Lawmakers approved a $69.7 billion spending plan and quietly ended the 2011 legislative session at 3:35 a.m. without any pomp and circumstance.

Instead, the 60-day session ended with Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon publicly rebuking each other over with Haridopolos accusing Cannon of playing “silly games” and Cannon claiming to “take the high road” by rejecting a controversial Senate tax break.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, called his members back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up a tax-break proposal that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Haridopolos apologized for asking them to return about an hour after he sent them home and instructed them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

Shortly before Haridopolos recalled the Senate, Cannon gaveled down the House without passing two claims bills that were Haridopolos priorities. Eric Brody was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon was slated to get less than $1 million after being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades for a crime he didn’t commit.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
Gov. Rick Scott left the building around midnight as the legislative session devolved into chaos. Scott had been scheduled to participate in the ceremonial white hanky drop but instead went home to bed because he had a busy schedule this weekend, his spokesman Brian Burgess said.

The House approved the budget shortly before 2 a.m., about two-and-a-half hours after the Senate and following some very hard feelings between the two chambers.

The House then took up the disputed tax break bill (CS/SB 7203).

But the House remained angered by the Senate’s killing a pair of professional deregulation bills earlier in the night — with House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, saying that move broke an agreement between the two chambers.

“In light of the Senate’s inability to meet that obligation, I’ve decided that our chamber would take the high road…and send it all to the Senate tonight, and leave no ambiguity,” Cannon said.

The House took up the tax-break bill, voted to remove the Jacksonville track provision, repackaged the measure as HB 143 and sent it back to the Senate. With the budget behind them, and the tax-break package structured to their liking, Cannon and House members adjourned at 2:07 a.m., Saturday.

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Senate President Mike Haridopolos apologized to his members shortly before the 2011 legislative session fizzled to an end in the wee hours of the morning Saturday.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, brought the chamber back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up and pass a tax-break measure that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Instead of the usual fanfare celebrating the end of the 60-day session, the 36 senators who showed returned to the Capitol after Haridopolos sent them home two hours before were somber.

Haridopolos apologized for calling them back so quickly after he had told them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

The big losers of the session were two Floridians whose claims bills the House refused to pass before Speaker Dean Cannon adjourned for the year: Eric Brody, who was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon, a wrongfully convicted Brevard County man who would have received less than $1 million for nearly 30 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. The claims bills for the two men were priorities of Haridopolos.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.

The Senate sine die’d at 3:35 a.m. The 2011 legislative session is officially over.

The tax provision that caused the Legislature to unravel and miss its scheduled Friday midnight close first emerged last weekend — and was ushered into a conforming bill by House and Senate budget-writers, said House Appropriations Chair Denise Grimsley.

“It’s been a very tough year, we had a lot of conforming bills,” Grimsley said shortly after the House adjourned and ended the 2011 session at 2:07 a.m., Saturday. “We just had some members who had some issues with it.”

Grimsley acknowledged she failed to fully gauge how a provision cutting the tax rate on coin-operated arcade machines would be seen as a major expansion of gambling by many in the conservative House.

The Senate, especially Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, wanted the measure to help dog tracks with card rooms.

But by then, the House had little love for the Senate — which Friday night had an uprising of its own over two other conforming bills that would have deregulated a dozen professions, but had never gotten a hearing in the Senate.

The Senate refused to go along with what the House wanted, killing the biggest of the two bills on a 32-6 vote. Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, and his leadership team were on the losing side.

Sifting through the still smoking wreckage of the last night, House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, declined to question whether the 45 conforming bills lawmakers were asked to vote on, may have caused the upheaval.

The bills, containing vast policy changes, some of which were being aired for the first time, had been agreed-upon only by a handful of leaders before being foisted on the full chambers for a final vote.

“A conference committee is an effort where people agree to things that they might not have otherwise have done in their chamber because it’s important to the other chamber,” Cannon said. “That’s what conference is all about. And that’s why conference is sort of an implied agreement between the two chambers.”

Was there a lesson learned? Maybe 45 conforming bills settled by a narrow group of lawmakers isn’t so hot?

Cannon disagreed. But his explanation may have reflected the early a.m. hour.

“Every session is different. And every Legislature is different. And because legislators are made of people, they’re subject to different personalities and different challenges,” Cannon said.

