On House Speaker Larry Cretul’s to-do list this year:

*Merge the Auditor General and OPPAGA into the “Legislative Accountability Office.”

*Streamline the Florida Health Department.

*Require all state workers to pay for parts of the of their health care insurance.

*Eliminate collective bargaining for all state employees, except in public health and safety.

*Call the state reserves the “Florida Savings Fund.”

Cretul has a “high performance government” team — or the “pit crew” as he calls it — to push these measures. All Republicans, they include Reps. David Rivera, Ron Reagan, Bill Proctor, Eric Eisnaugle, Dean Cannon, Dorothy Hukill, Matt Hudson, Will Weatherford, Rob Schenck, Gary Aubuchon, Denise Grimsley, and Marlene O’Toole.

The Ocala Republican, in his speech to open 2010 legislative session this morning, also chastised Democrats for refusing to participate in a budget prioritization exercise last month.

“It makes it hard to take seriously your requests in the future,” Cretul said. “If you conclude that you aren’t willing to do the basic work to set the budget priorities for the upcoming year, please let me know and I will be happy to reassign you.”

The Palm Beach Post requested the budget priorities assembled by House committees from Cretul’s office last week and never received a copy. The top House budget committee is supposed to review the priorities on Thursday.

Cretul focused his speech (read it here) mostly on streamlining state government. He called on lawmakers to repeal out-of-date laws, faze out redundant “advisory groups and commissions” and consolidate IT and call centers. Lawmakers should also consolidate state Auditor General and the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPAAGA) into the “Legislative Accountability Office,” he said.

“Government does not create jobs, the private sector does,” Cretul said. “We cannot tax, mandate and regulate our state into prosperity.”

Cretul quoted Thomas Jefferson and former Gov. Jeb Bush (to resounding applause) and implicitly took a shot at Gov. Charlie Crist, saying the chamber would not “base our budget on a wink and a prayer.” The phrase has become code for Crist’s budget proposal, which includes about $400 million from a gambling deal lawmakers have refused to approve.

Cretul also sent a warning across the hall to Senate President Jeff Atwater, who is running for state chief financial officer this year.

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Republican Marco Rubio‘s U.S. Senate campaign posted this video on Monday in response to Gov. Charlie Crist, his primary rival, telling The Post editorial board that he wouldn’t completely scrap President Obama’s health care reform. Crist, however, also refused to identify any parts of the reform that he would keep.

TALLAHASSEE — Former Republican Party of Florida Chairwoman Carole Jean Jordan said the GOP issued American Express cards to top officials while she was at the helm from January 2003 to January 2007, but “we were very careful. We set up a lot of business procedures….Nobody had carte blanche.”

The party made about $3.1 million in American Express payments during the four years Jordan was chairwoman. During the three years her successor Jim Greer was in charge, the party’s AmEx bills topped $3.8 million. Greer stepped down last month in part because of controversy over his lavish spending.

Jordan, now the tax collector of Indian River County, is in town for a Republican women’s conference. Asked her opinion of the American Express spending under Greer, she paused briefly, then said: “It’s over. We need to move on. I’m very excited to see Speaker/Sen./Chairman (John) Thrasher running the party.”

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The bill (HB 7033) would delay about $1.8 billion in unemployment tax payments for Florida businesses. It passed 117-0.

Companies are supposed to pay a higher tax rate starting in April because Florida’s spiraling unemployment has zeroed out the state fund that pays jobless benefits. To replenish that account, the unemployment tax rate is set to jump from about $8 to $100 per worker.

“Recharging Florida’s economy and putting Floridians back to work is our top priority this year,” House Economic Development & Community Affairs Policy Council Chairman Dave Murzin said. “Making sure employers can afford to keep the employees they already have is part of that agenda.”

By delaying the tax hike for two years, the state will pay for unemployment benefits by continuing to borrow from the federal government and ultimately accumulate $675 million in interest payments. The bill includes an assessment on employers over five years to cover that cost.

The Senate is expected to approve the bill this afternoon and send it to Gov. Charlie Crist, who is expected to sign it into law.

A South Florida Tea Party activist has filed ethics complaints against state Rep. Ron Saunders accusing the Key West Democrat of double-dipping on travel expenses and violating state campaign finance rules.

James K. Barnes of Coral Springs filed complaints with both the state elections and ethics commissions as well as the House of Representatives.

