The Florida teachers’ union filed a lawsuit today to keep a constitutional amendment watering down class size restrictions off the ballot in November.

The GOP-dominated legislature put Amendment 8 on the ballot to allow school districts flexibility with constitutionally-mandated class size restrictions voters approved in 2002.

The class sizes have been eased in over time and this year are set to go from school-level averages to individual classroom pupil/teacher limits.

The proposed amendment, if approved by voters in November, would keep the averages at the school level.

But Ron Meyer, the lawyer representing the Florida Education Association and who filed the lawsuit this morning, contends that the amendment is really about stiffing taxpayers by not adequately funding education as the state constitution requires.

Lawmakers failed to put $354 million needed to comply with the class sizes into the budget this year, Meyer said.

The ballot title and summary don’t tell voters that the real aim of the amendment is to cut back on education spending, he accused.

“The failure of the legislature to be honest with parents – to tell them that Amendment 8 cuts funding to public schools which will result in crowded classrooms once again – is what makes this lawsuit necessary,” Meyer said in a press release.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat running for governor, said she supports the amendment because it gives flexibility to school districts.

Read the lawsuit here.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott said today that race was one of the reasons to support local control of schools.

“If you’re 70 percent African-American, you’re going to deal with different issues,” Scott said.

“Yes, you are,” said Sean O’Flannery, a high school teacher from Pinellas Park.

O’Flannery, who met Scott at a Clearwater campaign stop, had raised the issue of Senate Bill 6, the controversial teacher tenure bill Scott and other Republicans supported. Opponents said the bill would take local control away from schools and centralize more power in Tallahassee.

We asked Scott to clarify his thoughts: “Every school has different issues. And so we have to make sure that whatever programs we put in place to measure teachers that its fair in that area. Beacause every school is different. And every community is a little bit different. So that’s what that focus was on.”

Scott is starting the third day of his six-day trip.

UPDATE: Scott, a Rubio supporter, says he believes Rubio has lost momentum because the Republican Party has not given him enough support. “If he was getting more support from the party right now then we would be seeing him out there more,” Scott said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, fairly unprompted, weighed in this morning on the state’s U.S. Senate race, which polls show Republican Marco Rubio and independent Charlie Crist trading the lead.

“Marco’s lost his momentum,” Scott said.

The comment came in a conversation with Ralph Beck, a Dunedin voter who was waiting for Scott at a campaign event in Clearwater.

Beck made an offhand comment about voting for Crist in the ’06 governor’s race. Scott responded with talk about poll numbers showing Rubio “five or six points” behind Crist.

Republican Rick Scott said this morning he would forgo the $133,000 salary if he wins the goveror’s office in March. Of course, the’s got to win his GOP primary first.

“No one’s asked me that, but it’s not that important to me, I’m not really doing it for the salary,” Scott said in an early morning interview with WOKV Jacksonville, a fellow member of the Cox Enterprises family.

More here.

Rosemary Currie of Venice got a round of applause from a room of about 400 Sarasota County Republicans today when she asked GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to sit down with primary opponent Bill McCollum and hash out a deal to end the barrage of negative television advertisements the two are unloading on one another.

“I feel it’s pretty much helping Alex Sink sink our chances,” Currie said, referring to the probable Democratic nominee.

Scott, who compared McCollum to a dirty diaper in one TV spot, has a personal fortune that gives him a decided spending advantage over McCollum, who is running his fourth statewide campaign. And Scott gave no indication that he was about to give that up.

Scott told the woman it was important for him to distinguish himself from his opponent. Then he implied that McCollum was out of ideas for Florida.

“The difference is this,” Scott said at a campaign stop at Trotter’s Dutch Heritage restaurant. “You have a choice between somebody that’s been in office and hopefully tried all of their ideas or you have somebody that’s new that is going to bring their business credentials to the table.”

We were the first to tell you earlier this week of the seven-figure ad buy the conservative advocacy group, League of American Voters, made for McCollum. In all, McCollum and his supporters have spent about $8.4 million on television. Scott’s campaign has spent $25.8 million on TV.

From the White House today:

WASHINGTON- On Saturday, August 14, 2010, the First Family will travel to Florida’s Gulf Coast, where they will spend the weekend. More details will be released in the coming days.

From Rasmussen Reports today:

The race to become the next U.S. senator from Florida remains a very close one between Republican Marco Rubio and Independent Charlie Crist as both potential Democratic candidates struggle to gain traction.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Florida finds Rubio earning 35% support and Crist capturing 33% of the vote. Prospective Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek remains a distant third at 20%. However, for Meek, that reflects a five-point gain from earlier in the month. 

With Meek as the Democratic nominee, three percent (3%) say they’d vote for “some other candidate,” and eight percent (4%) remain undecided.

