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On today’s Palm Beach Post letters page, state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, rips the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act while local AFL-CIO President Pat Emmert rips Hasner.
House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, asserted his authority this afternoon and stripped a council chair position from Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami. The move elevates Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, to head of the House Criminal & Civil Justice Policy Council.
Word is Republican leadership was unhappy with Robaina’s handling of this bill in council yesterday that had the support of Cretul and Attorney General Bill McCollum. Word is that Robaina offered this amendment, that rewrote language on contingency fees.
Senate President Jeff Atwater got an earful from a combative State Farm agent at what was supposed to be a routine Q and A with T-Coast leaders.
State Farm agent Bill Knight peppered Atwater, who has been on the warpath against property insurers for what he believes are excessive rates, with questions about the state CAT fund and other insurance questions, often interrupting the president and ultimately shutting down the session.
State Farm recently announced it was leaving the state and canceling its 1.2 million clients over the next two years after state insurance officials turned down its request for a 47 percent rate hike.
The state’s catastrophe fund has about $8 billion in cash on hand, but needs to cover about $28 billion in losses if a major storm occurs.
“We are heading out and there’s no turning around at this point. Where are the dollars going to come from if we were to have a Category 4 or 5 storm hitting Tampa or Pinellas County or anyone else in the state?” Knight wanted to know.
“We would be in a world of hurt if this occurred,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said.
But that didn’t stop Knight.
Don Winstead
Alexander agreed that lawmakers need to move quickly to get the money already available for road and water projects that could create jobs the fastest.
He said he’d like to get the budget committees working on passing bills as early as tomorrow to appropriate the federal funds for the construction projects and for Medicaid spending. Depending on the House’s position, the legislature could pass the budget amendments as early as next week, he said.
Gov. Charlie Crist appointed Don Winstead to act as the state’s “recovery czar” last week.
But despite the necessary legislative approval for the spending to begin, Winstead has yet to meet with Alexander.
Hasner (left) and Klein
In what some Republicans would like to be a preview of a 2010 congressional race, state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, is calling out U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, over the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act.
The Florida Senate is in the process of making state spending more transparent with the future launch of a website detailing the budget.
The site, which will cost about $500,000 to create and another $75,000 a year to maintain, will be up and running in about four months, Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander said today at a press conference announcing the “Transparency Florida” initiative.
Alexander said the money is a good investment because the site will allow the public as well as public officials to drill down into the budget and see what taxpayers are footing the bill for down to state workers’ cell phones and agency cable television charges.
“I’d argue that we’ll get many, many fold savings” from the site, said Alexander, R-Lake Wales.
(more…)
James E.C. Perry this morning became the fourth justice appointed to the seven-member Florida Supreme Court by Gov. Charlie Crist.
Perry, 65, of Sanford, is a registered Democrat and the fourth African-American appointed to the state’s high court. But despite nearly nine years on the 18th Circuit Court, he’s a little hard to categorize.
Crist’s folks love his narrative (a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army who decided to go to law school the night of MLK’s assassination) and the fact that he was first appointed to the bench by conservative former Gov. Jeb Bush.
But the connection to Bush might not be enough for conservative activists.
A candidate wants election day to end with a victory photo — not a Palm Beach County jail mug shot. In Belle Glade, perennial candidate Richard Harris’ campaign ended in the latter category Tuesday.
He was arrested on an aggravated assault charge after sheriff’s deputies say he threatened a woman by swinging a baseball bat during a dispute outside a polling place. An arrest report says Harris denied threatening the woman and characterized the incident as a misunderstanding.
Our Jason Schultz has more here.
Harris ended up with 20.1 percent of the vote against Mary Ross Wilkerson.
Liberal bloggers and the Republican Party of Florida are noting that the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act introduced in Congress today no longer has U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, as a cosponsor.
Klein will “review this year’s bill carefully before it reaches the House floor,” a spokeswoman said.
Klein is highlighted on the liberal “Down With Tyranny” blog as one of 29 House Dems who cosponsored the legislation last year but aren’t cosponsors this year. The state GOP, which calls the bill as an assault on ballot privacy, is pressing Klein to “come clean” on whether he supports or opposes the bill.
Read more, including a statement from Klein’s office, after the jump….
After appealing to Warren Buffett to bankroll potential hurricane-related losses last year, Gov. Charlie Crist and other state officials will look to the federal government to help cover costs from a major storm this year.
“From the federal government’s standpoint, it would be one of the least risky things they’ve embarked on here in the last few months,” said John Forney, Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund financial adviser.
Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and state CFO Alex Sink all agreed Tuesday to push for a federal line of credit in case a major storm hits the state.
Retired Miami Heat basketball player and NBA All-Star Alonzo Mourning made an impassioned plea to lawmakers today seeking support of a bill that would help kidney patients pay for medical coverage.
Mourning was diagnosed with a rare kidney disorder and received a kidney transplant nine years ago at the age of 30 when he “was at the top of my game,” he told Senate Democrats at a luncheon this afternoon.
“The last thing on my mind at that particular time was thinking about kidney disease,” Mourning said.
