The gubernatorial campaign fur continues to fly in the battle between Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum, this time over what is a tax “cut” and whether they’re good or bad for businesses.

Sink’s campaign took a swing at McCollum for opposing tax cuts for small businesses to jump-start the economy and create jobs.

In fact, McCollum told reporters yesterday that he didn’t think targeted tax credits or incentives work out so great in the long term.

Here’s what McCollum said after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.

“Targeted tax credits, in my experience in Washington, were minimally effective. They can be in the short run but they’re not in the long run very effective,” the former Congressman said.

After the two campaigns traded insults on other matters throughout the day, Sink’s campaign blasted McCollum for being against tax cuts.

“Career politician Bill McCollum says tax cuts don’t work, but he’s just plain wrong- wrong for small businesses, wrong for our economy, and wrong for everyday Floridians. The choice in this election just got a little clearer- a career politician who cites his decades in Congress as a reason to oppose tax cuts versus a businesswoman who knows what it’s going to take to get our economy back on track,” reads a press release issued by Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Conchita Cruz.

Hang on.

McCollum spoke about tax credits or tax incentives. Are they the same as tax cuts?

“He said tax credits and tax credits are tax cuts,” Sink said in an e-mail from Cruz.

This from McCollum’s campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell.

“It is laughable that Alex Sink, who has made thousands in personal campaign contributions to liberal tax-and-spend Democrats, would try to assert she is a fiscal conservative. Following more political stunts from her official office at taxpayer expense, Alex Sink has resorted to ridiculous attempts to obfuscate the facts.

“Bill McCollum has a bullet-proof record of fighting to cut taxes across the board for families and businesses that speaks for itself,” Campbell said in a press release.

It didn’t take long for Attorney General Bill McCollum’s campaign to slap Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s proposal to save $10 million a year by leaving her agency’s middle management positions unfilled after workers retire or leave the state.

The GOP candidate for governor’s campaign called Sink’s announcement a political publicity stunt by her official state office.

“On the heels of a failed publicity stunt calling for Florida’s first Paperclip Czar, it is clear that Alex Sink is running her political campaign out of the Department of Financial Services at the taxpayers’ expense.

“If Alex Sink is serious about streamlining government, maybe she should begin by cutting back on the bloated political and public relations operation being funded by the tax dollars of hardworking Floridians – one that she disingenuously worked to expand in anticipation of her campaign,” McCollum’s campaign said in a press release issued shortly after Sink’s announcement.

McCollum’s campaign lashed out at Sink for proposing to save the state more than $200,000 by cutting back on office supplies. But McCollum’s own director of administration last week proposed doing exactly the same thing to save taxpayers at least $250,000 by reducing office supply spending, including reusing paper clips.

Sink’s campaign shot back with the following:

“Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office has been criticized for playing politics through his official office numerous times, most notably by granting a $1.4 million dollar no-bid contract to his political consultant that produced a thinly veiled campaign ad with taxpayer dollars.”

McCollum hired his former political consultant last year to produce television ads featuring the attorney general warning parents about cyber predators.

Palm Beach County Republican Vice Chairwoman Beth Kigel was included today on the regional leadership team for Charlie Crist’s U.S. Senate campaign. Kigel was named the county chair of the campaign in October.

Continue reading for the rest of Crist’s leadership team.

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Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Democratic gubernatorial candidate says she’s going to shrink state government and save taxpayers up to $10 million a year by trimming middle management in her agency.

State workers don’t have to worry about layoffs, though – the former banker she’s going to leave middle management positions empty when current employees retire or resign. It will take up to 18 months to achieve the savings, long after Sink’s time as CFO has ended.

Sink’s announcement today is a continuation of her emphasis on bringing a business-like approach to government.

She recently caught fire from her GOP Cabinet colleague Attorney General Bill McCollum’s campaign for governor for promoting cost savings by cutting back on office supplies, including paper clips.

But McCollum’s own director of administration last week testified before a Senate committee that his office could save $238,000 a year by skimping on office supplies and reusing paper clips.

Sink set a goal of one supervisor for every seven workers, cutting back from a current ratio of one to five in her agency. She says taxpayers could save about $300 million a year if all state agencies did the same.

Many state agencies are already doing what Sink proposes – leaving vacant positions empty – for the past several years because of budget cuts.

