Orange County residents will get to vote on a paid sick time measure in 2014. (Photo via Doug Geisler/Flickr)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
After a long and difficult fight in Orange County, an earned sick pay measure that was left off the 2012 ballot will be put to voters next year.
The group behind the initiative, Citizens for a Greater Orange County, collected 50,000 signatures, which more than earned the measure a place on the ballot. Obtaining 50,000 signatures is no small task. It takes a lot of time, money and planning. However, large corporations operating in Orange County, including Disney and Darden Restaurants, lobbied local lawmakers to stop the initiative.
Recent reports disclosed that some of the commissioners were communicating with lobbyists representing companies opposed to the measure. Eventually, the commissioners opted for a stall tactic that kept the measure off the ballot.
However, following a court order to consider the ballot initiative once more, commissioners voted 6-1 this week to put the paid-sick-time measure on the August 2014 primary ballot.
A three-judge panel left room for little else when it ruled earlier this month that the board had violated the “plain meaning of its charter” by blocking the measure from the Nov. 6 election.
“I’m asking us to do what I believe the courts have told us to do, which is place it on the ballot,” Mayor Teresa Jacobs said during a debate about lingering concerns over the referendum’s wording.
But before voters can decide whether many local employers must provide paid sick time, the ballot measure still must survive other business-backed attempts to block it legislatively and in the courts.
“We still have a few more hurdles to clear,” said Maria McCluskey, a member of the Citizens for a Greater Orange County, the group backing sick time. “But we’re confident it will be on the ballot in 2014.”
The sick pay ordinance, if passed, might face another set of problems, though.
Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, has introduced a bill for this legislative session that would prevent local sick time ordinances.
Simmons’ bill, if passed, will prohibit a “political subdivision” — which means “a county, municipality, department, commission, special district, board, or other public body” — from requiring “an employer to provide family or medical leave benefits to an employee and may not otherwise regulate such leave.”
The bill states that the prohibition is “for purposes of uniform application of this section throughout the state, with the exception of family or medical leave benefits regulated under federal law or regulations, the regulation of family and medical leave benefits is expressly preempted to the state.”
The law is intended to thwart efforts of progressive groups to pass labor-friendly laws in local governments, since state-level labor reform law are out of reach with a GOP-led Legislature.