WASHINGTON — Palm Beach County’s newest congressional media star is U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta.

A day after leading the charge in the House to kill an alternate jet fighter engine program backed by House Speaker John Boehner, Rooney made his first-ever appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball tonight to talk about his victory. Rooney also appeared on CNN’s Situation Room on Thursday and is slated to appear on Fox & Friends on Saturday.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has given Florida an extra week to figure out a way to draw $2.4 billion in federal money for high-speed rail after Gov. Rick Scott rejected the grant Wednesday.

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who met with LaHood and five Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation this afternoon, said he hopes Amtrak or a local planning or transit authority would step in to assume the risk of cost overruns after Scott said those risks were too great for state taxpayers. Private business could also be part of the mix, Nelson said.

Scott would still have to sign off on such an arrangement, Nelson said.

The deadline for Florida to accept the federal money was Friday, but Nelson said LaHood extended the date to Feb. 25. LaHood didn’t talk to reporters after the meeting in Nelson’s office.

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A bipartisan coalition of Florida state senators asked U.S. Transportation Department Secretary Ray LaHood to give them more time to come up with a way to take advantage of the $2.4 billion in federal funds Gov. Rick Scott rejected yesterday.

Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, convinced 25 of her Republican and Democratic colleagues, including Sens. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Wellington, and Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, sign her letter to LaHood.

They say the Florida Rail Enterprise or the Florida Statewide Passenger Rail Commission, both created by the legislature in 2009, are possible entities to draw down the money to go around Scott, who heads the state’s transportation agency that originally sought the funds under Gov. Charlie Crist. The commission is comprised of nine members – three each appointed by the governor, the House Speaker and the Senate President.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and other members of Florida’s Congressional delegation are meeting with LaHood in a last-ditch effort to keep the money set to be distributed to the states tomorrow.

UPDATE: Gov. Rick Scott says he did not violate state laws with his sale of the state’s air fleet.

“We did it absolutely in compliance with the law. We reviewed it with our general counsel,” Scott told reporters after visiting the Florida Lottery this afternoon. “It was something that the taxpayers of this state wanted and it was one of the campaign promises that I followed up on.”

Gov. Rick Scott may have broken state law with his sale of the state’s two airplanes, according to Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander.

Scott used the sale of one state plane to pay off the lease on the second.

But in a letter to Scott sent today, Alexander says the governor needed the legislature’s approval to do that.

Using the money from the sale of the first plane to pay off the second plane “appears to be an expenditure of state funds not made in pursuance of an appropriation made by law,” Alexander wrote.

“My concern, of course, is that these actions may have violated the law and as such fail to recognize the Legislature by not respecting the Legislature’s constitutional duty to appropriate funds and your duty to spend appropriated funds in accordance with the law,” Alexander, R-Lake Wales, wrote.

The state planes are at the bottom of the heap of items the legislature and Scott are at odds over.

Yesterday, he sent Democrats and fellow GOP leaders in Tallahassee and Washington into a tizzy over his rejection of a sought-after $2.4 billion federal grant for high-speed rail.

Gov. Rick Scott will meet this afternoon with BP claims czar Ken Feinberg the day before the man with the $20 billion checkbook gets what is expected to be a grilling from a House committee.

Feinberg agreed to testify before the House Economic Affairs Committee at 9 a.m. Friday to field questions from disgruntled lawmakers unhappy with his handling of tens of thousands of Florida claims that have languished under his watch.

A federal judge recently ordered Feinberg, whose law firm earns $850,000 a month for administering the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, to quit saying he was independent of BP, the oil giant responsible in part for last year’s Deepwater Horizon massive oil disaster.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is among those calling for a White House investigation of Feinberg and the claims process after claimants complained that the money is being handed out inconsistently and they are unable to get answers about who got paid how much, if at all, and why.

