Privatization of a state hospital for the criminally insane is off the table for now after being quietly removed from the Senate budget during the Ways and Means Committee meeting today.
Sen. Durell Peaden made the move to quash the effort that could have saved the state about $6 million a year but opposed by Northeast Florida State Hospital employees and local officials who say the area’s economy is dependent on the facility and that a private company won’t pay as well.
About 200 workers and others from Baker County and the small town of Macclenny where the hospital is located came to the Capitol to plead with lawmakers to keep it in the state’s hands.
Dozens of them sat patiently through four hours of the committee meeting before Peaden introduced his amendment in his understated Panhandle style.
“This little simple amendment eliminates the privatization of Northeast Florida State Hospital,” Peaden, R-Crestview, said.
Without debating or closing on the bill, the amendment was adopted, drawing applause from the audience.
The House proposal still includes the outsourcing of the hospital.
Sen. Ted Deutch’s top priority – a buck-a-pack cigarette tax – is virtually guaranteed to get passed today by the powerful Ways and Means Committee, its last stop before heading to the floor.
But the Boca Raton Democrat won’t be able to vote on the bill he’s pushed since joining the legislature last year.
Deutch had to leave town suddenly last night because of a death in the family.
Sen. Thad Altman, a freshman Republican from Melbourne who chairs the Finance and Tax Committee, will present the cigarette tax bill (SB 1840) to the budget panel, which Deutch vice-chairs, this afternoon.
Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander has included the $1 billion the tax is supposed to generate in the budget to pay for health care, making it almost certain it will pass out of his committee today.
The House and the governor haven’t signed off on the tax yet.
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor may be a grandmother whose grandkids can easily outmaneuver her in the computer world, but House Speaker Larry Cretul thinks she’s plenty tech-savvy.
He asked O’Connor to twitter the lawmakers throughout the session to help them as they struggle to craft a budget with $6.5 billion less to spend than anticipated.
O’Connor spoke briefly to a joint session of the legislature this morning touting her new civics education website – ourcourts.org – aimed at teaching youngsters about the third branch of government.
“I’m an old grandmother and my grandchildren are so much better at computer use than I am it’s a night and day difference,” she said. “But it’s a very exciting project and we have a long way to go to rejuvenate our nation’s effort to excite its citizens.”
State Rep. Maria Sachs introduced retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to a joint session of the legislature this morning, lauding the Arizona resident as a role model for women.
O’Connor is in town to push her civics education after recently launching an education website, ourcourts.org.
Sachs, a Democratic lawyer from Delray Beach, asked the women in the gallery and on the floor to stand to honor O’Connor.
“These are the women whose lives have been changed because of your path, because of your light, and ladies and gentlemen I present to you our light bulb, justice Sandra Day O’Connor,” Sachs said.
Circuit Judge David Crow’s Monday ruling that upheld Palm Beach Mayor Jack McDonald’s one-vote victory in a February runoff doesn’t end the legal wrangling over how absentee ballots should be counted.
Crow even says so.
“This court recognizes that this decision will not be the final word in this dispute,” he writes near the beginning of his 16-page opinion.
Indeed, the attorney for McDonald challenger Gerry Goldsmith says he plans to appeal.
A controversial Central Florida rail project appeared mysteriously in the Senate budget plan today not long before Senate Democratic leaders demanded that the $641 million for the plan be spent elsewhere.
The language was not included in the budget package vetted by the Senate Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Committee but wound up in its budget anyway.
“This is a backdoor approach to legislation,” said Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson of Tallahassee who earlier in the day dubbed the CSX commuter rail project the “choo-choo to nowhere…even Mickey Mouse can’t use.”
Proposed legislation for the commuter rail deal has yet to be approved by the House or the Senate, making the maneuver all the more devious, Lawson said.
And with a $6 billion spending gap, lawmakers should spend the money putting people back to work on road projects the rail project money could be spent on. (more…)
The Senate budget plan includes no boost to health care spending despite $1 billion earmarked from the federal stimulus package and an anticipated $1 billion from a proposed cigarette tax hike.
That’s raised the bipartisan hackles of Senate Health and Human Services budget committee members, including Chairman Durell Peaden, who phoned in his complaints on Friday to Gov. Charlie Crist.
“You want it in oral communication or blood pressure readings?” Peaden, R-Crestview, said of his disappointment.
Peaden said he has no clue where the money meant for health care is going.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
Part of the stimulus money is going to pay for programs for the medically needy and to accommodate increases in the Medicaid caseload, as required to get the federal stimulus money.
But nearly $800 million of the stimulus money is going to be used for non-health care programs and replaced with money a buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal — if it passes.
Either way, the buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal will generate $1 billion to offset the more than $1.3 billion the state now pays for tobacco-related illnesses, the proposals sponsor Sen. Ted Deutch said.
“This legislation will generate in excess of $1 billion in the first year. That is new revenue that will go into the health care trust fund for the purpose of funding health care,” Deutch, D-Boca Raton, said..
Sen. Nan Rich called the fund shift a “bait-and-switch” that defies the intent of the federal stimulus plan. (more…)
Gov. Charlie Crist made a surprise visit to a Senate committee meeting this morning, watching as they unanimously passed one of his top priorities: a clean energy bill.
The committee also stripped out a penny gasoline tax increase, also pleasing Crist, who stuck around until the meeting ended to thank Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee members.
The House has balked at the “20 by 2020″ proposal although it was watered down by no longer requiring utilities to include nuclear energy in their portfolios by 2020. The House has no energy plan, and bill (SB 1154) sponsor Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, to negotiate, told the committee said he has no idea whether they plan to move one or not.
