Episode 11: Talking Politics with Senator Lori Berman

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And I got to see her in action many times up in the Capitol.

Hi, Senator Berman. Thank you so much for speaking with us. It's an honor to have you on, and thank you for all that you've done to help Florida be the best it can be for its people.

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[00:00:49] Ali Kessler: Aw, thank you.

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[00:00:55] Ali Kessler: I guess just to start let's just, if you don't mind telling our listeners a little bit about our background, how you got into politics, what'd you do before?

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I went to high school in Broward County at Nova High, a good friend of mine's father ran for Congress and we all worked on the campaign. He didn't win, but we had a blast and that was when I got the political bug. I went to law school. And I practiced law for many years. And then when my children were a little older, I decided I wanted to get back into politics and I ran for my first office as a state rep in 2010. So it's always been a passion of mine and I love doing it. It's gotten a little tougher since 2010, but, i, and I, we have term limits in the state of Florida and you get eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate and I have two more years and then I will be termed out. So not sure what's going to happen after that.

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[00:02:00] Lori Berman: No. Maybe take up golf. We'll see.

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[00:02:06] Lori Berman: Yes, so I practice law that helps many years. I did also work on I worked as a legislative aide for Congressman Robert Wexler.

I also worked in house for a bank in Boca Raton. Then I went and got a master's of law and estate planning. So I have a little bit of background in that area. I did a little bit.

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[00:02:34] Lori Berman: Sure. So I love to give people a little civics lesson. Don't want to be dancing about it.

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[00:02:42] Lori Berman: And interesting, under the Florida constitution, there is literally one responsibility that we have. and that one responsi bility is actually to pass a balanced budget, and that's it.

We don't have to pass any laws, but that's a lot of laws. I would say there's been a concerted effort to pass less laws. So we pass about 200 to 300 laws per session, considering that there's 160 legislators. In the House, they're allowed to bring seven bills in the Senate, we can do unlimited. So there are thousands of bills that get introduced every session, and it gets. We know down very quickly to 2 to 300, and for the civics lesson out of bill becomes a law, the Schoolhouse Rock it is pretty much like what we were all taught in Schoolhouse Rock.

You have to have a senator and a representative introduce the bill, then they are assigned to committees, typically 3 committees in each. Chamber, so the 3 house committees, 3 Senate committees as, because you were there for many of the Senate and House committees, we present them, we talk about them.

We look into there may be some compromises. There is some sausage making in the process to get them where everybody can agree to it and then get through your 3 committees. You have to go to the full floor of the house, the full floor of the Senate that has to be the same exact bill that passes in both chambers.

And then once you get through that, you still have the final potential veto of the governor. So it is hard work to get a bill passed.

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[00:04:26] Lori Berman: I had a bill this year that the governor vetoed. It was about water quality.

And it was a bipartisan bill. I had a Republican co-sponsor, and in the House, it was a Republican sponsor and a Democratic co-sponsor for women, we called ourselves the water women warriors, and the governor vetoed it and we worked really hard to get it through.

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[00:04:51] Lori Berman: He said that they already have, it's already being done, but if it was already being done, we wouldn't have so much problem. So many problems with water quality. Unfortunately, but yeah, so it is difficult to get a bill passed.

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[00:05:09] Lori Berman: Absolutely. It was very upsetting, we're looking to reformatting it for this upcoming year. We're not going to go back with the same right. Oh, that the governor would veto it, but we're looking into maybe putting together a task force to look into water issues and make some recommendations about what should be done in the state.

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[00:05:38] Lori Berman: not every day, but a fair amount of time. When I was in the house, extraordinarily picky about which I wanted to be my 7 bills.

I always took one or two bills that I would call my statement bills that I knew had very little chance of being a passage, but I felt it was important for us to every year make a statement. For instance, gun violence. So I would always do a bill every single year. One year I did it to limit the amount of bullets in a magazine.

One year I did it to say you can't bring a gun into a daycare center. Or a hospital. Every year I did a different one of those and I knew that they weren't going to pass, but it was a bill that was important to me. I also did the Equal Rights Amendment every year because that was important to me. And I knew that was an uphill battle in the state of Florida.

