Floridians would pay sales tax on box seats, ostrich feed and some magazine and newspaper subsctiptions, but save on yacht and plane purchases under a bill, approved today by a key Florida House committee, that puts the state deeper in the red.

After weeks of contentious debate over whether to remove any of the state’s 246 sales tax breaks, the House Finance & Tax Council unanimously approved a measure that would eliminate some of the most politically palatable exemptions.

But the bill would also cap sales tax on boat and plane purchases and exempt back-to-school items, like clothes and school supplies, from sales taxes for one weekend this summer.

With Florida facing a $6 billion budget shortfall, the bill would cost the state $17.4 million next year.

“It’s far from perfect,” council Chairwoman Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said. “You don’t automatically sunset exemptions. You just have to have the guts to start talking about them. And when you start talking about them, you’ll find those that create economic development and those that will create equity within our taxation system.”

Democrats agreed, saying strong lobby efforts made the process difficult.

“Everybody seems to have an association,” said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando. “The only association we haven’t heard from is the ‘association for sales tax exemptions.’”

Here are the changes proposed in the bill:

(more…)

A Senate committee approved Public Service Commissioner Lisa Edgar over the objections of a powerful GOP senator whose constituents, he said, were adversely affected by her votes.

Edgar was appointed to the commission that regulates utilities by Gov. Jeb Bush, served as chairwoman of the panel and was reappointed by Gov. Charlie Crist. The Senate must sign off on her reappointment.

The Senate Communications, Energy and Public Utilities Committee postponed a vote on Edgar but approved her reappointment this morning by a 7-1 vote after an unusually lengthy hour-long Q and A session.

Anticipating committee member Mike Fasano’s opposition to Edgar, chairman Jim King advised the panel to be civil before the meeting began.

“This is not an inquisition. It is a confirmation,” King, R-Jacksonville, cautioned. King used a seldom-employed procedure requiring Edgar to be sworn in before she testified.

Fasano questioned Edgar about going against a staff recommendation allowing a 10.75 rate increase for TECO. Fasano said Edgar instead led the charge to hike the recommendation to 11.25 percent, costing Tampa utility consumers about $14.5 million a year. The commission approved that rate by a 4-1 vote.

(more…)

In addition to his six-figure paycheck as chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, Eric Johnson was paid about $80,000 last year for his work on Wexler’s reelection campaign and for Wexler’s PAC.

Two other Wexler staffers also got significant side income for helping Wexler’s political operation.

Some staffers do political work for their bosses as volunteers, but one Wexler staffer explains that his boss “thinks if you’re going to be doing work for the campaign, it’s better to pay you.”

Read about it here.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said today that he won’t challenge U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, for Congress in 2010:

“This is the right decision for me and my wife at this time,” Hasner said. “Representing the people of Florida and serving as House majority leader remains the greatest honor, and I will continue to be an advocate for the policies and principles that will get our state and our country moving again.”

A message sent to House lawmakers moments ago:

——Original Message——

From: Goodlette, Dudley

To: !HSE All House Members & LAs

Subject: BUDGET CONFERENCE

Sent: Apr 19, 2009 4:44 PM

TO: All Representatives

FROM: Speaker Larry Cretul

SUBJECT: Budget Conference

DATE: April 19, 2009

I appreciate your hard work last week passing the House Budget. At this time, budget conferences will not be meeting Monday morning. House Councils will meet as scheduled. We will continue to work with our Senate partners and will notify you when we have further information.

Again, thank you for your continued work on behalf of Floridians.

From The Post‘s Kimberly Miller:

In the year since declaring a hiring freeze in January 2008, Florida Atlantic University has hired nearly 500 employees, spending $175,000 for a basketball coach, $90,000 for the basketball coach’s son, $110,000 for an associate general counsel and $220,000 for a biomedical science professor.

The hires were made amid tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts, predicted layoffs and a worsening salary dispute with the school’s professors. FAU faculty members have not had across-the-board raises since 2006, leaving some to question the new hires, especially after FAU’s rejection April 10 of a state-recommended 2.5 percent raise that would have cost $1.9 million this year.

Personnel data obtained by The Palm Beach Post show that salaries for the new hires total $13 million. Of the 495 new employees, 74 were professors and 123 were adjunct or graduate student instructors, meaning 298 were not responsible for regular classroom teaching.

“You say we have freezes, but we’re really hiring, and now we’re being asked to make these budget reductions while we’re hiring,” said Tim Lenz, president-elect of FAU’s faculty senate. “It makes no sense to have hard freezes because some programs need to have positions filled, but the numbers raise some concern.”