Shortly before 2 a.m., the Florida House voted 79-39 to approve the state budget — about 2 1/1 hours after the Senate and following some very hard feelings between the two chambers.

The House then took up the disputed tax break bill (CS/SB 7203) which included reductions for a Jacksonville dog track forced into the bill by Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine.

But the House remained angered by the Senate’s killing a pair of professional deregulation bills earlier in the night — with House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, saying that move broke an agreement between the two chambers.

“In light of the Senate’s inability to meet that obligation, I’ve decided that our chamber would take the high road…and send it all to the Senate tonight, and leave no ambiguity,” Cannon said.

The House took up the tax-break bill, voted to remove the Jacksonville track provision, repackaged the measure as HB 143 and sent it back to the Senate. With the budget behind them, and the tax-break package structured to their liking, Cannon and House members adjourned at 2:07 a.m., Saturday.

 

UPDATE: Senate’s going home until 10 a.m. Senate President Mike Haridopolos said he hopes they’ll get the tax cut bill by then. The tax cut measure (SB 7203) includes a component that would allow a Jacksonville greyhound track to get arcade-style slot machines. A track in Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district is seeking the video slots.

Gov. Rick Scott has left the building as the legislative session devolved into chaos around midnight.

Forget the traditional sine die white hanky drop where the governor, House Speaker and Senate President ceremonially signal the successful completion of another session. Not going to happen.

Instead, the Senate extended session until 6 p.m. tomorrow, miffed that the House had ignored a handful of bills considered crucial, including a $12 million by the Broward Sheriffs Office to Eric Brody who was injured by a Broward deputy 13 years ago.

Around 12:15 a.m., Senate President Mike Haridopolos advised his members to stick around in informal recess until 1 a.m. If he and House Speaker Dean Cannon can’t reach an agreement on what bills to take up by then, Haridopolos said he’ll call it a night.

“I will try not to keep us too late,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said.

Earlier in the evening, the Senate revolted against the chamber’s GOP leadership by voting down a measure deregulating less than a half dozen professions, including interior designers. The House is now holding up an economic development bill with a tax credit and a sales tax holiday the Senate was hoping to finalize tonight.

It seems an unfortunate end to the governor’s first session. Scott’s spokesman Brian Burgess said his boss is disappointed there wasn’t a simultaneous finale but “very, very pleased” that “90 percent of what we wanted went through.”

Scott had to get to bed because “he’s got a very aggressive schedule over the next few days,” Burgess said.

As Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi looked on from the dais, the House unanimously approved a pill mill compromise, sending it to Scott for final approval.

Cannon, R-Winter Park, praised the final product, the culmination of late-night negotiations that went down to the wire and at times appeared to be doomed.

“Today we saw the best of the best of the best of Tallahassee,” Cannon, R-Winter Park, said.

Bondi said she spoke with Senate President Mike Haridopolos after midnight and was working the phones until 2:30 a.m. Friday morning to try to bring the deal in for a landing.

Bondi said Friday’s vote would send an immediate message to unscrupulous pill mill operators and doctors.

“I hope they start packing right now,” she said.

Twisting a purple rubber bracelet, Bondi said she could now stop wearing the memento she placed on her wrist on March 8. The bracelet was a gift from the mother of Brandi Meshad, an 18-year-old Sarasota woman who overdosed from prescription drugs. Meshad was the granddaughter of attorney and prominent developer John Meshad. Her body was discovered at his house.

Bondi said she promised Lisa Meshad she would wear the bracelet until the measure was signed into law.

“Real soon,” Bondi said.

Working into the night on the legislative session’s 60th and final day,  the House and Senate debated the $69.7 billion budget — the lone bill by law the Legislature must pass each year.

The rhetoric flew in both chambers, with the partisan lines clearly marked. A final vote isn’t expected until after 10 p.m.

Ruling Republicans praised the spending plan for closing a $3.8 billion shortfall, including no-new-taxes, and managing to avoid deep cuts to programs serving critically ill, elderly and disabled Floridians.

“Contained within this budget is the seed for a money tree,” said Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville, touting the blueprint’s economic development potential.

Democrats, though,  ridiculed the plan for cutting $1.3 billion from schools, reducing dollars for environmental programs, and imposing 3 percent pay cuts on 655,000 government employees who will have to contribute to the Florida Retirement System for the first time since 1974.