Stay tuned to find out what the ratio of middle managers to workers is in McCollum’s office.

Attorney General Bill McCollum continues to defer to GOP party leaders instead of ordering an investigation into possible criminal conduct regarding credit card abuses at the Republican Party of Florida.

McCollum today said he may ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to look into the matter but that he would wait until the new chairman of the RPOF – expected to be Sen. John Thrasher – is elected this weekend.

Also today, Florida Democrats shut down McCollum’s anti-corruption hotline, filling up the 800 number’s voice mail in an effort to draw attention to McCollum’s refusal to investigate the credit card charges even after other top Republicans want the books opened.

McCollum said he won’t ask for inquiry until an audit of the RPOF is complete and he gets direction from the new party chairman to move although Gov. Charlie Crist last week said that party officials should open the books now.

“I’m waiting about what the new chairman might discover. I don’t see any evidence at this point of criminal behavior,” McCollum said today after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.

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From the Washington Post today:

Karin Hoffman, founder of DC Works For Us, a South Florida tea party group, said she initiated the meeting by approaching Steele last month and asking him to sit down with a range of tea party organizers. She said her goal is to open a civil dialogue with the GOP leadership, but she dismissed any suggestion that tea party groups would merge with the Republican Party.

“From the get-go, the grass-roots movement emerged from people desiring to be heard and not feeling like their voices are being heard in Washington,” Hoffman said in an interview. “This is the beginning of a formal discussion with the political establishment.”

Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla is likely to announce his entree into the Congressional race for U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart’s seat very soon.

Diaz de la Portilla, who is term-limited out of office this year, is traveling to Naples this week to drum up support for his candidacy for the district that stretches across the state from Broward and Miami-Dade County to the West Coast.

Mario Diaz-Balart, who won his last election with just 53 percent of the vote, is leaving his seat to run for his brother Lincoln’s seat after Lincoln Diaz-Balart declared he won’t seek re-election in the fall.

State Rep. David Rivera, the powerful House budget chairman, is also seriously considering abandoning his state Senate race and jumping into the Congressional battle for the open District 25 seat.

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Sitting House members and current staff of the Florida House have been told they will not receive subpoenas in the chamber’s investigation of former Republican House Speaker Ray Sansom, said Jill Chamberlin, spokesman for Republican House Speaker Larry Cretul.

“The speaker determined that the staff would be required to testify. And if they would not, they would need to resign and then be subpoenaed,” Chamberlin said. “In the case of House members, they were advised that we expect them to cooperate fully. And then there is no need to subpoena our own members.”

Cretul must approve any subpoenas issued in the potentially explosive investigation of Sansom, who is accused of damaging the public’s trust in the House by using his influence to gain a six-figure job at Northwest Florida State College.

Sansom, who has maintained his innocence, requested last week that 35 men and women receive subpoenas. Rep. Bill Galvano, a Sarasota Republican leading the investigation, determined at the time that parliamentary rules prevent him issues subpoenas to sitting members of the state Senate.

As freshman U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, seeks reelection this year, older brother Pat Rooney Jr. is running for a state House seat and younger brother Brian Rooney is trying to win a Michigan congressional seat.

Read about it this week’s Politics column.

Also: Read about how prosecutors want tougher residency standards in response to Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher’s frequent address changes when she was a state House member. And Robert Wexler returns to South Florida this week.

Seeking to put the Florida governor’s race in a national context, Republican Bill McCollum invoked Scott Brown and ripped President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a speech at tonight’s Palm Beach County GOP Lincoln Day dinner.

He also blasted Democratic rival Alex Sink as being “in lockstep with liberals in Washington.”

Click here to read about the speech.

And read expanded excerpts of McCollum’s remarks about Sink and the Sink campaign’s response after the jump….

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“Although the conduct reviewed is questionable and it appears that Ms. Bucher was manipulating her residency documents, there are no Florida statutes that directly address her behavior.”

So says a Palm Beach County state attorney’s memo concluding that no criminal charges should be filed against Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher for her multiple residency changes while she was a state House member from 2000 to 2008.

Read about it here.

Bucher and her husband owned a house outside her legislative district, but — in a practice that’s not uncommon among elected officials in Palm Beach County – Bucher registered to vote at a series of addresses inside the district.

