I worked for a few years down in South Florida. For a while, my office was in Dade County, then later in Broward.

Do not worry about that. I worked indoors. I was not out toiling in the midday sun. Honestly, do I look like either a mad dog or an Englishman? Do not answer that!

There are, however, people who have to work out in that sun. Dade was a major agricultural producer. I often drove by tomato fields on the way to my house down there.

There are plenty of other crops in Dade. South Florida’s population is concentrated on the coasts. Inland areas remain agricultural. Even as I write this, people are sweating out in those fields.

Due to the heat and sun, Dade proposed some minimal worker protection. When it got real hot, employers would have to provide water and occasional shade breaks. So far, Dade was the only county considering this. Well, Gov. DeSantis and the Legislature to the rescue. Obviously we would not want workers to have to labor under “patchwork” laws. Imagine how hard it would be to work in the sun with different counties having different laws!

To protect the workers from legal hazard, the Legislature enacted Ch. 2024-80, which the governor gleefully signed. This worker-protection measure bars local governments from enacting local regulations, so workers do not face uneven regulation.

Local governments cannot require water and shade, or notices about heat risks, or heat monitoring. Also, they cannot require first aid for workers who pass out from the heat. Additionally, there is to be no cooling.

Now, as I said, I worked indoors. It was climate-controlled. The same is true of the Legislature. The main difference is that, in my case, it was private industry that paid me to sit indoors.

The legislators are paid public salaries. You might say that they are also paid by the lobbyists who feed them, buy them liquor and shady ladies, and donate money as requested. Those special interests are generally private industry, such as the pollution lobby or big banks.

In this case, huge industrial farms and worker-contracting firms supplied money. And we all know what the Legislature is thinking, because they are a bunch of coin-operated goobers. More important, we can guess what the workers in Dade are thinking — what a relief that the Legislature protected us from patchwork heat regulation!

— Andrews is a DeLand-area attorney and a longtime government critic. For purposes of the column, he finds it convenient that there is so much government to criticize.