Senate relaxes rules on itself

The Senate just relaxed a lot of the rules on its members, relaxing or wiping out some of the tougher requirements that came with the Tom Lee administration.

Senators made it easier to vote with conflicts of interest, easier to dismiss complaints against themselves and gave themselves more time to report money raised and spent in their political committees.

They now don't have to register their affiliation with a 527, the second they register the committee, just as "required by law." They also don't have to create "immediate" Web sites anymore -- just create them promptly. And they don't have to report expenditures and money raised to their committees within 10 days anymore.

The rules also make it easier to have conflicts of interest by declaring that a senator absolutely "is not disqualified from voting on a measure" when there's a conflict on interest, as long as they declare they could personally benefit.

They made it harder to file a complaint against a senator. The complaint must be based on "personal knowledge" and it gives all committee chairs, the rule chair and the president the ability to dismiss it, if they don't find "probable cause."

Read the rule changes here.

Check out rule 1.361, 1.39 and 1.42.

Jennifer Liberto, Times staff writer

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Comments

"...They made it easier to vote with conflicts of interest, easier to dismiss complaints against themselves and gave themselves more time to report money raised and spent in their political committees..."
WOW!
Can we have a revote?

these freakin' moron piglicans dont seem to have a CLUE, do they?

a hefty part of the reason they LOST so big nationally is because they acted like the CRIMINALS they are!!

TRUST US, WE ARE NOT CROOKS!!

How did the Democrats in the Senate vote? Publish the votes.

[terminator]

looks like these guys didn't learn much from Obama's election.
"yeah, we'll show em, we'll really screw the taxpayers and voters now, they can't mess with the Florida Senate"!
you guys are headed down a slippery slope to oblivion with wrong headed thinking like this.

voice vote

10:36 - They had to do something to help the convict Siplin, (i love you Josh).

Slime ascendant.

[A true Republican]

Now just calm down. Why should we Republicans have to be honest and follow any rules. You fools put us in office so that means we can do what ever we want. If we had rules and regulations where do you think this country would be? Not in the shape it is now. We need high unemployment, low education, high taxes for the middle class, people to live in fear and thank us for the bone we toss them every so often. If we didn't have these things you people would want to share my wealth and that's not going to happen in Florida. So come on fools lets keep voting Republican. Hey maybe ABC could use Florida politics as it's newest sitcom. I'd loooooooove to see all this on my HD TV while you stand in the unemployment line.

Pathetic. Maybe anything to do with representative oversight (on both a federal and state level) ought to be decided by the voting public. Including pay raises and everything else. No wonder this country is in such poor shape. Ethics? What are those? Oh, that's right, if you are in politics, YOU AREN'T REQUIRED TO HAVE ANY.

Excuse me, ms "piglican" commenter I think the jackass members voted for it too.

Win one election, and already they're above whatever rules they had in the first place. That kind of arrogance comes back in ways they won;t like.

And when were these issues spoken about on the campaign trail?