Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek will bring his campaign to Boynton Beach on Friday as he make a push to become the first U.S. Senate candidate to qualify for the ballot by petition.

He’ll be at St. John Missionary Baptist Church at 10:45 a.m.

U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, has returned $9,000 in donations from former House Ways & Means Chairman Charlie Rangel after Rangel was forced to give up the powerful spot after questions the belated disclosure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in previously unlisted wealth.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee took the opportunity to note Democrats have returned $378,000 of Rangel’s money, but U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, “continues to hang onto the $5,500 from his ethically-challenged contributor.” Those donations were to Meek’s previous U.S. House campaigns.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum is bringing buddy Rudy Giuliani back to Florida for a breakfast fundraiser in West Palm Beach on March 12.

McCollum, who endorsed Giuliani in the ’08 Republican presidential primary in Florida, is holding his $40/person fundraiser at Howley’s Restaurant on South Dixie Highway at 7:30 a.m.

“It is always nice to enjoy a good meal with friends prior to a day on the campaign trail,” McCollum writes in the invitation.

The host committee for the event includes Palm Beach County Commissioner Steve Abrams, Teresa Bailey, Marie Davis, Palm Beach Councilman Bill Diamond, Sid Dinerstein, Peter Feaman, Jay Goldfarb, Fran Hancock, Mark Hoch, Beth Kigel, Greg Langowski, Cheryl Mullings, Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits, Joe Penkala, Jonathan Satter, Tom Sliney, Ben Starling, Joy Stone and Palm Beach Shores Mayor John Workman

TALLAHASSEE — Former Democratic state Rep. Irving Slosberg of Boca Raton was at the Capitol today to promote Safe Teen Driver Week with Florida Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos.

Look for him to file Friday as a candidate for his old Palm Beach-Broward state House seat.

Slosberg, was elected to the House in 2000 as a traffic safety crusader after his 14-year-old daughter was killed in a 1996 car wreck. He championed a variety of seat belt laws and other traffic safety measures before leaving in 2006 to pursue a state Senate bid. Slosberg lost a costly and bitter Dem primary to eventual Sen. Ted Deutch, who was boosted by the support of former U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler.

This time around, former Wexler chief of staff and political consultant Eric Johnson is expected to help Slosberg’s bid for the District 90 House seat now held by Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton. Skidmore is leaving to run for state Senate. Educator Sheldon “Klassy” Klasfeld, a Democrat, is the only other candidate in the race.

Former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, who left office last year before finishing out his first term, has joined the board of directors of the state’s second largest utility.

Martinez, 63, was elected to Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy’s board earlier this month.

Progress Energy operates Progress Energy Florida, which provides power to nearly 2 million customers in the Tampa Bay area. State utility regulators recently turned down the utility’s $500 million rate hike request.

Not a bad part-time gig for Martinez. The annual pay for outside directors like him is $80,000 including $30,000 towards a deferred compensation plan, according to the company’s federal SEC filings.

Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate in 2005, Martinez was the mayor of Orange County and was on the Orlando Utilities Commission. He’s been lobbying as a partner with the law firm DLA Piper since leaving office last year.

Martinez’s early retirement set off a political cascade in Florida and paved the way for Gov. Charlie Crist to take his place.

Crist appointed his own former chief of staff George LeMieux as a place-holder to fill in for Martinez until the November election. Crist is running in a GOP primary for the seat against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Republican House Speaker Larry Cretul is not counting on $1 billion in Medicaid that many believe the state will receive from the federal government. Less surprising, the House also does not include $433 million from Gov. Charlie Crist’s would-be gambling compact with the Seminoles.

Budget writers will use allocations to begin drawing up the state’s spending plan for next year.

Cretul is instructing his chamber to find state dollars in the K-12 budget to replenish the $778 million drop-off in property tax collections caused by spiraling home values. He is also insisting that federal Medicaid dollars Crist counted on for his budget be supplanted with state money. Cretul wants 5 percent of the budget in reserves and no new taxes.

“I know budgeting this year will be very difficult,” Cretul wrote in his memo. (Read it here.)

Put it under the headline “Only in Florida.”

A Republican National Committee memo found in a Boca Grande hotel reveals the GOP’s strategy of using fear to intimidate voters and mocks donors, Politico reported today.