Barnes alleges that Saunders, a veteran lawmaker who returned to the House, charged the state for travel money for trips to Tallahassee from his home in the Florida Keys while also filing for reimbursement for official and campaign work while in his Keys district.

The complaints also allege that Saunders accepted campaign contributions during the legislative session, a violation of state law and that Saunders “requested reimbursement for travel expenses from more than one source for the same travel and has claimed per diem amounts for which he is not entitled.”

“Corruption is running rampant in both Florida parties, from Ray Sansom’s ethical lapses to party credit card abuse to Saunders’ multiple violations,” Barnes said in a press release. “If the Florida Legislature wants to rebuild trust with voters today, Saunders’ apparent violations must also be fully investigated and, if true, punished.”

Read the Barnes ethics complaint here, the elections complaint here, and the House complaint here.

Senate President Jeff Atwater launched his opening day remarks with an attack on his federal counterparts for wanton spending, then laid out a pro-business agenda for the 2010 session and a push to water down class size restrictions put into the Florida Constitution in 2002.

“Over the next sixty days you will each search your souls, come to your own personal decisions, but for my part, I will not participate in the evisceration of the American dream, I will not lower my vision, I will not choose the easy path, and I will not stand idly by while Congress smothers the next generation with its self indulgence and irresponsibility,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said early in his speech.

Atwater, who is leaving office this year to run statewide for chief financial officer, also recognized seven senators leaving office this year because of term limits, including Alex Villalobos of Miami. Villalobos would have been at Atwater’s place at the podium today were it not for a coup that Atwater and his supporters staged more than two years ago.

Atwater, a descendent of Florida Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, was joined by other family members in the audience who were in town for the opening of an exhibit on Broward at the Old Capitol.

Listen to Atwater’s speech here.

Or read the text of his speech here.

The 60-day 2010 legislative session began with the usual pageantry as Senators, their families, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet and the Florida Supreme Court crowded into the Senate chambers for Senate President Jeff Atwater’s opening day speech.

The chamber was filled with opening-day flowers, one of the only exemptions in the gift ban law barring lawmakers from accepting presents of any kind, including food.

Among the guests attending this morning: Linda King, widow of the late Sen. Jim King, the Jacksonville Republican who died earlier in July after a bout with pancreatic cancer and who once served as Senate President.

The Senate dedicated a committee room to King and read a resolution honoring the veteran lawmaker who was instrumental in getting end-of-life legislation passed.

Stay tuned for audio of Atwater’s remarks and other opening day treats, including the House’s session kick-off, winding up with Crist’s 6 p.m. state-of-the-state address.

With Florida suffering from its highest unemployment in three decades, pumping life into the state’s dismal job market is at the top of almost every lawmaker’s to-do list this year.

“It’s been an economic tsunami,” Gov. Charlie Crist said of the collapsing housing market and spiraling unemployment that has slashed Florida’s tax collections by 17 percent since he took office three years ago.

Crist, like his fellow Republicans in charge of the state Senate and House, will largely look to tax cuts and incentives to spark job creation as the legislature begins its annual spring session Tuesday day.

Story here.

State Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, D-Wellington, has filed the “Internet Poker Consumer Protection and Revenue Generation Act of 2010″ a bill to legalize online poker in Florida.

Abruzzo says about 900,000 Floridians already gamble at sites run by unregulated “offshore operators.” He says his bill would bring in more than $200 million in revenue in its first year.

Abruzzo’s bill would allow an Internet hub operator based in the state to pay a $500,000 application fee to the state for a license. Operators would pay the state a 20 percent gross receipts tax. Abruzzo’s 42-page bill includes provisions aimed to combat money-laundering and gambling addiction.

Abruzzo’s bill has attracted the attention of the gaming industry. Here’s one take on it from casinogamblingweb.com.

The Florida Senate will kick off the 60-day 2010 legislative session at about 9 a.m. setting off a day of pageantry culminating with Gov. Charlie Crist’s prime-time state-of-the-state speech this evening.

Stay tuned to postonpolitics.com for continuous blogs throughout the day, beginning with the Senate session at 9 a.m., followed by the House session at 10 a.m. and then later sessions in the afternoon. Then keep Post’ed with Crist’s final state-of-the-state address at 6 p.m.