And then I try and pick and then also, as you mentioned, I'm an attorney. The Florida bar, different sections, especially the real property and probate and the business law, which are more what I practiced, come to me every year, usually with 1 or 2 bills. And those bills are based on maybe a court case that they needed to change or just something that they saw in practice where the law wasn't working the way it's supposed to work.

So those bills I traditionally have done. So that will get me additional bills. And then I look at the bills that really matter to me and when I came in, there weren't that many women in the legislature. There are more now. I think I just looked the Senate is actually going to be over. It's going to be about 37 percent women, which is great.

We're getting close to our 50. I don't know the number in the house. I did not look about that one. So when I came in, women and children were my focus because I was one of the few women and there just weren't those bills. A lot of time what I was looking for, and when people would come to me for instance, there are people who focus on doing bills for animal protection.

That wasn't my area as much. I didn't pigeonhole myself. I'll do bills on everything. I'm really proud of a bill I did on public safety for the purple alert, which you may have seen in the state, just like Amber, I was the sponsor of the purple alert. So when there's a good idea and that, that also came from a constituent too.

And I feel like the best ideas we get come from constituents.

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[00:08:11] Lori Berman: Our leader in the Senate, Lauren Book, asked me to take a look at the bill and said, would this be something that you would be interested in doing? And I took one look at it, and I said, absolutely. This was for sure a travesty of justice and it was something that was in my wheelhouse that I felt very comfortable as an attorney and as someone who has advocated for women and children in the legislature. It really was. Exactly on point for what I wanted to do.

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[00:08:49] Lori Berman: What I want to see changes. I don't want to see any child ever killed by a parent- ever. I don't understand that. And it's still going on and it's very disturbing to me. And that's the ultimate goal is no parent should ever or their domestic partner. I know that's a big problem also or abused in any way.

So that's always been something I, one of my gun control bills had A little crossover because I did do a gun control bill about domestic abusers not being able to have access to guns because we know that's a very important point where we know when they have access to guns, it's very dangerous for their partners, right?

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There's no documentation that says, do you have a firearm in the house? And that is something that I know would have helped me because I had no idea that Greyson's dad had a firearm or a gun. But I think if we have to disclose all of our personal information, I think disclosing that is definitely key.

And that's not pro or against guns. This is just transparency.

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And I wish that was a question that was on that parenting plan. I do know that we have such a strong lobby on the other side that it would be ridiculously hard to do. I had a bill last year that we tried to do, which also came from a constituent. A woman was hit on her own property by a bullet and the police, the property next door was a shooting range.

And the police said there's nothing we can do. No one got arrested. There was no ticket issued, nothing. And so we tried to do a bill saying just keep your bullets on your property. You want to have a gun? Keep it on your property. And I couldn't even get that bill through the legislature. That's how absurd it is right now in Tallahassee. Whenever you bring up anything about guns, it's for the Republican party. It's like the third wheel.

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[00:11:27] Lori Berman: know. I don't know. I, it's just a real issue for the party. They are just so afraid to discuss this at all. And I, and that makes me very sad that our state has become the Gunshine state, you know, unfortunately.

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[00:11:49] Lori Berman: Parkland was the event that led to some reform in the state of Florida.

But now they're trying to undo some of what Parkland did. One of the things that we passed after Parkland said that you can't purchase a gun if you're under the age of 21 in the state, it used to be 18. We raised it to 21. Yeah. They're trying to roll that back, and I would not be surprised to see that roll back.

And then the other really great thing that we did after Parkland, which was my bill, because like I said, I always brought these bills, they took it, and that was fine. I was very happy, was the risk protection orders, which says if someone's a danger to themselves or others, and you know that they have a gun, you can go to court and ask the court to take the gun away.

times since: 2018

[00:12:39] Ali Kessler: Can imagine

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[00:12:58] Ali Kessler: Absolutely. Especially when children are involved.

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[00:13:16] Ali Kessler: Horrible. I really hope that at some point as a country, we can come together and just say, let's just make it safer. We know you're not going to take them away. Let's just figure out a way to make it safer.

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[00:13:43] Ali Kessler: I agree now going back to Greyson's law We know that it took two years to get passed, what do you think happened the first year?

Or why do you think it didn't pass the first round?