The memo – a Power Point presentation given at an RNC meeting in Florida last month – details the GOP’s plans for this year’s election cycle by luring “ego-driven” rich donors with promises of access and “tchochkes.”

“What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate…?” it asks.

The answer: “Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

Read the Politico report here.

The revelations left Democrats licking their chops, naturally.

“If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said in a statement. “The Republican Party, which barely 20 percent of Americans will even admit they belong to anymore, seems hell bent on damaging their battered brand even further by engaging in the most despicable kind of imagery, tactics and rhetoric imaginable. This type of politics at all cost approach to our public discourse is what the American people are sick and tired of – and if anyone thinks this wasn’t approved of or signed off on at the highest levels they are kidding themselves. Republicans across the country have cheered on crowds where these very images appeared, they’ve encouraged and perpetuated scandalous lies about the President and his plans. And, from calling for secession to condoning violence against government officials they have sunk to new and unbelievable lows.”

The Senate Commerce Committee approved, 7-3, one of Gov. Charlie Crist’s top priorities, but only after Republican Sens. Evelyn Lynn of Ormond Beach and Durell Peaden of Crestview agreed to move the measure to the next committee. Had they opposed the bill, it would have died on a tie vote.

Lynn and Peaden were critical of the bill (SB 1680), which would save Florida corporations an average of between $1,800 and $1,900 per year while the state budget writers (like Lynn, the Higher Education Appropriations chair, and Peaden, the Health & Human Services Appropriations chair) are considering deep cuts to health and human services to account for budget holes.

The bill would reduce the corporate income tax by 1 percent on the first $1 million of a company’s income. It would have a total savings for business/cost to the state of about $57.4 million.

“The amount of money a corporation will receive is really going to be so minuscule it really will have no impact,” Lynn said. “It certainly cannot bring in jobs as we would like to see. It’s not meaningful enough.

Peaden said he “probably won’t” vote for the bill if it makes it to the Senate floor.

“It’s tough when we’re sitting on these committees looking at cuts at are going to mean live and death for kids,” Peaden said.

(more…)

The Florida Senate approved a measure that would keep the concealed weapons permits trust fund off-limits to lawmakers in search of money to plug budget holes.

The bill (SB 1158) is one of the two gun rights-advocates priorities this session. It passed by a 31-9 vote.

Last year, lawmakers took about $6 million from the trust fund, which comes from concealed weapons permits fees and is used to process permit applications. They swept hundreds of millions of dollars from other trust funds, but the gun license trust fund was the only one that Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed.

Only four of the state’s 400-plus trust funds now have that protection.

Democrats argued that the gun license trust fund should be treated the same as others.

“I can’t figure out how it makes any sense how one of our first orders of business is protecting a trust fund for gun registration applications,” objected Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston.
“When you single out one trust fund above the hundreds that we have you’re making a statement about priorities. I guess I disagree with those priorities.”

The Senate quietly approved a measure designed to clean up the Public Service Commission with a 39-1 vote this afternoon.

The bill (SB 1034) would make public all communications between the utilities the panel regulates and the commissioners or their advisory staff.

It would also bar commissioners or high-level staff from going to work or lobbying for the utilities for four years after they leave the PSC, double the current two-year limitation, aimed at stopping the “revolving door” between the commission and the utilities they make billion-dollar decisions about.

The bill will make certain that former commissioners and staff “will not be able to continue what they’ve done in the past and for a change our consumers will be represented,” the bill’s sponsor Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, argued.

The changes come from a 1992 grand jury report that lawmakers largely ignored designed to keep regulators and utility representatives at arm’s length.

This year’s proposal came about in the wake of reports that PSC staff and a Florida Power & Light Co. lawyer were swapping secret BlackBerry messages. Other details about questionable relationships between FPL and the commission were revealed during Juno Beach-based FPL’s proposed $1.2 billion rate hike hearing.

On the opening day of FPL’s rate increase hearing last year, Commissioner Nathan Skop revealed that the PSC’s lobbyist, Ryder Rudd, had attended a Kentucky Derby party at the Palm Beach Gardens home of FPL Vice President Ed Tancer. Rudd later quit.

Since then, the agency has struggled through investigations into BlackBerry messages exchanged between the PSC and an FPL attorney, a myriad of ethics complaints and allegations of interference from political leaders, including Gov. Charlie Crist, who threatened to not reappoint any commissioners who voted in favor of the rate hike.