Expect to hear lots of talk about jobs, jobs, jobs and what the legislature and Crist want to do to help small businesses weather the prolonged economic storm.

The House and Senate plan to pass a delay of the unemployment compensation tax hike that could increase taxes on some businesses up to 5,000 percent unless lawmakers act quickly.

The business tax increase is necessary to replenish the trust fund that pays out-of-work Floridians and to repay the federal government $1.1 billion the state borrowed after the fund ran out of money last year.

Last year, lawmakers approved an increase in the unemployment tax to speed up the repayment of the federal loans and beef up the trust fund.

But the increases, originally signed off on by the business community, turned out to be significantly higher than expected, ranging from 21 percent to more than 5,000 percent.

The minimum rate for employers with a good employment track record is slated to skyrocket from $8.40 to $100.30 per employee per year unless lawmakers do something by April 1.

Senate President Jeff Atwater said he is more than willing to hand over his Republican Party of Florida-issued American Express credit card statements but that the party’s new chairman, Sen. John Thrasher, won’t do it.

Reporters asked Atwater, who is running statewide for chief financial officer, about the notorious AmEx spending that’s embroiled former House Speaker and U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio and former House Speaker Ray Sansom.

“I asked Chairman Thrasher if he would release the statements of the RPOF credit card that was assigned to me and he said no,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said. “He said he has his internal process going on…I have asked him and he has said no. That is the party’s card. It is not my card. I do not have the statements.”

When pressed about why Atwater did not request the statements, he insisted he could not.

“I’m not the card. That would be RPOF. It’s RPOF’s card. So if RPOF were to request those statements I assume they could get them. At this point, it is the party’s card. And I have asked the chairman would you release any card statements that were associated with me? I have no qualms about what anyone would see on that and he said no, we’re doing our process.”

Atwater had one of the AmEx cards while he was recruiting Republican Senate candidates and raising money for the party in 2007 and 2008. He says he used the card strictly for party-related business.

The cards, issued to an undisclosed group of top elected Republicans and party officials, have been a continuing source of embarrassment as details have emerged of lavish spending by former Chairman Jim Greer (including that $3,600 meal at Brasserie L’Escalier), indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom (his $173,000 in AmEx charges included a family trip to Europe and an $893 Starbucks tab) and former exec director Delmar Johnson ($133,763 in a single month last summer).

Rubio got his turn in the AmEx spotlight last week when someone, presumably a supporter of opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s slumping GOP Senate bid, leaked records of Rubio’s $125,000 in charges from 2006 to 2008. No Greer-scale extravagances emerged, but the records showed a $133.75 visit to Churchill’s Barber Shop in Miami that Rubio said he paid himself.

After taking billions of dollars in federal economic stimulus money to balance the state budget last year, Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul along with other GOP lawmakers are demanding that the federal government balance its budget to put an end to the escalating federal deficit now surpassing $12 trillion.

“Unless something is done with Washington’s irresponsible fiscal behavior, Florida’s economy will drown in debt,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said at a press conference this morning.

Atwater and his cadre want the feds to balance the nation’s budget as Florida lawmakers are constitutionally required to do in the Sunshine State.

But that didn’t stop the legislature under Atwater and Cretul from accepting at least $12 billion in federal stimulus money – more than $3 billion used to balance this year’s Florida budget and nearly another $6 billion plugged into next year’s. That money helped add to the nation’s rising debt.

“It’s a gaping inconsistency to take that money happily to fill giant holes in our budget and then turn around and criticize the very people who gave you the cash,” said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota.

Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, is sponsoring a joint resolution that, if passed by two-thirds of the Florida legislature, would have the state joining 19 other states asking Congress to convene an amendments convention to propose a constitutional amendment requiring the balanced budget and limit federal lawmakers’ ability to pass mandated spending down to the states.

But Florida lawmakers have done the same thing to local governments over the past decade, forcing them to take up a large share of education spending by passing down mandates and making counties pick up the tab for other items.

Congress would have to call the amendments convention if 34 states make the request. Passage of the constitutional amendment would require ratification by three-fourths, or 38, of the states.

Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, had one of those notorious Republican Party of Florida American Express cards. He says his spending was all legit and he has “no qualms” about his records becoming public. But Atwater, who’s running for chief financial officer this year, says he doesn’t have copies of his own and it’s up to the state GOP to decide whether to release credit card records.

Read about it in this week’s Politics column….