“I was 30 years old. I was at the top of my game. MVP in the league. Olympic gold medalist. All-Star. You name it. So it was truly a humbling experience,” he said.
The transplant from Mourning’s relative allowed him to get back on the court and win a world championship.
“That’s a storybook life,” he said.
Mourning, who had health insurance provided by the NBA, spoke on behalf of a bill (SB 1022, HB 675) that would help about 500 less fortunate Floridians with end stage renal failure who lack the medical insurance to pay for expensive post-transplant drugs.
Clay Bennett | Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Updating this item, the Democratic National Committee announced today the top five submissions for the group’s anti-Rush Limbaugh billboard in West Palm Beach:
*Americans didn’t vote for a Rush to failure
*Hope and change cannot be Rush’d
*Failure is not an option for America’s future
*We can fix America, just don’t Rush it
*Rush: Say yes to America
If unemployment above 14 percent in some regions and a one out of 10 Floridians on food stamps isn’t bad enough, now unscrupulous spammers have launched stimulus scams on unsuspecting web surfers.
Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson issued an alert today warning Floridians about Internet ploys involving federal stimulus money.
One of the scams sent by e-mail promises grant dollars and asks consumers to provide their bank account number and other personal information that could result in identity theft, Bronson cautioned.
Another swindle asks consumers to pay an up-front fee for a grant or list of available grants.
“It’s clear that criminals are preying on the public’s desperation and using the stimulus plan to con people out of their hard-earned money,” Bronson said in a press release. “They should just delete these emails as quickly as possible and understand that the federal government is not providing stimulus money over the Internet.”
A recommendation from the Florida Public Service Commission for state lawmakers to mandate that 20 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 could generate 85,000 jobs in the state, according to The Vote Solar Initiative.
And the San Francisco-based group is taking out these classified ads in newspapers across the state, including The Palm Beach Post, for interested electricians and engineers to apply to the legislature for these jobs, Post writer Susan Salisbury reports today.
Gwen Rose, deputy director of The Vote Solar Initiative, said the jobs estimate comes from a study by Navigant Consulting that showed more than 3,800 megawatts of solar power could be generated if the state goes to the 20 percent standard. According to Navigant, with each megawatt yielding 15 to 30 direct jobs, that translates into 57,000 to 114,000 direct jobs — 85,500 is the mid-range.
Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson is pushing the powerful Senate budget chief to expedite use of the state’s economic stimulus money.
Lawmakers can spend some of Florida’s share of the package – aimed at helping cash-strapped states and creating jobs – by passing a special budget amendment or having a legislative committee approve it.
That would be much quicker, Lawson argued in a letter to Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, sent this morning.
The money includes $1.4 billion for road projects that transportation officials say could create or save about 30,000 jobs. But when the shovels meet the dirt is unknown, The Palm Beach Post reported in a web story this weekend.
Passing a spending bill will allow lawmakers to amend the package of road projects and introduce a potential political battle that could slow down the process, Lawson argued.
“You and I are far too familiar with the political posturing and machinations that can occur when billions of dollars are at stake and individual lawmakers are deciding where that money is to go,” Lawson, D-Tallahassee, wrote. “I fear for the little guy when the big guys are calling the shots.”
Greg Norman and Chris Everett (above right) this morning attended the Florida Cabinet meeting where state CFO Alex Sink celebrated them and other board members of the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida. The non-profit group, which helps pay for research projects aimed at the state’s at-risk children, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
Sink introduced the board, saying that Everett, “needs no introduction.” “Her picture is upstairs right outside my office,” Sink said. “She’s a member of the women’s hall of fame.”
Norman, Sink said, also needed no introduction. “But your picture is not outside my office,” she said.
Already frustrated jobless Floridians have more angst in store when trying to deal with the agency responsible for unemployment.
The Agency for Workforce Innovation can’t answer the phones and isn’t handing over the extra $25 a week to those receiving unemployment benefits. Agency officials said yesterday the weekly payments should begin by the end of March.
The 10,000 telephone calls coming into the agency have so overwhelmed the 1,012 phone lines that help-seekers end up getting nothing but busy signals. Lawmakers okayed an emergency $6.3 million to set up a private call center to handle about 5,000 calls a day that go unanswered.
But jobless folks shouldn’t start dialing yet.
The call center won’t be operational until July 1, agency officials said.
From left: Addie Greene, Burt Aaronson, Shelley Vana
Our Jennifer Sorentrue reports that three members of Palm Beach County’s corruption-tarnished commission will decline State Attorney Michael McAuliffe’s invitation to testify before a state grand jury trying to uncover more wrongdoing. McAuliffe characterized the probe as a general, information-gathering exercise that isn’t targeting specific individuals or transactions. He didn’t offer immunity.
The decliners: Burt Aaronson (“no need” to testify), Addie Greene (“I don’t have anything to hide”) and, according to an aide, Shelley Vana.
Florida’s neighbors Georgia and Alabama are among the 26 states with Web sites keeping the public informed about where and how they plan to spend federal stimulus dollars.
But the Sunshine State appears to have a problem illuminating its own recovery road map.
Gov. Charlie Crist’s office has yet to create a federally mandated Web site revealing how Florida’s $12.4 billion will be spent.
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