If real estate billionaire Jeff Greene wins the Democratic nomination, the numbers are Crist 36%, Rubio 34% and Greene 19%.

From Public Policy Polling today:

Rick Scott is looking like the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee for Governor of Florida, although both he and Bill McCollum have been badly bruised by their primary fight. Scott leads McCollum 43-29.

Indecision reigns in the Democratic Senate primary. Kendrick Meek leads Jeff Greene by a 28-25 margin that’s pretty inconsequential given the survey’s margin of error. The bigger story is that 37% of voters remain undecided, and that both candidates continue to be relatively unknown even to the party base.

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, spoke at the South Florida Tea Party’s first rally in West Palm Beach on Tax Day in 2009. But he’s not one of the 28 Republicans who have signed up for the new House Tea Party Caucus.

“Congressman Rooney is very supportive of the Tea Party Movement and its message of lower taxes, less government and more personal freedom,” Rooney spokesman Michael Mahaffey said.

But, Mahaffey added: “He believes the strength of the Tea Party lies in its grass roots support and its leadership from the people, not from Washington.”

Get those last public record requests in.

Veteran media handler Jill Chamberlin, who is well-skilled in the art of evasion, has a magician’s knack for misdirection and a pretty good sense of humor, says she’s planning her exit from the House speaker’s office around Labor Day.

No replacement yet for her six-figure salary as communications director, but it sounds like probable future House Speaker Dean Cannon is working on bringing Katie Betta over from the Florida Republican Party.

Chamberlin left the newspaper business in ’79 to join Gov. Bob Graham’s office. She’s worked for Treasurer Bill Gunter, CFO Tom Gallagher and FSU President Sandy D’Alemberte.

She worked for one Democratic House speaker, Peter Wallace, and the last three Republicans: Cretul, Ray Sansom and Marco Rubio.

Chamberlin said she plans to kick back for a while up north somewhere – shortly after destroying her Blackberry.

MIAMI — Republican governor candidate Rick Scott, star of more than $20 million worth of small-screen ads since April, is going out in public on a six-day bus tour that began this morning.

Scott’s wife and mother are on the bus. So is Donna Arduin, budget director for former Gov. Jeb Bush and a key architect of Scott’s “7 steps for 700,000 jobs in 7 years” plan. GOP primary rival Bill McCollum’s camp called some of the ideas borrowed and others “silly” or “unrealistic.”

Read about it here.

Here’s the Scott campaign’s presentation of the plan.

This nugget from a Bloomberg story today that BP’s spending to lobby Congress rose 6.3 percent in the second quarter of the year:

Jennifer Bendall, a former policy adviser to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Jesse McCollum, a former chief of staff to Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., are representing BP within the Eris Group.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink wants Ken Feinberg, appointed by President Barack Obama to administer the BP oil spill claims process, to clarify whether individuals and businesses seeking payment from the oil giant must promise not to sue BP in the future.

Sink’s letter comes on the heels of a scathing analysis of Feinberg’s claims process – revamped nine times since he started the take-over late last month – by a Florida legal dream team tapped by Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum.

One of the legal eagles’ chief worries is Feinberg’s requirement that anyone seeking a lump-sum settlement from BP waive their right to sue – long before the full impact from the devastating oil leak are known.

“With millions of gallons of oil discharged in the Gulf of Mexico, the people who live and work along the Gulf Coast cannot know with any certainty today what the full extent of their damages may be in the future. In order to ensure that the claims process is fair, the payment of any Floridian’s claim, including a final claim, should not be conditioned on the waiver of the claimant’s rights under state or federal law,” Sink, a Democrat running for governor, wrote to Feinberg today.

Former attorneys general Jim Smith and Bob Butterworth sent a letter to Crist and McCollum this week outlining their concerns with Feinberg’s process, chief among them his aim to give BP “total peace” regarding payouts.

“While the current BP claims process has been fraught with delays and has failed to adequately compensate the many victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we are concerned that the process that is about to replace it has the potential to harm the citizens of the Gulf Region as profoundly and deeply as the spill itself,” Smith and Butterworth wrote.
(more…)

That’s the word from George Bennett, who is aboard Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s bus tour today and tomorrow:

FLASH! — State Sen., former GOP governor candidate Paula Dockery planning to join Rick Scott bus tour in Central Florida.

We mentioned Dockery last week as a potential running mate for Scott, if he wins the GOP primary against Bill McCollum

U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid told Washington D.C. reporters yesterday that he hasn’t talked to Gov. Charlie Crist in months. The statement refuted a Wall Street Journal story on the same day in which Crist said he recently talked to the Nevada Democrat.