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And if you have a bill that affects the family law section, and they say, we're opposed to the way this bill is written. That's the kiss of death for that bill, basically. So what happened was over the summer, that summer after when I then became the head chef on the matter, I wasn't the head chef before that I was one of the cooks putting in over the summer, I became the head chef and I went to the family law section and I said, we need to do this.

You need to work with me. You need to figure out how we're going to make this the bill that will have the impact that we want and that you can all support. And they did. I will tell you, they did a great job. They had workshops. They had committees they, because they don't, they're not, they don't all agree on everything.

So it was, they got to a consensus product that everybody was happy with, and that was like a big benefit that then we could come back and say, okay, the family law section of the Florida bar is in support of this bill.

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[00:15:38] Lori Berman: Of course, I would like it to be strong. You always want it to be as strong as it could be, but I think it's a good product. I really do. I think we got to the point where we made the message clear. If you're a judge, you need to be looking at this factor. You need to be looking at what kind of threats are being made by the person.

Time sharing agreement when you're deciding if somebody has to bring their child over. So I think we did a great job getting it to where it needed where it still had an impact. I wouldn't do a bill if I didn't feel like it was going to have an impact. There's no point in doing version that wasn't going to have an impact.

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[00:16:59] Lori Berman: Yeah, no, I agree. And I'm glad I know the Florida bar said that they would take the mantle up on that. As a legislator, I can only do so much. I know, but I knew that the bar was going to take it up. I would like to continue and maybe we need to do some Op-Eds and things like that.

We could do some Op-Eds. Or, this law. We've had a chance to see it in effect in Florida. And yes, in some cases, it's been wonderful, but in some cases, the judges haven't been as aware and maybe that'll get some public awareness. I would like to see more public awareness around it.

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[00:18:04] Lori Berman: We didn't use the word coercive control because that is a. Also a very I guess divisive is the word, it's a word that gets people very up in the air, but a lot of the same concepts, but we talked about those concepts in the legislation, which I think was important.

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[00:18:26] Lori Berman: I did hear of it. Remind me again what it said.

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Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah, because most of these cases are state cases, right? I don't, it would be unusual to see these cases in federal court, but the federal court would be great.

Yeah, I'd have to look into that a little bit and see what we could do. Interesting.

Okay. Good to know. I have tons of ideas, so if we ever want to chat about it, I can come up with a bunch. Just real quick before we continue, I just want to say again, how thankful I am that you and Hilary Cassell were able to make a difference, because, it was the 2nd year, the 1st year, it didn't make much traction and it was still the same story.

So I really do appreciate all your time and attention. And I'm sure all the other families across Florida do as well.

Thank you. I'm sad that we failed Greyson and that it came to that, but I'm happy that we were able to get legislation passed in his name and hopefully not fail other children in our state.

Do you think our justice system is flawed? I do. I think it's hard to make a perfect justice system. I look at the at capital punishment, for instance we know that it's disproportionately against minorities. There's always gonna be things in our criminal justice system that have issues and we continue to try and make it better. It's never gonna be perfect.

I guess that's all you can do. I think also calling them out and shining lights on what needs to get better is important because otherwise they'll never know.

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You want me to sponsor? I'm happy to sponsor it. What do you have? And unfortunately, if you know the history. That domestic violence coalition at the time was run by a woman who was taking financial advantage of it and was very tied into not changing the status quo and they never gave me a bill, never in all those years that I would go to them and say, do you have anything?

So unfortunately, for those years, there wasn't a lot of activity that was happening to prevent people in domestic violence situations. I think the woman has since been I think she might be might have some charges against she left the state. And I think that group is now trying to regroup and be a stronger coalition, which I hope they, they will be.

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[00:22:02] Lori Berman: Shaped my career? Wow. That's a hard we can leave Greyson's law out of it.

Okay. Yeah. Certainly Greyson's was pivotal.

I mentioned to you a little bit about the purple alert. That was really exciting for me, to get a bill that would help the whole community of people with developmental disabilities.

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[00:22:23] Lori Berman: So what the purple alert says right now we have the amber alert and the silver alert.

The amber alert was for young children. If they went missing, the police could immediately start looking for them. Cause normally when somebody goes missing, the police have a 24 hour period before they get panic because they think maybe the person just got waylaid. They'll come back. So they don't want to spend or he's

just with his father,

right?

