By Mark Schlakman, special to the Times
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

When they meet today as the Clemency Board, Gov. Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson will likely revisit concerns surrounding a recent audit of the Parole Commission's civil rights restoration process.

Sink will likely renew her call to revoke the civil rights of 13 individuals referenced in the audit whose rights to vote, eligibility to serve on a jury and hold public office were restored in error.

Regardless of what the board decides, the glaring reality is that Florida's civil rights restoration process is largely broken and widely misunderstood. The April 2007 rule change that provided for expedited processing of case files involving nonviolent offenses, along with certain kinds of violent offenses, didn't entirely fix the system.

Eligibility for state occupational licenses and other employment requiring state certification is often mischaracterized as if it were a right within the bundle of rights subject to restoration in Florida. This common mischaracterization complicates efforts to achieve the kind of comprehensive civil rights restoration reform that Crist may have envisioned at the outset of his term.

Similarly, misperceptions about the public safety implications relating to ex-felon employment eligibility have been a distraction and a source of continuing controversy. The civil rights restoration process was never intended to serve this larger purpose.