Anticipating a huge turnout for tomorrow’s two-hour meeting, committee chairwoman Dorothy Hukill ordered members to submit their questions for Feinberg in writing to her by Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Nelson and members of Florida’s congressional delegation will meet this afternoon in Nelson’s office with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to discuss ways to finance high-speed rail despite Gov. Rick Scott’s announcement Wednesday that he’s rejecting $2.4 billion in federal money for a Tampa-Orlando project because of concerns about the state being on the hook for cost overruns.

Nelson’s office says the Senator reached out this morning, to mayors and planning officials in Central Florida. He says a metropolitan planning organization in Tampa and a rail authority in South Florida have volunteered to step forward in the state’s place to accept oversight of the train project.

The Florida Supreme Court is asking state lawmakers to approve 80 more judges to handle skyrocketing court filings since the state’s economic downturn.

The state’s court system needs an additional 26 circuit court judges and 54 county court judges, according to the high court.

While they certified the number of new judges, the Supreme Court also acknowledged that the likelihood of getting the funding for them is slim given lawmakers’ struggle to craft a budget with $3.62 billion less to spend than last year.

“With over one million Floridians unemployed and significant deficits in the state budget, we recognize that funding new judgeships will compete with other critical state priorities,” the judges wrote in an order today. “Nonetheless, the reality is that Florida’s circuit and county judges are overloaded with new filings, have substantial caseloads, and have fewer support staff to assist with the disposition of cases. Taken together, these factors continue to hamper the effective administration of justice in Florida.”

West Virginia lawmakers are asking Florida Gov. Rick Scott to reconsider doing away with the state’s prescription drug database aimed at curbing doctor-shopping for pain pills.

The Charleston Gazette reported that 13 West Virginia lawmakers sponsored a resolution asking Scott to reverse his plan to get the legislature to repeal the database they created two years ago.

Law Enforcement officials and others, including Senate President Mike Haridopolos, contend the state needs the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, not yet up and running because of a bid dispute, to crack down on prescription drug abuse and the illicit export of prescription drugs into Appalachian states, including Kentucky and West Virginia. Drug users and dealers come to the Sunshine State by the busload to get the meds from pill mills.

WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said he talked with Transportation Second. Ray Lahood this afternoon about financing the Tampa-Orlando rail project without the state government’s participation.

“We are exploring with the Secretary of Transportationan Ray LaHood, how we could keep this project going forward since the state of Florida will not participate. We have the lawyers researching it,” Nelson told The Palm Beach Post.

Nelson’s action was in reaction to Gov. Rick Scott announcing this morning that he’s rejecting $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money from President Obama’s administration for a high-speed rail project from Orlando to Tampa.

Read more: Scott says no thanks to feds’ $2.4 billion for hi-speed rail

After four years of close relations with his predecessor Charlie Crist, most black lawmakers believe they’ll have a much cooler relationship with Gov. Rick Scott.

“I’m not optimistic at all,” said Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, whose district includes a portion of Palm Beach County.

But don’t look for any sit-ins, yet.

After two months on the job, Gov. Rick Scott has yet to appoint a black or Hispanic to a high-level post.

And at a luncheon for black lawmakers at the mansion yesterday, he further alienated some of the members by suggesting he grew up like them – in public housing and with a parent who had a sixth-grade education.

He also told them he wants their help hiring minorities although he also said he insisted he believe in giving preferences to applicants based on race or ethnicity.

Today, black lawmakers set up an e-mail address to help Scott round out his hires.

Blacks and Hispanics interested in getting to work for Scott should send their applications to iamqualified@live.net, caucus leader Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, said at a press conference today. Minority business owners seeking contracts with the state should also send their information, Siplin advised.

The lawmakers want Scott to reconsider his decision to whack money for historically black private colleges – except the financially ailing Edward Waters College near Jacksonville – from his budget.

Siplin said they’ll meet again with Scott and forward the qualified applicants to his office.

Siplin said Scott was simply sharing his background with the black caucus by mentioning the public housing and parents’ lack of education.

“Quite frankly, all black folks are not poor,” Siplin said at a press conference Wednesday.

