The Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla., is pictured. | Phil Sears/AP Photo

Who is lobbying to change Florida’s privacy laws? That’s private
By MATT DIXON –  04/01/2021 06:46 PM EDT

TALLAHASSEE — A mysterious group is the driving lobbying force behind sweeping legislation that would beef up Florida’s data privacy laws. It has hired a Tallahassee-based lobbying team and spent $300,000 in political contributions, but almost no one — including the sponsors of the bills — has any idea who is behind the group.

The organization, Propel Florida, is a nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors, lists a UPS box in Lithia as its only address and was incorporated last April. But over the first half of the 2021 legislative session, the group has flexed its political muscle. It’s so far steamrolling the state’s powerful business lobby, which almost universally opposes the legislation because it would allow consumers to sue companies over data-privacy violations, a provision supporters say is a needed enforcement mechanism to protect consumer rights.

The organization, whose existence POLITICO first reported in December, has hired well-known Tallahassee-based lobbyists who are actively meeting with lawmakers. The bills (FL HB969 (21R)/ FL SB1734 (21R)) ) would give consumers more access to data collected by companies and allow them to opt-out of the sale of that data. In early committee stops, the proposals have gotten overwhelming support in committee stops, but neither sponsor of the bills introduced in February says they know the true identity of the organization that has spurred a lobbying push to pass legislation they are sponsoring.

“I am aware of a group identified as Propel Florida, and have met with their lobbyists as well as many other lobbyists across the state on my data privacy bill,” state Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican sponsoring the Senate version of the bill, said in an interview. “I don’t have any knowledge about the specifics of the group.”

Bradley said it does not concern her that a group she knows nothing about is a main lobbying force behind a bill she is sponsoring because “I support the policy.”

House sponsor, state Rep. Fiona McFarland (R-Sarasota), is also in the dark. She said she has met with lobbyist Derek Whitis, a Tallahassee-based contract lobbyist hired by Propel Florida, to discuss the bill, but has no idea who the organization is or who is funding its efforts.

“I have worked with lots of companies and industries on this bill,” she said in an interview. “Propel Florida was introduced to me through their lobbyists as a proponent of data privacy.”

In a text message, Whitis said Propel Florida is a “social advocacy group looking to support the data privacy protection legislation.” He did not respond to follow up questions about who is behind the group. The group is not violating any state laws, which allow organizations and nonprofits to lobby the Legislature without identifying donors.

Both Bradley and McFarland said they have spoken with dozens of lobbyists about the bill when asked about Propel Florida, but among those lobbying on the bill, an overwhelming majority are in opposition. Opponents include some of the biggest business groups in the state including the National Federation of Independent Businesses and Associated Industries of Florida. Propel Florida is the only outside group that expressed support in each of the bill’s three committees, which it has passed with just one “no” vote among the three. California-based software and cloud company Oracle also expressed support in its first House committee stop. Oracle is among the companies that helps with privacy law compliance. Many such firms emerged after passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, a bill that resembles the Florida legislation, but differences exist.

Ken Glueck, who heads Oracle’s government affairs team, said that outside of a strong federal consumer data protection law, the company has been encouraging states to institute bills as data increasingly becomes a tool for “surveillance.”

“Let’s keep pushing the rock up the hill,” Glueck said. “We are encouraging states to go it alone, and Florida has an important economy.”

He said his company has no idea who Propel Florida is.

“We are supporting this bill out in the open under our company logo,” he said.

Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis’ office has also supported the bill in committee. Frank Collins, a spokesperson for Patronis, said the CFO is “concerned about consumer protections issues,” and that he had heard from Propel Florida, but did not return follow up questions about whether he knew who was behind the group.

Propel Florida has also hired contract lobbyists Cameron Yarbrough and Paul Hawkes, records show. Neither returned a request seeking comment.

The group has also given $300,000 in political contributions, according to campaign finance records. That includes $50,000 to both the Republican Party of Florida and the main Republican Senate campaign committee in October, and $100,000 last month to both a political committee chaired by Dave Ramba, whose lobbying firm employs Yarbrough, and a separate committee chaired by lobbyist Bill Helmich.

In December, Ramba told POLITICO that Propel Florida was led by someone named Shaun Keck, who at the time identified himself to POLITICO as Propel Florida’s director.

“The fact of the matter is Floridians can’t trust Big Tech,” Keck said in a December email. “For years, virtual platforms have been collecting personal, private information from all of us. After which they capitalize by renting and selling this private information.”

Keck did not respond to follow up questions at the time, and did not respond to several requests for comment for this story.

The bills in the House and Senate are not identical, but both have core provisions that would allow consumers the right to access personal information a business collects on them, the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal data, and allows them to request a business delete the personal data they have on them. The provisions would apply to companies that have $25 million or more in global annual revenue, annually buy data of more than 50,000 consumers for commercial purposes, or get 50 percent of their annual revenues from selling data.