So they won't spend the resources. But so we have the amber for children and we have the silver for adult for over 65 elderly who may have dementia issues or things like that, but we didn't have anything for, Okay. The middle group at somebody between 18 and 65. And very often we have people with developmental disabilities.

And as soon as they're missing, you've got to start looking especially someone with autism. What happened in the real world case was somebody in their twenties had autism, wandered off from their family home, actually went to a gas station, but they were totally nonverbal.

So they couldn't talk, couldn't say anything and ended up walking into a lake because autistic children particularly are drawn to water and walked into the lake and drowned. And so if somebody had known that this person was missing when they saw them in him in the gas station, maybe it could have been prevented.

That was our bill. So if you're in that middle period and you have a developmental disability, the police can start looking for you immediately and they can put out alerts. A lot of times these people are walking, they're not driving, so you won't see it as much. On the highway, but the alerts should be out to the whole community in the especially like in a gas station terminal, which has a lottery terminal, you can have an alert situation so that people in the community know, there's a missing person and they can be on the lookout for that person.

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[00:24:17] Lori Berman: You just report it right away.

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[00:24:19] Lori Berman: Same like a child and an over 65. So you can report it right away. The police can see. Set it up and start looking for that person. Last year there were 300 times the purple alert was used. Yeah it's been a good tool for law enforcement.

They really like using it. And they knowing that it's something else in their toolbox that they can use to look for that. My aha moment, that's a really good question. I'm just looking back. I would say my real aha moment was like my 2nd year in the legislature and my microphone was turned off when I was speaking and I was pretty shocked.

Because it doesn't happen very much and it was. We were talking about something about lawyers. I remember, I don't even remember what the specific bill was about and I said, I, at that point, I had been a member of the Florida bar for 30 years, maybe 20 something years. And I said something like as a member of the bar, I.

I can't believe you are doing this. And I found out later on my mic was turned off because I said you because that was viewed as a personal attack. If I had said, I can't believe the legislature is doing this, it would have been harder for them to turn my microphone off. So I learned how you have to address things.

And it was a good lesson because I don't take any of this personally and we shouldn't, this should all be about policy and politics. And unfortunately, personality has become the rate reigning in the United States because of our former president who does so many personal attacks. I try. Sure, everything is about policy in Tallahassee, and that's my concern.

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[00:26:08] Lori Berman: was a pretty good learning moment for me when that happened.

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[00:26:17] Lori Berman: I did. And actually, I was mostly through my speech, which was the good part so it wasn't the end of the world. I got my,

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[00:26:30] Lori Berman: I would say the best thing that I do is that I can help my constituents. That to me, that's, and that has nothing to do with party. I'd ever ask anybody if somebody comes in, and they're having a problem with their unemployment, if they're having a problem with their driver's license, if they're having a problem with their Medicaid payments we can make a difference.

Sometimes it's unfortunate that they have to come to us to make a difference because I wish that the agencies or whoever we're dealing with could just. Handle the problems and they didn't have to come to us, but a lot of times it just gets so complicated and bringing us in uncomplicated things and we can really change people's lives.

When somebody absolutely driver's license, and then they come to us and say. I need my driver's license. I didn't do anything wrong. I, let's figure this out. It's a big life changer to get your driver's license back. To get money for Medicaid payments for elderly for long term care for people with disabilities.

Those are life changing things that and during the pandemic, we did so much unemployment insurance because everybody was unemployed and people had. It was really a very scary time. So to me, that's the greatest honor that I have as a legislator is that I can help people really get things from government that they're entitled to, we do that, obviously, sometimes not everybody's entitled and we have those issues too,

but I really enjoy that part of the job.

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[00:28:20] Lori Berman: I do, once a month, I do constituent day and you can come to my office. You can either, you can, if you don't want to do that, you can write me a letter or an email. Email is probably the preferred method. Write me an email, put forth your idea, tell me why, and if you want to talk to me about it, you can write an email first and we can set up a date.

Meet with you, I do it once a month, but we start going to Tallahassee. Very soon. In December, I'm going to be away on a trip. And then in January, we're two weeks in Tallahassee and then February three, and then all of March and April. So not as much time now. And it's late now. If somebody has an idea for it's pretty late.

