Sen. Rene Garcia sponsored legislation that would have ended the revocation of licenses for facilities with repeated egregious offenses. (Photo courtesy of Rene Garcia.)

By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Three months ago, Miami Herald investigative reporters Michael Sallah, Carol Marbin Miller and Rob Barry published the results of a year-long investigation into assisted living facilities for the elderly and disabled. The three-part “Neglected to Death” series exposed a stunning pattern of abuse and a disregard for laws and regulations.

Now, Sallah and company are taking the next step: looking at how the legislature is responding to the problems at Florida’s ALFs.

And the story is just as compelling — and foul.

The Herald found that over the past four years, riding the wave of deregulation in Tallahassee, lawmakers have actually pushed to strip protections from residents of ALFs and place practically all control in the hands of ALF operators.

In the past four years, a dozen lawmakers — often at the behest of the industry’s advocacy group, the Florida Assisted Living Association — filed 36 bills to slash oversight of an industry that the “Neglected to Death” series found already to be severely lacking in regulation.

Amazingly, when Herald reporters asked some of the sponsors about their bills, they said they didn’t realize the consequences of the legislation.

Sen. Don Gaetz, a co-sponsor of a bill that ended the state’s right to bring in medical teams to determine whether sick patients should be removed from an ALF, said he couldn’t remember that part of his bill.

Sen. Rene Garcia put together a deregulation package that, among other things, would have ended the revocation of licenses for facilities with repeated egregious offenses. Garcia also told the Herald that he didn’t remember that language being in his bill.

“I just don’t recall that,” he told the Herald. “FALA came to me with this massive deregulation bill. We went back and forth, but my intent was to help [the industry and AHCA] create its own chapter [of enforcement].”

Which should be an eye-opening statement for Florida voters of how involved lobbyists are in drafting state law.

The Herald’s “Neglected to Death” series was published at a critical moment in the session, and 16 bills, including Garcia’s, were tabled.

But that didn’t help Republican Sen. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey, who saw one of his bills — to require facilities to have defribillators — shot down.

“The governor and lawmakers were all pushing to deregulate the professions,” he said.

Fasano’s bill was attacked as being too costly and burdensome to the industry.