Democratic CFO Alex Sink was poised but shaken this afternoon after Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum, both Republicans, thwarted her proposal to increase the number of trustees that oversee the embattled State Board of Administration.

Ironically, it was an argument against politics — made to what has become an increasingly political trustee board — that helped doom Sink’s proposal.

The SBA has been the target of reforms since almost squandering a $25 billion investment fund filled with local government tax money in 2007. Sink has penned many of the changes, but the one she says was her most important was all but demolished today.

The trustees include Crist, McCollum and Sink. Sink argues that elected officials often don’t have the background to dig into the state’s investment policies and suggested adding at least two more trustees to the panel: a beneficiary from the state’s $130 billion pension fund and someone with a strong investment background.

But former CFO Tom Gallagher, a Republican and veteran politician, on Tuesday attended his second Cabinet meeting since leaving office in 2006 to argue that Sink’s plan would also add a layer of politics to the panel. “Keep the politics out of the decision making on investments,” he said.

But Gallagher made his no-politics argument to an exceedingly political board: Sink and McCollum are the leading gubernatorial candidates from their respective parties and, still almost a year from a election day, neither wants to give the other any opportunity for momentum.

That leaves Crist as the tie breaker.

And while it’s easy to imagine that 15 months ago — before Mel Martinez Jenga’d the state’s political structure — Crist agreeing to give a voice to more diverse interests, today he’s facing his own problems with his party. And given that, it’s probably easier for him to team up with McCollum.

The two voted to send two proposals to the overtly political legislature: Sink’s plan and another from McCollum, who, instead of increasing the number of trustees, wants to add members to the trustees’ advisory panel.

Crist dismissed the notion that he was punting on the issue by sending both to the Republican-led Senate and House. “You can view it any way you want, I suppose. But having the legislature have the opportunity to review it is prudent and smart,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty good legislature.”

The issue also sheds an interesting light on Sink’s politics.

First, she probably could have avoided the “defeat” altogether. When she made her motion, she all but acknowledged the almost certain outcome. Instead of ending up on the losing side of a vote, she could have put on a happy face, amended her plan with McCollum’s and declared at least partial victory while sending both proposals to lawmakers.

Instead, she talked about putting “on record” her opinion that McCollum’s plan to increasie the advisory board offered no “value added.” “My focus is really on the people who have the fiduciary responsibility on the board,” Sink said.

Sink also could have had a different result by bringing up this proposal sooner. The meltdown of the pool was in November 2007. In a reform process at the SBA that seems to have more fits than starts, why has it taken so long for Sink to get a vote on her “most important” change?

Lastly, it seems important to finish this up by referring back to the first sentence of this blog item: Sink was upset about this vote.

Maybe it was the passion of a former bank president trying to right this state’s financial ship. Or maybe it was frustration over the same thing.

Or maybe it was just her adrenaline pumping after taking on Crist and McCollum in public, even though she had to have been prepared for the situation.

Sink still stood and waited to answer questions from reporters, who naturally first approached Crist after the meeting. She was confident in her answers, but it will be an interesting to see how Sink, with one relatively obscure statewide CFO race under her belt, fares in the coming year as the chorus of Republican opposition only continues to mount against her.

Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, State Board of Administration

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns, Charlie Crist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.