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[00:29:06] Lori Berman: Yeah. The best timeframe is to start probably over the summer like May or June before everything gets next. Cause next year, especially. Committee weeks are early- committee weeks will start September, October, November this year because of the election, we couldn't start till everybody got elected.

So the 1st committee week is not until December this year. But yeah, so they, I have 30 bills right now that are in the pipeline for that. We're going to be filing. So it would be hard for me to, I don't have the bandwidth at this point really to add a new idea, but if it's something you just think you're going to solve the property insurance crisis, go for it.

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[00:29:49] Lori Berman: The other big issue I think we're going to address this session is the condo reserve crisis that's going on because Surfside collapsed. And because so many condos had been pushing their maintenance down the road.

We said, you have to do an inspection. Then you have to put money in reserves based on your inspection, or you have to actually fix whatever's an immediate problem. So as a result of that, these condominiums, which had been kicking the can down the road now have huge. Either bills to do the work now, or they have to put away huge reserves so that when they're, when they need a new roof in 5 years, the money will be there or when they need new plumbing or a new electricity electric, the money will be there.

And it's a real problem because we have so many people who are on fixed incomes living in these condominiums. And between the property insurance crisis and the reserve requirements, they can't afford to live there anymore because they're on fixed income. So I think we're going to do something about the reserves.

Maybe we'll set up our own loan in the state of Florida we can give the loans out. Banks don't want to loan on that for the most part. Maybe in the state of Florida will do the loan fund. So we're going to look into some ideas about that. Those are, I think, going to be the 2 of biggest issues when we go back to Tallahassee now.

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He wasn't called into school. He was missing. And John was missing too. Nobody heard or saw them. Why do you think that never happened?

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[00:31:41] Ali Kessler: Yeah, they just said the child is with his father. He's not missing interesting.

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[00:31:46] Ali Kessler: yeah.

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It's a real challenge. I'm sorry, but you're right. He was missing. So why wasn't there an alert put out? You're you are right. I don't know. I'm not sure.

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And that was. That was the hardest part for me at that time, because I had to get police escorts.

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[00:32:25] Ali Kessler: He was. Oh, I know. I know. Ybe that's something we can work on down the pipeline.

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[00:32:34] Ali Kessler: Yeah. All right. So last question. It's a big one. What do you do for fun outside of the office?

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And then we are in December. We're doing our 7th continent and we're going to Antartica

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[00:33:13] Lori Berman: Actually, it is going to be cold and I have it's summer there because it's the summer, even their summer is very cold. Somebody told me it's probably like around 30 all the most of the time.

So that's not terrible

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[00:33:27] Lori Berman: zero. Yeah. And it might be sub zero. I'm prepared. I have long underwear layers. Yeah.

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[00:33:37] Lori Berman: Australia, although I do love Europe, too, but Australia is just so unique. I've been a couple of times. We have some friends who are there.

So I've been to the barrier reef. I've been to northern nobody. Most Americans don't go. And of course, Sydney is a lot of fun. We've been to Perth on the West Coast. So I enjoy that. And then the other thing. The other love that I I have a couple, but I do like to read. I am in a book club, but the thing that I really like the most and that I try not to have to give up is playing tennis.

I love to play tennis and it's a great release for me.. As much as I can, I have a steady game on Sunday morning.

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[00:34:19] Lori Berman: So I've heard about too many people getting injured in pickleball. I know people love it. I've heard about too many people having injuries and I love my tennis, so I'm just going

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Stick with what you know. That sounds good.

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[00:34:37] Ali Kessler: Those are great things. I enjoy traveling as well. It's pretty much the only thing that keeps me going at this point.

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[00:34:43] Ali Kessler: Yeah. So I

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[00:34:48] Ali Kessler: Yeah. I try, I actually try to do things for gray, like things that I wouldn't normally do on my own. I do it just for gray, like going down a water slide or, I typically wouldn't have done that by myself before I had Greyson. So, I do things for him and I pretend he's with me sometimes.

Great.

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[00:35:18] Ali Kessler: I have to do something. Know you're busy and I appreciate you so much with talking with us and sharing all your knowledge.

And we look forward to hearing all about the new session, new bills, and hope to have you back sometime.

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[00:35:35] Ali Kessler: All right, great. Thank you so much, Senator Berman, and we will be in touch. Sounds great. Talk to you later.