Smith, whose mother has a master’s degree, said he was shocked at Scott’s comments at yesterday’s lunch and considered walking out.

“He just assumed because he was sitting with a bunch of black people that we had all grown up in public housing,” Smith said.

Scott is “tremendously disconnected” from the realities of being black or Hispanic in Florida, Smith said.

“He doesn’t see the need for diversity or inclusion,” Smith said. “Any diversity that happens (in his administration) is going to happen by happenstance.”

Gov. Jeb Bush started off by alienating blacks when he did away with minority preferences in university admission and state contracting.

Bush’s actions prompted two black lawmakers – then-Sen. Kendrick Meek and Sen. Tony Hill, then a House member – to stage a sit-in in his office.

Sen. Joe Negron wants fat Floridians and smokers to get healthy or else.

Included in Negron’s revamp of the state-federal Medicaid program – which Negron will release tomorrow – is a component aimed at what senators are calling “personal responsibility.”

Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who helped craft Negron’s bill, said Medicaid patients have to take control of their health care just as he had to do when his doctor told him to lose weight.

“We’re saying that an individual who’s been diagnosed as morbidly obese needs to be on a medically-directed program of weight loss to manage that health care problem that could turn into an increased taxpayer liability. The same thing with smokers,” Gaetz said.

The bill would require smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts to get treatment, Gaetz said.

Negron said his bill would include incentives for Medicaid patients to lose weight, quit smoking and stop drinking but did not give details about what they would be.

If they don’t get thinner and put down the smokes, Negron said their coverage could be cut off.

“It’s possible,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

He said the Medicaid program currently includes a seldom-used provision that would allow the state to boot patients out.

“If you are non-compliant with your appointments, if you reject medical advice, there is a system in place under current law, which is rarely used but it has been used, …where someone would no longer receive services,” Negron said.

Healthier Medicaid patients will save the state money, Gaetz and Negron said.

“They not only compromise the quality of that person’s life they compromise the efficacy of any medical care that might be rendered but they drive up costs that are then shifted to the friends and neighbors who are actually paying the health care bill for the individual who is smoking,” Gaetz said.

The system can no longer tolerate someone “who is an alcoholic and wants to offload the medical consequences of alcoholism to the taxpayers of Florida,” Gaetz said.

Gov. Rick Scott announced this morning he’s rejecting $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money from President Obama’s administration for a high-speed rail project from Orlando to Tampa.

Scott made the announcement at a hastily-called press conference this morning where he blasted the president’s budget.

“You don’t have to be an economics expert to know when you spend more money than you take in you will fail,” Scott said, saying ridership studies were overstated.

Scott’s move will certainly draw cheers from tea party activists who have railed against the high-speed rail project. Scott, who rolled out his budget at a tea party event earlier this month, met privately with two Tampa tea party activists last week. The pair urged him to say no to the high-speed rail project that had the support of powerful GOP legislative leaders as well as Republican U.S. Rep. John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“I am deeply disappointed in the decision to not move forward with the Orlando to Tampa passenger rail project,” Mica said in a statement. “This is a huge setback for the state of Florida, our transportation, economic development, and important tourism industry.”

Scott was also asked about Central Florida’s controversial $1.2 billion SunRail project — which critics have called a worse deal for taxpayers than high-speed rail.

“I’m still reviewing SunRail,” the governor said.

House Speaker Dean Cannon issued an ambiguous statement about Scott’s decision to scrap the project that would have brought jobs to his hometown.

“I have not spoken to the Governor regarding today’s announcement, but I watched the Governor’s press conference. I’m encouraged that he is focusing on the practical realities of government programs, and their long-term impacts. As the Constitutional officer charged with carrying out transportation policy, the Governor seems to have determined that at this time he cannot feasibly implement high-speed rail in Florida. I have confidence that he will bring the same level of scrutiny to other issues,” Cannon, R-Winter Park, said.