The provisions specific to data-privacy are largely non-controversial. What has sparked a clash between supporters of the bill and nearly every major Florida business lobbying group is a separate provision that would allow consumers to sue over violations of the new data privacy laws, which supporters have said is a needed enforcement mechanism to give the new data privacy provisions legal teeth.

“It will be a litigation magnet,” said William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, which regularly spars with state trial lawyers over lawsuit reform issues.

Each violation could come with a $100 to $750 fine, and because when a large company is impacted by something like a widespread data breach, thousands of consumers could be involved, opponents like Large have argued in committee that could lead to class action lawsuits.

During a meeting of the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee last month, state Sen. Annette Taddeo (D-Miami) filed an amendment to remove the lawsuit provisions. She acknowledged the oddity of a Democrat sponsoring amendments to help the state’s generally Republican-leaning businesses lobby, but said she thought the lawsuit provisions were too large.

“If any businesses violate any provision of this bill, then they could be liable, and I believe it is too broad,” Taddeo said before her amendment was defeated.

Bradley defended the clause, but said she would work with opponents moving forward.

“This cause of action I believe is very important for enforcement … and to be able to protect our consumers’ rights,” she said. “A lot of companies that operate in this space have the economic ability of some world nations.”

“These subtle differences combine with more serious ones — like who enforces the law — to add complexity to an already confusing regulatory landscape,” Anthony Prestia, head of privacy for TerraTrue, a data privacy firm.

He said one difference in the Florida bill is that it would become effective Jan. 1, 2022, which is a much quicker timeline for companies to comply with than in other states.

“This is a full year before already-passed legislation (like California’s CPRA and Virginia’s VCDPA) come into effect, which gives companies a little time to come into compliance,” he said.

Bradley said during the Senate committee meeting she is considering moving back her bill’s effective date.

McFarland said during the last House hearing that lawsuits and legal fights are not the point, but rather it is to make sure consumer data is protected.

“In society the amount of power we have handed companies through use of our data I believe has resulted in an erosion of our right to privacy and even how we think about ownership over our own data,” she said.

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/04/01/who-is-lobbying-to-change-floridas-privacy-laws-thats-private-1371112 

 

Lee credits Sprowls for saving opioid bill

BY ALEXANDRA GLORIOSO
|05/03/2019 04:20 PM EDT

Gov. Ron DeSantis has already said he intends to sign the bill, which Walgreens and others in the drug industry have quietly lobbied against.AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

TALLAHASSEE —In the final weeks of session, Rep. Chris Sprowls rescued a floundering measure that could bring in roughly a billion dollars to fight the state’s opioid crisis.

Sprowls, an attorney and likely next speaker of the House, assuaged privacy concerns related to a bill FL HB1253 (19R) that would allow Attorney General Ashley Moody to access certain patient information in a state drug database. After unease about the bill surfaced a few weeks ago, it wasn’t evident the measure would pass in the Senate.

Today it did, clearing the upper chamber on a 39-0 vote after Sprowls, a Republican from Palm Harbor, jumped in with an amendment to sunset the provision in 2021. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he’ll sign the bill into law.

“He stepped forward and put his legal energy and his experience to work to try to overcome the objections,” said state Sen. Tom Lee (R-Thonotosassa), the bill sponsor, on the Senate floor Friday. “He got that bill out of the House and down here to the Senate.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis has already said he intends to sign the bill, which Walgreens and others in the drug industry have quietly lobbied against.

“There are people who believe that corporations in this state should be immune,” Lee said.

With the bill’s passage, Moody will have patient-level access to certain information in the drug database beginning in July. She intends to use the information to make a legal case against the pharmacies Walgreens and CVS, the drug manufacturer Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and other companies named in Florida’s opioid lawsuit.

The case has the potential to bring in a billion dollars for drug treatment programs related to the epidemic, which kills 17 people a day in Florida.

Since taking office in January, DeSantis has pointed to Oklahoma’s $270 million settlement, saying Florida should expect one that’s much larger, given the size of the state and the scope of its opioid problem.

On Thursday, DeSantis said the drug database bill would help deliver Florida’s settlement.

“These companies knew that this stuff was very addictive and yet you see the way they conducted themselves,” said DeSantis Thursday in Brevard County. “Purdue Pharmaceutical is just one of them. But, certainly, that is one that is likely going to have to pay the piper, not only here, but throughout the country.”

William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, which is funded by business interests, has been the bill’s most vocal opponent. Large doesn’t represent Walgreens but a member of his board works for the company.

Large’s organization lobbies to limit large legal settlements in cases brought against corporate interests. He acknowledges his group speaks for companies that don’t want to publicly clash with Moody, a Republican Cabinet member, but he said he fought the bill because it was the right thing to do.

“While we obtained several important concessions, we remain concerned that the bill makes a bad problem worse,” Large said in a statement Friday.

Large said he believes Moody is going after Walgreens and CVS because they have deep pockets, not because of their roles, if any, in the opioid crisis. He said individual doctors aren’t named as defendants in the state’s complaint because they’re not worth pursuing financially.

