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For the second year in a row, state lawmakers are treading on questionable ground in voting to test for drugs. The state House today approved random drug testing for state employees, but lawmakers and the Governor are zero for two when it comes to sniffing out illegal substances.

The legislation would allow ten percent of the state’s work force to be randomly drug tested four times a year. That’s fifty thousand tests. Rep. Carlos Trujillo says it will make the workplace safer. “I think it improves the quality of life of public employees”
Trujillo told his colleagues.

But Rep. Rick Kriseman says initial evidence has found few positive tests. “The Department of Transportation, with more than six thousand employees, only had two positive tests of over five hundred that was done,” says the St. Petersburg representative.

The idea unleashed a triad of opposition. “You don’t want to do it to the Governor, you don’t want to do it to us. I tell you, what you are doing, you’re being bullies” said incoming Democratic Leader Perry thurston. Rep. Irv Slosberg of Palm Beach took a more compassionate approach. “It’s all about forgiveness. People make mistakes in life and we have to forgive them and we have to try and work with them” say Slosberg.

Last years legislation ordering drug testing for welfare recipients has been put on hold by the Federal Courts. So too has a plan by the Governor to order state employee testing by executive order.

The legislation made Florida the brunt of a national joke on a comedy news show.

Lawmakers say they don’t care. Rep. Scott Plakon says interpreting the constitution is not the legislature’s job. “It is our job to make good public policy that we think benefits all Floridians, and that’s what this is” said Plakon.

And there is little doubt that if the random tests are signed into law, it’ll go straight to court. ACLU Legislative Coordinator Ronald Bilbao says court rulings are clear. “Random, suspicion less drug testing, absent a safety sensitive position, by the government, is unconstitutional under the fourth amendment” says Bilbao.

While ordering the tests, lawmakers gave agencies no cash, forcing them to cut elsewhere to carry out the law.