WASHINGTON — Florida should keep its early presidential primary date in 2012 and the Republican National Committee would be wise to accommodate the important swing state, Republican U.S. Sen Marco Rubio says.

Both parties have agreed that only four states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — should have primaries before March 1. When Rubio was state House Speaker, the legislature moved Florida’s 2008 primary to January to give the state more influence. The 2012 primary will be in January as well unless the legislature changes the date.

Says Rubio: “I think if the Republican Party wants to pay for the elections in Florida, they can have them any day they want. But as long as the voters of Florida are going to pay for this election, it should be on the most meaningful day possible. An election in late January costs the same as an election in April, but it’s a lot more meaningful.”

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Senate President Mike Haridopolos hasn’t yet officially said whether he will abstain from fundraising for his U.S. Senate campaign during the legislature’s upcoming 60-day session that begins on March 8.

This week, Haridopolos, a Merritt Island Republican who frequently speaks of the classes he teaches University of Florida students in the Capitol, said to ask his Democratic opponent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson whether he would forego fundraising while the Senate’s in session.

Politico recently reported that Haridopolos has 15 fundraisers scheduled over the next 30 days to build up his campaign war chest, meaning he intends to keep filling his coffers during session. Florida legislators are barred from collecting campaign contributions for state or legislative races during the 60-day session.

Now, the state party chairmen have waded into the “to fundraise or not to fundraise” sphere.

In a press release, Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith demanded that Haridopolos “either step-down as Senate President” or “immediately stop abusing the power afforded to him by not fundraising until the legislative session ends.”

That prompted Republican Party of Florida Chairman Dave Bitner to issue a press release demanding that Nelson do the same.

“Chairman Smith should clarify his statement about fund raising activities during legislative sessions. Did he mean to say that Senator Bill Nelson will not be accepting any money leading up to, or during the federal legislative session? Will he also request that the Senator return any of the approximately 1.2 million dollars he has accepted from lobbyists during the legislative sessions since 2002?” Bitner said in his statement.

That means Nelson would have to quit his job to raise money to keep his job if he agreed to Bitner’s demand.

As constitutional expert Haridopolos no doubt knows, the problem is that Congress is always in session. Their session (which is not a legislative session, but a Congressional one) begins the day members are sworn in and ends after the two-year Congressional terms are up.

“Article 1, section 3 of the Constitution provides a system of staggered six-year terms for senators. At the conclusion of each two-year congress, the terms of only one-third of the 100 senators expire, allowing two-thirds of the senators to continue serving without interruption. As a consequence, the Senate is a continuing body, which allows the Senate to make any changes in its leadership, or to change committee assignments prior to opening day,” the U.S. Senate website reads.

Gov. Rick Scott appointed Francis Gibbs as the Department of Transportation’s chief of staff – but has yet to name who Gibbs will answer to. Scott has yet to appoint a replacement for former secretary Stephanie Kopelousos, who went to work for U.S. Rep. John Mica in Washington.

Scott also appointed Jerry Curington as DOT’s general counsel and named his own general counsel, Charles Trippe.

Trippe most recently was a partner at the Moseley, Pritchard, Parrish, Knight and Jones law firm in Jacksonville. Before that, he was a top lawyer for CSX, Inc., the Jacksonville-based transportation behemoth.

Gibbs worked for U.S. Reps. Ander Crenshaw and Connie Mack on transportation policy matters and most recently served as Mack’s chief of staff.

Curington was until now general counsel at the Department of Children and Families.

A transportation department reorg may be in the works. It was one of the agencies Scott’s transition team recommended be merged with the Departments of Environmental Protection and Community Affairs. Scott virtually eliminated DCA in his budget proposal.

Senate Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee Chairman Mike Fasano says he’s not sorry for being harsh with Gov. Rick Scott’s aides at a budget meeting last week.

Scott’s policy and budget staff skipped Fasano’s meeting this morning after Scott ordered them not to show up because of Fasano’s angry questioning about the governor’s plan to do away with more than 1,800 prison jobs.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander told reporters “an apology is in order” after saying Fasano’s treatment of Scott’s staff was “not ideal.”