Today, Crist told Tallahassee reporters that he phoned Reid and was non-committal on who he would caucus with if elected to the U.S. Senate.

If you’re still reading this blog post, the conversation is relevant because Crist if were to win the U.S. Senate seat with no party affiliation he would be free to caucus with either the Democrats or Republicans. After his defection/expulsion from GOP, many expect he would sit in on the Democratic meetings.

Gov. Charlie Crist issued the executive order today, which calls for BP to foot the bill for any lost tax revenue the new assessments cost cities, counties and schools. The order tackles at least one issue lawmakers were considering for their special session in the fall. (Read the executive order here.)

“I have not asked BP’s permission to this this. We got it from the Constitution,” Crist said.

The constitution gives Crist the power to issue executive orders. But we’re checking now to find out what allows him to use an order to seemingly change state tax policy. Even so, would anyone in Florida have the political will to oppose Crist on this move?

Crist said he was contacted by appraisers in the Panhandle who wanted to do this.

But we’re not sure the Property Appraisers Association of Florida will be too thrilled. The statewide group gave legislative leaders a list of reasons why they don’t want to make mid-year assessments, saying mid-year assessments are arbitrary and could lead to tax increases for the few properties that were not built when the initial assessments were completed.

Read their letter here.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner’s staff director e-mailed reporters saying Gov. Charlie Crist’s press conference today should win “the Oscar for best performance of planned faux indignation.”

Some will argue that, politically, it might be better for Crist, a U.S. Senate candidate, that lawmakers refused to vote. After all, anger does seem to be it’s own political ideology these days.

That said, Crist seemed as fired up as anyone has ever seen him after House and Senate Republicans refused to vote on whether or not Florida voters should decide to amend the state constitution to ban oil drilling. The only votes the two chambers took today were to adjourn.

Gov. Charlie Crist could grant long-term out-of-work Floridians relief with the stroke of his pen, according Sen. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat running for attorney general.

Lawmakers ended the special session on oil drilling early, making it impossible for them to pass a bill that would have allowed jobless Floridians to take advantage of an unemployment benefits extension Congress is expected to authorize as early as tomorrow.

But Crist could do by executive order what GOP lawmakers refused to do earlier this year, Gelber said.

“On behalf of the voiceless, the hard working people of this state who are about to be cut off from benefits which they have rightfully earned and to which they are rightfully entitled, I urge the Governor to act in all due haste,” Gelber wrote in a letter to Crist.

Gov. Charlie Crist said he won’t call lawmakers back a second time, after the House and Senate adjourned without voting on a constitutional amendment to ban offshore drilling in state waters.

“I am significantly disappointed for the people of Florida,” Crist said after “I can’t believe this legislature has shirked its duty so badly.”

“How arrogant can a legislature be?” Crist said. “I call this legislature the do-nothing legislature. And I’m going to give them hell for it.”

Crist included Senate President Jeff Atwater as a target, saying Atwater never asked Crist to expand the issues for session, despite an implication from Atwater that he did.

“Nobody asked me to, for the record, in spite of what you heard on the Senate floor,” Crist said. “I don’t know where that came from.”

Two Palm Beach County lawmakers are pushing a measure to implement an expansion of unemployment compensation benefits Congress is expected to pass as early as today. The bill could bring about $270 million in unemployment benefits for about 200,000 long-term unemployed Floridians whose extended benefits dried up on June 5.

But there’s little chance GOP leaders will expand the special session on oil drilling that kicked off at noon and is already coming to a close in the House.

Gov. Charlie Crist called lawmakers into town to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow voters to decide if offshore oil drilling in Florida should be banned.

The Senate wants to pass the measure but the House is expected to convene briefly and adjourn without even voting on it.

Congress appears to have settled its own impasse over unemployment benefits and is expected today to approve another expansion for the long-term unemployed.

But Floridians won’t be able to get the additional funds unless state lawmakers sign off.

Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Boynton Beach, filed a bill that would extend the state’s June 5 expiration date for the long-term unemployed benefits and wrote a letter yesterday asking Crist to expand the session.

More than 35,000 Floridians a week are losing out on the extended benefits, Rader said.

“These are families who need this money because of the economic crisis in our state,” said Rader, who failed to convince lawmakers to pass a similar measure during the regular session to avoid having to come back during a special session to extend the deadline for the benefits.

Jobless workers spend $1.70 for each $1 in unemployment fund they receive, according to some estimates.

“It’s outrageous we would not act so that Floridians get the funds that they are entitled to,” said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Gelber’s Democratic attorney general opponent, Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres, is also backing the measure. “It’s money for people who need it the most and who will spend it immediately.”

Rader acknowledged it is highly unlikely the session will be expanded but that “I am always hopeful that common sense and reason will prevail.”