With patient-level information from the state’s drug database, Moody wants to prove that Walgreens and CVS, which own more than 1500 pharmacies across the state, knew they were filling too many prescriptions for an addictive substance and had a responsibility to intervene, but didn’t out of financial greed.

In his remarks on the floor, Lee thanked Moody for explaining the bill’s importance to wary lawmakers. He also thanked Senate President Bill Galvano and Rules Chair Lizbeth Benacquisto for “breaking this bill loose and letting it to be heard on this floor.”

Galvano on April 19 told POLITICO he had doubts about the bill’s ability to protect patients’ personal information. Benacquisto, who didn’t comment for that story, refused to hear it in her final Rules Committee on April 23, even though Lee had been requesting a hearing since April 9.

After the sunset provision was amended to the House bill, Galvano said he was reconsidering his position. He still hadn’t committed to hearing the bill as of Wednesday.

“We believe that privacy was protected when the bill was first introduced,” Moody told reporters after the Senate vote. To win over reluctant legislators, she mainly had to “correct misinformation,” she said.

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/05/03/lee-credits-sprowls-for-saving-opioid-bill-1006539 

 

House panel OKs bill to eliminate long standing PIP program, despite opposition

03/27/2017 05:08 PM EDT

In lieu of the PIP policy drivers will instead be required to carry aminimum bodily injury policy
of $25,000 and $50,000 for bodilyinjury or death to two or more persons. Getty

TALLAHASSEE—The House Insurance and Banking Committee on Monday approved HB 1063,which eliminates Florida’s long-standing law requiring drivers to carry $10,000 of personal injury protection insurance and along with it the no-fault program that provides people access to health care for injuries stemming from automobile accidents without having to first file a lawsuit sue in court.

In lieu of the PIP policy drivers will instead be required to carry a minimum bodily injury policy of $25,000 and $50,000 for bodily injury or death to two or more persons.

State Rep. Erin Grall, a Vero Beach Republican and sponsor of the bill, told the committee that the PIP system is rampant with fraud and that Florida several times has tried to respond to that by altering the program. In 2012, to address increasing PIP costs, the Legislature limited the dollar amount of PIP coverage for an accident to $2,500 unless the injuries required emergency attention.

To underscore the problems with fraud, Grall told the committee that before the changes 60 percent of the injuries stemming from car accidents were considered non-emergency. Since the change, she said, 4 percent of claims filed are for non-emergency medical conditions.

“It just gets tweaked in a different way and we squeeze it in different parts,” she said.

Pinnacle released a report in September that showed the sweeping changes made to the state’s mandatory personal injury protection yielded an average 15.1 percent savings in PIP auto insurance premiums. The report estimates that eliminating the PIP requirement would generate an overall reduction of about $81 annually per car for the average driver.

Several insurance lobbyists who testified on Monday expressed concern that HB 1063 would eliminate the no-fault system and require drivers to sue for benefits, but that the proposal does not make any changes to the state’s third- party bad faith laws.

“Right now, in cases where a policyholder has low policy limits and is sued on a claim with clear liability and big damages, the plaintiff’s lawyer doesn’t settle the case for those low policy limits,” William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute said in a statement. “Instead, they set arbitrary and unreasonable time frames and multi-conditional demands, making it impossible to settle an undisputed claim. The result is lucrative multi-million dollar settlements and payouts that greatly exceed policy limits of policyholders. That would only get worse under a system of mandatory bodily injury insurance.”

But Grall called bad faith a separate issue and said that the Legislature should be mindful of the details of the decision to eliminate PIP and replace it with a new system. The Legislature “can’t anticipate a problem that does not yet exist.”

Lobbyists representing health care providers, though, opposed the bill, including the Florida Medical Association and the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association. They said health care providers wouldn’t be paid for providing needed health care services. Additionally there were concerns that there would be increases to health insurance as injured drivers turned to their health insurance policies to cover their health care needs as opposed to filing a lawsuit in court.

Florida’s financial responsibility laws currently require drivers involved in an accident to prove that they have the ability to pay monetary damages in the amount of at least $10,000 for injury or death for one person and $20,000 for injury or death to two people as well as $10,000 in property damage.

The bill does not change financial responsibility for property damage but it does increase the minimum coverage requirements for bodily damages.

According to staff analysis, Florida is one of 17 states (including the District of Columbia) with mandatory PIP requirements. But only nine states, including Florida, have compulsory PIP laws and no fault laws. Five states including Texas, which does not have a compulsory PIP law, allows drivers the option to choose no fault protections.

Policies issued on or after January 1, 2018 would be precluded from selling PIP coverage, which provides drivers with lost wages and health care costs.

During her closing remarks, Grall told the committee that she would be open to eliminating bad faith but only if there was a mandatory rate rollback, a move insurers traditionally have opposed.

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2017/03/house-panel-oks-bill-to-eliminate-long-standing-pip-program-despite-opposition-110729