Fasano said no mea culpa is forthcoming.

“Why would I apologize?” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said.

Scott’s staff should have been better prepared to answer his questions, Fasano said.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said of this morning’s snub. “I thought it was a bit childish.”

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Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to do away with a prescription drug database approved by lawmakers two years ago is getting the cold shoulder from Senate President Mike Haridopolos.

Haridopolos said today he not only wants to keep the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program alive, he wants to fund it.

“I want to fund it. I do and I think it’s the right thing to do,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said, in contrast to Scott’s statement earlier today that he doesn’t believe in the system.

Haridopolos said that the state would only have to pay $500,000 a year to maintain the system, not yet up and running because of a bid dispute.

“I think it’s a good idea. And we need to look at other aggressive law enforcement tactics to take on this major problem in our state,” Haridopolos said.

Gov. Rick Scott rejected some GOP lawmakers proposal to phase-in a revamp of the state’s pension system.

Scott’s proposed having state workers kick in 5 percent of their salaries to their pension plans, splitting the 10 percent the state now pays for. That would amount to a 5 percent salary cut for the state’s public school employees, who make up nearly half of the Florida Retirement System.

Senate Education Appropriations Committee Chairman David Simmons said he wants to see the pension reform eased in over more than one year so that beginning teachers won’t get a pay cut while the state’s still struggling to come out of a recession.

Scott says nope.

“It’s only fair. The private sector, they fund their retirement benefits so the public sector ought to be doing the same thing,” Scott said. Asked if he was willing to negotiate on the phase-in, Scott’s response was terse: “No.”

Gov. Rick Scott said he scrapped Florida’s much-anticipated computer system aimed at curbing the sale of prescription drugs by pill mills because he doesn’t believe it’s something the state should do.

Scott said he’s backing instead Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement that she’s going to step up prosecutions of the pain clinics with a team led by former state Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat.

“What I’m focused on is the stuff Attorney General Bondi’s focused on -focus on the people that are doing the wrong things rather than just trying to create a database of everybody in the state,” Scott, a former health care executive, said this morning. “I’m focused on the things she’s working on.”

But Bondi, who ramped up her efforts after Scott axed his office of drug control and policy, said recently that the prescription drug database is one of the tolls that law enforcement officials – and doctors – need to stanch the flow of the highly addictive drugs from Florida, which she called the “epicenter” of the nation’s illicit drug activity.

Scott said the database hasn’t worked (it’s not up and running yet because of a bid dispute).

“And I don’t’ believe we ought to be doing it,” he said.

Scott’s decision to do away with the database, created by lawmakers two years ago, alarmed officials in Kentucky and other states who’ve seen an influx of prescription drugs from Florida. And it created shockwaves in the law enforcement community and among lawmakers who backed the program.

The database would crack down on “doctor-shopping” by allowing doctors to look up patients’ prescription records.

“Without this important program Florida will take a step back ten years or more into the past,” Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said of Scott’s decision.

WASHINGTON — PostOnPolitics didn’t catch the dozen or so GOP presidential hopefuls who appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, but The Hill says most of the White House wannabes weren’t as enthusiastically received by the activist crowd as U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, was tonight.

Click here for The Palm Beach Post‘s coverage of West’s keynote address.

Democrats and some nonpartisan political handicappers believe conservative firebrand West will be vulnerable in 2012 when he seeks reelection in a district that Dems John Kerry and Barack Obama won (though decennial redistricting will create new lines before the next election).

Perhaps. But West is a certified rock star with conservative activists. As he walked around the Marriott Wardman Park hotel this afternoon, he was repeatedly stopped by college kids asking him to pose for pictures, by a guy from California who wanted his autograph on a cowboy hat and by the vice chairman of the GOP in Kings County, N.Y., who used his camera phone to snap a shot of himself and West.

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