More here.

From The Post‘s Kathleen Chapman:

When former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth took over the Department of Children and Families in January 2007, he vowed that the state would stop paying attorneys to fight lawsuits filed by families with valid claims against his agency.

Since then, DCF has settled with 104 plaintiffs, paying a total of more than $6.1 million. Butterworth’s successor at DCF, former state legislator George Sheldon, has continued that approach. In some cases, Sheldon said, it is better to help children who truly have been harmed by the agency’s mistakes than to continue racking up legal fees.

But the settlements are increasingly putting DCF’s commitments in conflict with a state legislature that often has been unwilling to pay.

More here.

Rep. Steve Precourt, R-Orlando, logs on to www.PostOnPolitics.com during House session Friday to read the grand jury indictment of former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin. (AP Photo/Phil Coale)

(more…)

JPMorgan Chase officials announced Friday they will stop using Indian call centers to answer customer service questions from Floridians on food stamps.

The announcement was made the same day the state’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.7 percent, the highest since 1975.

“No future calls will go to India,” Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon said. “This is permanent.”

The Palm Beach Post published a story Thursday about the frustration of a Jupiter woman who reached a customer service call center in India while trying to obtain state assistance. The state contracts with JPMorgan Chase to run parts of the Florida food stamp program and uses two customer service centers in India. The company will instead route calls to its centers in Ohio and Illinois.

“The state has indicated to us they want to bring these calls to the U.S.,” said JPMorgan spokesman John Murray. “We’re working with them to do so.”

More here.

It’s worth noting that a few of the state’s major papers did not put news of former Speaker Ray Sansom’s indictment on the front page. Instead, papers like the Florida Times-Union and Orlando Sentinel fronted an analysis of Gov. Charlie Crist’s schedule, including this headline from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, asking HOW MUCH DOES HE WORK?.

(more…)

UPDATE: Read the story published Saturday on page 1A.

Read the indictment here.

Former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, is facing a maximum five-year prison sentence after a grand jury indictment this morning on a felony charge of official misconduct.

Northwest Florida State College President Bob Richburg was also indicted for perjury.

The charges mostly surround Sansom’s work to tuck $6 million into the state budget for an emergency operations training center at the Destin airport. But a grand jury believed the project was instead for a hangar for developer and Destin Jet owner Jay Odom, one of Sansom’s top political benefactors. Odom had tried and failed to get the city of Destin and Okaloosa County interested in the project.

From the grand jury report:

The building essentially has the same design as Destin Jet’s 2004 design and is still an aircraft hangar.

…

No member of the legislature saw this appropriation until it was inserted into the appropriation bill during conference with [Sansoms'] Senate counterpart, Senator Lisa Carlton. The hangar project for a community college was the sole work of Ray Sansom, Jay Odom and Bob Richburg.

…

While direct evidence was not developed that Jay Odom would acquire an aircraft hangar in exchange for his generous campaign contributions there is strong inference of impropriety.

…

Your Grand Jurors find that the spirit of the Sunshine Law was clearly violated by both President Richburg and Representative Sansom.

…

(T)he appropriation process that gives unbridled discretion to the President of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Appropriation Chairman needs to be changed… The procedure currently in place requires that our elected legisaltors vote on a final budget that they have no knowledge about because it is finalized in a meeting between only two legisaltors.

(more…)

Lawmakers have passed a measure removing the term “shylock” from the criminal usury laws in the Florida statutes.

The Florida House approved the bill unanimously yesterday; the Senate unanimously passed the bill last month.

The measure (SB 318) now awaits Gov. Charlie Crist’s signature.

The offensive term dates back hundreds of years and became part of the vernacular based on a Shakespearean money-lender in “The Merchant of Venice.”

In the play, Shylock, a Jew, demanded a pound of flesh when the bankrupt Antonio defaulted on a loan.

Jews consider the term offensive and two Democratic lawmakers from Hollywood Sen. Eleanor Sobel and Rep. Elaine Schwartz, who are both Jewish, sponsored the bills.

The Anti-Defamation League lauded the measure’s passage.

“The terms ‘Shylock’ and ‘Shylocking’ based on the character of Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice have perpetuated negative portrayals and stereotypes about Jews. We applaud the long overdue removal of these harmful terms from Florida’s criminal usury statute. They have no place in our law or society,” Andrew Rosenkranz, ADL Florida Regional Director, said in a press release.

