Pmalm Beach post

Thursday, May 3

Legislator's stunt creates capital stink

By Mary Ellen Klas, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 3, 2001

TALLAHASSEE -- The acrimonious House debate on the nursing home bill took a malodorous turn Wednesday as a key legislator had a gift-wrapped, 25-pound box of cow manure delivered to a nursing home lobbyist.

In one of the strangest turns of events all session, the head of an influential business lobbying group demanded that House Speaker Tom Feeney immediately discipline the legislator, Rep. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon, and make her apologize.

Feeney told Argenziano he thought the action was inappropriate and asked her apologize.

But she refused, saying the lobbyist, Jodi Chase, owed her an apology for "invading" her office during the House nursing home debate to insult her and for her "arrogant shove-it-down-their-throat techniques."

Feeney said he will send Argenziano a letter of admonishment and consider taking away her chairmanship of the House Healthy Communities Council.

"I am a huge admirer of Nancy but it does make it difficult to rely on people when you just don't know what's going to happen next," he said.

Argenziano, one of the House's sponsors of the nursing home bill and the only Republican to vote against it Wednesday, opposed the litigation limits inserted in the bill by House and Senate leaders. Unhappy with her intransigence, Feeney cut Argenziano out of decisions.

Argenziano was at odds with industry lobbyists all session, especially when they were given better access to Feeney than she had. So when Chase, a leading nursing home lobbyist who had not come to Argenziano's office all session, walked into her empty office Tuesday and sat on her couch during the House debate on the bill, Argenziano was insulted.

Argenziano said she bought the manure at a feed store and had it delivered to Chase with a card that said: "Mrs. Chase, I believe you deposited this in my office in your uninvited visit there yesterday."

She called Chase's visit "a rub-it-in-my-face kind of a thing."

A confused Chase received the package at the Capitol about two hours after the House passed the most contentious bill of the session. Suspicious, she asked Capital Police to handle it. She never looked inside.

When Capital Police returned the box to Argenziano's office, she had her staff send it to Chase's office. That prompted Jon Shebel, president of Associated Industries of Florida, to fire off a letter to Feeney.

He called it "one of the most despicable acts" he had ever seen by a legislator and "a low-rent, immature, indefensible and libelous act of slander."

Anticipating the scolding, Argenziano began soliciting support. By the end of the day, she had received the signatures of more than 40 of the 120 House members saying they agreed with her that her actions were "within the realm of that freedom of speech available to each citizen."

mary_ellen_klas@pbpost.com

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Answers

Considering that this is Florida, lucky it wasn't a dead chicken....

LOL

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001