Nevertheless, Crist remained characteristically optimistic after the Senate vote, hailing the removal of the gas tax. (more…)
Former Democratic state Rep. Irv Slosberg burst on the local political scene in 2000 by dispensing corned beef sandwiches and schlepper bags. He later set up a freelance hurricane-relief/election campaign effort and called it the “Schlosberg Emergency Management Agency” or SEMA.
His latest venture is producing and starring in pro-Israel TV shows for which he hopes to land a syndication deal. He calls it “Irv Jazeera.”
Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday looks closely at his portrait that hangs in the Tallahassee City Hall. Crist was at the hall to attend the kids only town hall meeting.(AP Photo/Phil Coale)
Florida Children & Families Department Secretary George Sheldon told Post reporter Kathleen Chapman that he’ll find $1 million in his budget for Jorge and Debbie Garcia-Bengochea, a couple formerly of Boynton Beach who adopted a set of brothers who had been raped, caged, and starved while in foster care. Read today’s front-page story here.
The department admitted hiding the boys’ histories from the family, but the couple agreed to forgo a jury trial in return for DCF’s support for a claims bill in the legislature that would pay the family $10 million over a decade.
Their fate now hinges on House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, who spoke with the family Friday, and Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, who sponsored the claims bill on their behalf last year.
Their staffs warn that the state budget has never been tighter and say that they can’t make any promises.
Debbie and Jorge say they understand that, but by next year, when their oldest son is 18, it will be too late.
More than a decade ago, one of the boys “begged for help – he held on to the social worker’s leg, begging her not to leave him,” Debbie said. “Here it is, all these years later, and we are still begging for help.”
From the Palm Beach Post editorial board this morning:
Sen. King has been in the Legislature since 1987. As a former House majority leader and Senate president, he’s been one of Tallahassee’s most powerful legislators. If he had wanted to make the university system great, it would be. It isn’t. It’s good, but far from one of the country’s best.
Yet Sen. King touts that political experience as a qualification to run the university system. Why, he’d even resign his Senate seat if chosen, presumably trying to distinguish himself from Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Destin, who quit as speaker because he got a six-figure job at Northwest Florida College after steering millions to the institution.
But does Sen. King want the job because he has a plan to make the system great? No. He has a plan to make himself some money.
Sen. Charlie Dean says he should quit his post as Majority Whip if lawmakers move forward with a push to privatize a state-run mental hospital for the criminally insane in his district.
Dean said that’s not merely a threat.
“If I can’t be a team player and jump in with what everybody wants then maybe I ought not to be the whip,” Dean, R-Inverness, said. “If you’re the whip you’re supposed to be the team player and I just think this is wrong.
Both the House and the Senate have included privatization of the Northeast Florida State Hospital in Macclenny in their budget proposals. Staff estimate a savings of about $6 million per year, or a 9 percent annual drop, in spending if the Department of Children and Families no longer runs the facility, which employees about 1,100 state workers.
DCF officials say it will cost about $4 million to buy out the workers, but Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander said the move will result in savings in the long run. (more…)
Another Republican is clearing the way for a potential U.S. Senate bid by Gov. Charlie Crist.
U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, who used to represent a portion of Palm Beach County in the state House before moving west to represent a Fort Myers-area congressional district, says he won’t run for U.S. Senate next year and will back Crist if the governor decides to pursue the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez in 2010.
Crist is expected to announce in May whether he’s running. Of the potential non-Crist Republican candidates for Senate, Mack was among the strongest in polls — perhaps because he’s the son of former U.S. Sen. Connie Mack and the great-grandson of legendary suit-wearing Philadelphia A’s manager and baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack.
Terry Mahoney, the long-suffering wife of former U.S. Congressman Tim Mahoney, wants to depose eight people in the couple’s divorce in West Palm Beach.
Once bitter rivals, former state Rep. Irv Slosberg and Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson appear to have patched things up — at least enough for them to appear together next week at a traffic-safety event in West Palm Beach.
Slosberg, who lost a 2006 Democratic state Senate primary after Aaronson and other south-county Dems backed underdog Ted Deutch, flirted with challenging Aaronson in 2008 but decided against it.
Slosberg, who lost a teenage daughter in a 1996 car crash, is continuing to promote traffic safety through a nonprofit foundation. He’s also spending lots of time on his half-hour Slosberg Report TV show, a paid program that promotes Israel to South Florida viewers.
“There’s Al Jazeera and there’s Irv Jazeera,” says Slosberg. “Al Jazeera presents one side of the story. And Irv Jazeera presents the Israeli side.”
LAKE WORTH — Former mayor Tom Ramiccio is planning to run for mayor again in November, when he expects current mayor Jeff Clemens to step down to pursue a 2010 campaign for state House to replace term-limited state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach (who’s running for the county commission seat of term-limited Jeff Koons).
Clemens has shown interest in running for Brandenburg’s District 89 seat, but hasn’t made an official announcement. Pete Brandenburg, husband of the state House incumbent, has already launched a campaign. Clemens and Pete Brandenburg are both Democrats.
Delray Beach activist Nick Loeb announced at tonight’s Palm Beach County GOP meeting that he’ll run in 2010 for the south-county seat of term-limited state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton. Former Boca councilman Bill Hager has also announced he’s running in the GOP primary. Democrats are expected to make a play for the seat as well. Loeb is managing partner of Carbon Solutions America, a company that helps businesses become more energy efficient.
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