Rep. Mary Brandenburg, pictured far left, is planning a campaign for Palm Beach County Commission in 2010. Her fellow West Palm Beach Democrat, Priscilla Taylor, is hoping Gov. Charlie Crist appoints her to the panel next month. Those ambitions make their votes this morning to freeze impact fees for the next few years mildly interesting.

The women joined all the House Republicans and about half of the Democratic caucus in a 92-26 vote to freeze impact fees through 2011. The measure was cast as an economic development measure by sponsor, Rep. Gary Aubuchon, R-Cape Coral.

A similar measure is moving through the Senate.

Shanda Kirkwood reads to her Pine Grove Elementary fourth grade class. (Palm Beach Post)

The Florida House this morning approved a constitutional amendment for the 2010 ballot that, if voters approved, would let school districts keep current class size caps at the school average instead of individual classrooms.

The 78-41 vote included a few Democrats crossing over to join Republicans: Jim Waldman of Coconut Creek, Debbie Boyd of Newberry and Leonard Bembry of Greenville.

The debate over the measure, sponsored by Rep. Will Weatherford, a Wesley Chapel Republican hoping to become speaker in 2012, also offered a few contenders for Quote of the Day, including this one that earned a “Hey!” from Speaker Larry Cretul.

“Hypocrisy knows no bounds in this chamber,” said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando.

The Senate companion (SB 1828) is scheduled for its final committee hearing next week.

The Florida House this morning restored about $63,000 in funding for the state Holocaust Museum, pictured left. And here’s the partisan press release from the House Republican Office that accuses a handful of Democrats of, well, partisanship.

“It is outrageous that 13 Democrats would put partisan politics ahead of increasing funding for education about the Holocaust by voting against this measure,” House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said in the release.

What happened this morning was that Rep. Marty Kiar, D-Davie, offered this amendment to move about $35,000 away from the school recognition program to the holocaust museum, which is located in St. Petersburg.

Hasner then upped the ante by offering a substitute amendment that took even more money from the Excellent Teaching Program.

But several Democrats — 13 to be exact — voted against Hasner’s amendment, including several who said they didn’t want to take any money out of the state education budget.

The Senate unanimously approved a buck-a-pack cigarette tax expected to raise nearly $1 billion for health care programs.

Boca Raton Democrat Ted Deutch made the issue his top priority and the state’s dire fiscal straits – a $6 billion spending shortfall – helped persuade some senators to hold their nose and vote for the bill although they object to it.

The tax will discourage smokers and result in healthier Floridians while cutting back on the amount of money the state pays for tobacco-related illnesses in Medicaid patients, Deutch argued.

A provision to make it illegal to possess cigarettes sold on Indian reservations was taken out of the bill.

Instead, the measure (SB 1840) was amended to allow every member of the tribe to buy the equivalent of five packs of smokes a day for every day of the year. The population count of the tribes includes kids.

The Senate relies on nearly $900 million from the tobacco tax although the House does not have a similar provision.

Sen. Ronda Storms is demanding an investigation into a contract in which the state has spent more than $50 million over the past three years to a private vendor to provide food stamp services.

The Palm Beach Post reported today that Department of Children and Families vendor JPMorgan Chase is using customer service call centers in India even as the state’s unemployment rate is 9.4 percent and climbing.

Storms brought up the outsourcing during budget discussions on the Senate floor this morning.

“I have requested an investigation into that. As soon as we get the results of that investigation then I’ll bring it before the body and then we’ll deal with it perhaps in budget,” Storms, R-Valrico, said.

It’s not the first time lawmakers opposed offshoring state contracts, but it is unusual that it’s a Republican questioning the practice this time.

Five years ago, Senate Democrats demanded that Gov. Jeb Bush – the “father” of privatization – audit whether private vendors had outsourced state contracts to offshore locations, including India, but that went nowhere.

The latest batch of Federal Election Commission reports are in!

Read about ‘em after the jump……

(more…)

View DCF customer service centers in a larger map
After selling real estate for two decades in Palm Beach County, Michelle Brown picked up a baby-sitting job when the housing market tanked. Then the children’s parents had their hours cut at work, so she turned to the state for help in buying food.

When Brown called the customer service line for the state’s food stamp program, a phone rang in India.

“It’s like a slap in the face,” said Brown, 52, of Jupiter. “That’s a job I’d be qualified for.”

With unemployment at 9.4 percent in Florida and nearly 50,000 new applications for food stamps each month, the state has paid JPMorgan Chase nearly $50 million over the past three years to provide food stamp program services, which include customer service call centers in Bangalore and Gurgaon, India.

Read the rest here.