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.

Tags: 2010 legislative session, Charlie Crist, unemployment

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.