The bill would also require that the commissioners behave more like judges by applying the canons of judicial conduct, including refraining from inappropriate political activity and avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

Public Service Chairwoman Nancy Argenziano is backing the proposed changes.

Recognizing Palm Beach County day today, PBC home-boy Sen. Dave Aronberg recited some facts about the state’s largest county before giving a shout-out to some county officials watching the Senate session from the East Gallery.

Aronberg, D-Greenacres, introduced PBC Commissioner Burt Aaronson as “The Godfather of Palm Beach County.”

Aaronson was first elected to the commission in 1992.

Aronberg’s intro may be considered a dubious distinction, considering that three of Aaronson’s former county commission colleagues are in prison for corruption charges.

TALLAHASSEE — Palm Beach County Commissioner Jess Santamaria won’t be here this afternoon to talk with Gov. Charlie Crist’s staff about elevated childhood cancer rates in his commission district.

Santamaria said he wanted an extended sit-down with the governor himself to discuss the cancer cluster in The Acreage. Instead Santamaria was told he’d be one of several people talking to Crist aides with the possibility the governor might briefly drop by.

“There’s going to be eight or nine people in the room with the assistants of Gov. Crist and sometime in the 20 or 30 minutes, he’s going to drop in. That’s not the type of meeting I hoped to have,” Santamaria said this morning.

Instead, Santamaria said he’s been working with Sen. Bill Nelson’s office to try to assure more testing in The Acreage.

(more…)

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would make tapes of all 911 calls secret.

Opponents of the measure, including First Amendment watchdogs, say that the tapes are rarely requested but when they are released often reveal errors by 911 dispatchers that resulted in the deaths of callers seeking help.

Gov. Charlie Crist doesn’t think creating a new exemption for the emergency calls from the state’s broad open records laws is a good idea.

“No, I favor transparency why would they be taken off,” Crist said. “It’s always better when you shed light on any situation, whether it’s a 911 call, whether it’s public expenditures. No matter what it might be, transparency is always the right call.”

First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen gave examples of 911 calls released to the public that revealed errors by 911 operators that resulted in the deaths of callers seeking help.

_ In Tampa, a 911 dispatcher didn’t follow procedure and as a result, the caller died.
- In Detroit, a 911 dispatcher chastised a small boy for “playing on the phone” while his mother was unconscious. When the police arrived, the mother was dead.

A Memphis 911 dispatcher fell asleep after asking “What’s your emergency?”

Supporters of the measure argue that victims may avoid getting aid through 911 because they are afraid recordings of the call may end up on the 6 p.m. news.

A House committee this morning delayed taking a vote on the measure (PCB 10-3).

“Ideology” was a bad word in Gov. Charlie Crist’s State of the State address, which called on lawmakers — and, indirectly, Republican voters in this year’s U.S. Senate primary — to elevate “problem-solving” over rigid adherence to ideological positions.

“During these very difficult economic times, we do a disservice to the people who elected us – the people who are counting on us – to elevate ideology over problem-solving,” Crist said.

Embracing a $787 billion Democratic stimulus plan, which has damaged Crist in his GOP primary race against former House Speaker Marco Rubio, was cited by Crist as an example of choosing a path “more helpful to Floridians than engaging in hollow ideological posturing that achieves nothing.”

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, took issue with Crist’s stigmatizing of the I-word.

“I’m as much of a problem solver as anybody else in the legislature or anybody else who serves. But I come to solve problems based on my principles, based on the beliefs that I hold and that the people elected me to come and carry out,” Hasner said afterward.

(more…)

It was a mostly festive day in the Florida legislature today, although you wouldn’t know it from this Associated Press photo of the state’s two leading gubernatorial candidates.

Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum, left, and Democratic state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, right, already fully engaged in a political battle over who is the better fiscal conservative, were seated next to each other today during opening day ceremonies.

The political jockeying between McCollum and Alex Sink is expected to continue throughout the legislature’s 60-day session.

See more AP photos from the Capitol today after the jump.

With a slew of lawmakers, including Senate President Jeff Atwater, running for higher office this year, Senate Rules Chairman Alex Villalobos delivered a stern warning to members about using staff for campaign purposes.

Villalobos, who would have been in Atwater’s presidential shoes were it not for a coup staged by Atwater and his backers more than two years ago, sent a memo to the Senate’s 40 members outlining what their aides can – and mostly cannot – while on the clock.

Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is leaving office early to run statewide for chief financial officer. Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, forced out because of term limits, is running for Congress, along with Democratic state Sens. Frederica Wilson of Miami, Charlie Justice of St. Petersburg and Palm Beach County’s own Ted Deutch of Boca Raton. Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, is also expected to run for Congress.

And Sens. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres and Dan Gelber of Miami Beach are running statewide in a Democratic primary for attorney general.

Senate staff can’t use annual leave or comp time to work on campaigns, nor can they work on a campaign during their lunch hour, Villalobos wrote.

They can volunteer after hours, that means outside the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

But aides can’t take a paying job with a campaign unless they get permission from Atwater and take leave-without-pay first.

“A Senator who uses staff paid by the Senate to work on his or her campaign while ‘on duty’ may be liable for theft,” Villalobos wrote. If the employee earned more than $5,000 or more as a state worker, the crime is a felony.

And the staffer who works on the campaign could also be liable for theft.

Oh, and no using state equipment like telephones or computers for campaign stuff. That’s a misdemeanor.

A prepared copy of Gov. Charlie Crist’s anticipated final State of the State speech is here.

Watch live here.

Expect Crist to take ownership of the state’s decision to spend stimulus money, list off some accomplishments of his first three years and urge lawmakers to focus on cutting taxes in order to create jobs this year.

The Senate considered some sweeping changes to Public Service Commission, the panel that oversees billions of dollars in utility rates, without voting on it.

The measure (SB 1034), which Senate President Jeff Atwater previously said he wanted passed out of the chamber today, is on the fast-track in the Senate but isn’t moving so quickly in the House.

The proposal, backed by five-member Public Service Commission and Public Counsel J.R. Kelly (who represents consumers), is aimed at injecting new ethical standards into the maligned regulatory agency entangled in secret messages swapped between staff and a Florida Power & Light Co. lawyer. That and other questionable actions did not break any Florida laws, a number of investigations found.

The changes, proposed by longtime PSC critic Sen. Mike Fasano, would require that all written and oral communications between commissioners and their aides, called ex parte communications, be put in the public record and placed online where everyone can see them.

“We had staff and commissioners that were communicating with multi-billion dollar utility companies and we didn’t know anything about it. Absolutely nothing. Now when anybody has access to them, we’re going to know within 72 hours after their transmission,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said.

The measure would also bar commissioners and their aides from going to work or lobbying for the utilities they regulate for four years, which would be twice the current restriction.

Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson tried but failed to keep the limitation to two years, arguing that the restrictions surpass those of even lawmakers who control the state budget and who are barred from lobbying for just two years.

The bill would affect all the electric, water and gas companies that are regulated by the commission. Under the proposal, a company could be fined one-tenth of one percent of its annual operating revenue for violating the restrictions.

The Senate could vote out the measure as early as tomorrow.

The House Republican Office noted that it took their Democratic colleagues less than five hours to launch the first attack of session.” “So much 4 bipartisanship,” the office tweeted.

Indeed.

The House Democratic Office press release quotes House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, who said this morning that it was time to “do government business in a new way.” Democrats note that Republicans have controlled state government in Florida for the past 12 years.

“It is interesting to hear Speaker Cretul confess that Republican leadership since 1998 has led to unnecessary spending and a failure to follow basic government accountability measures,” Democratic Leader Franklin Sands said.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2010 Florida House…

Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law a tax break for businesses ten minutes before he began his state-of-the-state speech this evening.

The measure (HB 7033) will delay about $1.8 billion in unemployment tax payments for Florida businesses that will jump from $8 per worker to $100 per employee on April 1.

The higher tax rate kicks in in April because the number of jobless workers in Florida, among the highest in the nation, has wiped out the trust fund that pays for unemployment benefits.

Putting off the tax hike for two years means that Florida lawmakers today agreed to continue to borrow from the federal government to replenish the fund and rack up $675 million in interest payments. Those costs will be passed on to businesses over the next five years.

“Decisions are being made as we speak. Business owners are trying to determine what they’re going to do next to be able to deal with this Friday’s pay roll. This is what this bill’s about,” said Sen. Rudy Garcia, R-Hialeah.

The Senate unanimously approved the bill (HB 7033), which the House also unanimously passed earlier today.