A political rival alleged in 2008 that Bucher didn’t live where she claimed and therefore had signed false voter registration documents. Eighteen months later, the state attorney’s office concluded that Florida’s residency standard is too “vague” and “ambiguous” to pursue any charges.

That was the total pledged to Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate Republican primary campaign against Gov. Charlie Crist in a pair of online fund-raisers known as “money bombs.”

It’s a huge number.

It doesn’t beat Crist’s best stretch of this race (he collected $1 million over three days in June). But it is 25 percent of what Rubio raised in the first nine months of his campaign and 41 percent of all the cash he had on hand to start the year, about $2.1 million.

Crist reported a total of $7.6 million in campaign cash to start 2010.

The money bombs also brought more than 8,000 donations directly to the campaign. As a comparison, Rubio’s campaign had about 11,000 donors through its first six months.

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A Republican U.S. Senate candidate, a Democratic Palm Beach County Commission candidate and the next Florida Senate President could all be forced to testify if a state House investigation into whether its former leader betrayed the public trust goes forward as scheduled.

The potential of such an event, which could end in the first expulsion from the House in nearly 60 years, exploding in an election-year media fiasco in the midst of the legislature’s annual spring lawmaking session has sparked negotiations for a potential settlement. But so far, both sides are taking a hard line in those talks.

“I don’t expect this to be resolved outside of a full-blown hearing,” said Gloria Fletcher, attorney for former House Speaker Ray Sansom.

More here.

Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, term-limited out of office this year, is considering a run for Congress.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart said today that he will not seek re-election this year. His brother Mario, a U.S. Representative from a neighboring district, plans to run for Lincoln’s seat.

That opens up Mario Diaz-Balart’s seat, which he won with just 52 percent in his last election against Democrat Joe Garcia.

Diaz de la Portilla says he’ll be the frontrunner in that race the day he enters and he’s already calling potential contributors who he said are ready to back him.

“I’ve got a proven track record as actually making good policy not just political hack work like others have,” Diaz de la Portilla said today. “As majority leader, I’ve proven my ability to reach across the aisle and deal with many, many democrats.”

DLP’s older brother Miguel is running to replace him in the state Senate and their younger brother Renier sits on the Miami-Dade County School Board.

DLP has served in the state legislature for 16 years, starting as a state representative in 1994.

“I have had the honor and privilege of serving my community as a state
senator and I am seriously considering the opportunity to continue to
fight for the people of Florida on a national level in the United
State Congress. I will make my final decision soon after thoughtful
and deliberate consideration,” Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said in a statement.

Fox News has invited Florida’s two Republican U.S. Senate candidates to a debate, but the timing could be a problem for at least one.

Marco Rubio has accepted the invitation, but Gov. Charlie Crist raised a potential problem this morning with the March 28 date

“Isn’t that during the session?” Crist told reporters this morning. “We’ll see.”

Lawmakers are scheduled to begin their annual spring lawmaking session on March 2. Among the subjects they’re hoping to tackle in the 60-day session: a potential $3 billion budget shortfall and the state’s historic 11.8 percent unemployment rate.

A week after losing a close GOP special primary, Joe Budd said he’s supporting Republican nominee Ed Lynch in the April 13 special congressional election to replace Democrat Robert Wexler.

During the primary, Budd and a third GOP candidate, Curt Price, criticized Lynch’s business dealings and said they wouldn’t support him if he won the primary. But Budd changed his tune at tonight’s Palm Beach County Republican Party meeting.

“If I made a mistake along the way it was probably saying I wouldn’t support Ed Lynch had he won the primary,” Budd told the GOP crowd. “Ed Lynch is the best candidate in the race. So I have to support Ed….Good luck in this race, District 19. I hope you win.”

Democrat Ted Deutch and no-party candidate Jim McCormick are also on the ballot.

For whatever it’s worth, Budd didn’t use the word “endorse” or any of its variants in his announcement. When asked afterward if his announcement constituted an endorsement, Budd said “it was announcing support…I believe he’s the best candidate standing.”

Gov. Charlie Crist told lawmakers to keep the state’s Public Counsel J.R. Kelly, who represents consumers in utility cases, on the job.

Kelly’s tenure appears to be in question because the Joint Committee on Public Counsel Oversight last week decided to take applications for his post – on the heels of two high-profile wins for Kelly before the Public Service Commission that saved Florida consumers more than $1 billion.

