed him up.

That’s bad news for the governor and his potential liability, and for the Florida taxpayers swindled into footing the bill for this vicious boondoggle with the full support of legislative leaders.

Calls for justice

Along with legal actions, officials across the nation — including Florida House Democrats, a Texas sheriff and the governor of California, are calling for investigations. News outlets, including our own, are vigorously digging into documents and chasing money trails.

We appreciate the indignation. But we also see a very real potential that pursuing this case on multiple fronts could, at best, be duplicative and costly. At worst, it could offer DeSantis and his defenders multiple opportunities to create confusion about what really happened.

It makes more sense to coordinate all official investigative efforts through the Justice Department — which should get moving now, and be as transparent about the information it uncovers. That shouldn’t cloud the media’s pursuit for the truth, however. Florida voters deserve as much truth as possible before they vote on whether DeSantis should have a second term, and mail ballots go out in just a few weeks.

Already, there’s a chill in the air.

When DeSantis campaigned with Kansas Republicans last weekend and talked about the flights, he got a standing ovation. But where are the standing ovations in Florida? Instead, there’s an eerie silence from Republicans who, for once, can see what we all see: DeSantis’ stunt was crass, cruel, inhumane, possibly illegal and politically dumb. Where’s your ringing endorsement of DeSantis’ actions, Sen. Rick Scott? Sen. Marco Rubio? Members of Congress? GOP legislators? Republican candidates?

Meanwhile, The Miami Herald has documented a third flight that DeSantis’s people are now claiming was designed to “punk” the media. Really, governor? That’s a valid use of tax dollars?

Even more important: Is it the truth? What we know now, from the Herald’s reporting, is that migrants were gathered for that flight, then turned away. The flight left with no cargo.

Florida leaders know that the money authorized by the Legislature was clearly targeted toward the relocation of undocumented migrants, not legal asylum seekers, and that the funds were only authorized to be spent in Florida, not Texas.

But we also believe they understand, finally and when it’s almost too late, that this despicable fiasco is not about immigration, which everyone agrees is a brewing crisis. It’s about a governor gone renegade and perhaps — finally — having gone too far.

Florida’s governor has brought shame upon his state. The only path to redemption lies in a rapid and vigorous pursuit of the truth, in all its ugly reality — and before the election.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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