Kelly, appointed by the legislature in 2007, is a “prepared, competent, and compassionate advocate for consumers,” Crist wrote to the committee in a memo released this evening.

“I want to commend him, not only for the preparation of the two significant cases before the Public Service Commission, but also for the outstanding work he has done over the years,” Crist wrote.

St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler linked Senate President Jeff Atwater with the move to oust Kelly, which Atwater denied when asked what he has against the consumer advocate.

“Nothing! Nothing at all,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said this week. “There wasn’t any evidence to suggest that. Only that there was a committee that was acting in a certain way and so someone had to take the whack for it. And so sure enough, (Troxler) whacked me. I have not said one word to any member of that committee as to any displeasure or disappointment I would have of the sitting public counsel.”

Atwater said the committee could not have reconsidered Kelly for the job in the midst of the controversial rate cases, including Florida Power & Light’s proposed $1.2 billion rate hike. The PSC shot that down instead granted the Juno Beach-based utility a $75.5 million-a-year increase, viewed by many as a victory for Kelly.

“Imagine if that committee had gone in in November and chosen not to re-up him with those rate cases pending. Pow. Rockets. So. What the legislature did was not act. This is too important. This man is out there fighting as public counsel on behalf of the public. So delay your time,” Atwater said.

The committee, led by Sen. Lee Constantine, last week discussed the applications and the process of interviewing candidates, Atwater said.

“So once you start that process then the criticism comes that it’s about Mr. Kelly.…but for heaven’s sakes at some point you need to address the process. We’ve now concluded…that a two-year term for the public counsel is too short a period of time to be able to act independently and not be acting in a way that you might see that around every corner is the reappointment of your job,” Atwater said.

“There’s been no discussion in the senate to oust Mr. Kelly whatsoever. I would venture to guess that Mr. Kelly’s going to remain as public counsel,” he went on.

Atwater said he and others want to prolong the two-year term.

“So merely the discussion of that drew the conclusion from some that people wanted Mr. Kelly out. Certainly not myself. I’ve never expressed that to a soul. And I think Mr. Troxler had an opportunity and he took it. And I have no qualms about that. That’s how the process works. I sit in this seat,” Atwater said.

With more than 1 million Floridians out of work, Florida taxpayers are footing the bill for the salaries for out-of-state workers.

This time, it’s Florida Lottery vendor GTECH’s workers in Texas that are the beneficiaries. GTECH’s call center is located in Austin and that’s where calls regarding the Lottery’s on-line tickets and other products are answered.

And lawmakers don’t even know how many jobs are at stake in Texas because the private contractors hired by the state to handle call lines won’t give up their number of employees or where they’re located, according to legislative analyst Emily Leventhal.

Sen. Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat who sits on the committee, asked Leventhal how many of the 16 private call centers were located outside Florida.

Only GTECH’s, she told him.

“And do you know how many people the state of Florida is paying to work in Austin, Texas?” Deutch asked.

“I do not,” Leventhal replied.

“I think that would be worthwhile information for this committee,” Deutch said.

An incensed Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander agreed.

“If they take the cash or check they can tell us what we want to know,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Last year, the Department of Children and Families got in hot water because the agency’s food stamp contractor, JP Morgan Chase, routed questions about food stamp services to a call center based in India. The vendor stopped sending the calls overseas and instead sent them to Ohio and Illinois.

The head of the state’s tourism agency also earned the wrath of lawmakers last year when lawmakers found out that calls to Visit Florida were being answered in Missouri. The agency later canceled the contract.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink will be in Palm Beach County on Friday to promote her proposed legislation stiffening penalties for crooks who scam senior citizens.
It’s the third year in a row Sink, a Democrat who is running for governor, has backed legislation to crack down on investor fraud schemes targeting the elderly.

The Senate passed her bill last year but it never got heard in a House committee.
Sink’s office has had 800 complaints from seniors this year.

Rep. Maria Sachs, a Delray Beach Democrat, is sponsoring Sink’s bill this year.

Sink’s proposal would increase penalties for “churning” – turning an existing life insurance policy or annuity from one company to another – annuities to senior citizens and for other annuity or insurance-related schemes.

Friday’s event will be held at 10 a.m. at The Church of Bethesda in Palm Beach.

Those interested in attending should pre-register by calling 1-877-MY-FL-CFO (1-877-693-5236) or (850) 413-3089.