Rep.  Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, has stung House Republican leaders several times this session by accusing them of “sticking it” to various segments of Floridians.

He used the phrase to criticize Republicans for enacting new pay standards for teachers, and changes Clemens and other critics said were aimed at reducing womens’ access to abortion.

“It’s a great day in the state of Florida,” Clemens told the House on Friday afternoon, “because this is the last day I can ask ‘who are we sticking it to today?’ Unfortunately, the answer is Floridians.”

As the Senate began debating the budget in anticipation of a vote late this evening, President Mike Haridopolos dropped into the press gallery to chat with reporters at the close of the 60-day legislative session.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, boasted that he’s achieved the goals he set out at the onset of the 60-day legislative session: a balanced budget, no new taxes, Medicaid reform, and passing “Smart Cap,” the proposed constitutional amendment limiting how much government can spend he’s championed for 11 years.

The result is “hopefully that people will be able to see Florida as a business-friendly state,” he said. “That was my goal and I’m happy to report on the final day of session we met those goals.”

But cutting $3.6 billion from the state budget without raising taxes and creating sweeping new policies on Medicaid, education and pensions wasn’t easy, Haridopolos said, .

“This was a very difficult year, a very trying year in many cases,” he said.

The biggest – if not only – issue left undone is immigration, Haridopolos said. The Senate passed its measure but House Speaker Dean Cannon said the proposal is dead because it doesn’t go far enough for the super-majority of his 120 members needed to take it up.

Haridopolos said he hoped the House would consider what he called solid, common-sense legislation that would deport criminals after their sentences are served and would have required anyone receiving state or federal benefits be a legal resident of the state.

“Too often politicians operate through bumper stickers,” Haridopolos said. “This is what the legislative process is about…
It’s not just a public opinion poll that says do this. We’ll come back next year with more information.”

Asked how much influence Gov. Rick Scott – who Senate budget chief JD Alexander said earlier should take a “victory lap” – had on the session, Haridopolos said: “He was a rock” because “you knew he was not going to raise taxes” and would veto any measures that did.

The Senate president, also running for U.S. Senate in the GOP primary, took a couple of campaign-related questions as well.

Democrats are using a coloring book based on the single-copy book Haridopolos wrote and was paid more than $150K for as a fundraising tool on the last day of session.

Haridopolos shrugged it off and even signed a copy for Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo.

“Welcome to the NFL. I guess I’m in the NFL now and I’m playing on the field. Look, it says something if they’re constantly attacking me. So I must be doing something they don’t like if they spend so much time and attention on me,” Haridopolos said.

Then came a little bashing of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

“I think the contrast is pretty darn clear between me and Bill Nelson. Bill Nelson’s been in office since I was two years old.
And other than getting a ride on the shuttle, name me something major in this building, in Washington, D.C., that he has accomplished since I was two years old,” the 41-year-old said. “I like to think I get things done. He’s a person who holds a press conference….a press conference is not legislation.”

A proposed constitutional amendment that would make it clear that state money can go to religious institutions was approved Friday by the Senate, putting the measure on the ballot next year.

The state constitution has a so-called “Blaine Amendment,” which prohibits tax dollars from directly or indirectly going to sectarian purposes. It’s been used to challenge faith-based programs that get government grants.

Backers say if government grant money could clearly go to sectarian institutions, it wouldn’t be used directly for religious purposes. But the provision, if approved by voters, could make it clear that state money can go to private religious schools, such as in a voucher, though the state’s main voucher program was found unconstitutional on other grounds.

Still, some vouchers, such as those used by disabled children, remain authorized, though backers of the bill have said they fear those scholarships could be threatened by the constitutional “Blaine Amendment.”

Removing the provision, however, would also make it clear that Medicaid money going to church-affiliated health care providers is OK, halfway houses that are run by ministries or other organizations are legal, or that churchs could get state money for an after-school sports league.

Opponents had worried that because the state can’t discriminate against religions, it also would make for the possibility of taxpayer dollars going for some possibly unpopular religious organizations.

Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Clearwater, noted that if it passes, state money could go to the Church of Scientology. Others have noted that it could go to the Koran-burning church in Gainesville, or it might allow for a voucher to be used by a student to attend a conservative Islamic religious school, meaning taxpayers would be paying for Islamic fundamentalist education.

“We may be very sorry we have voted for this amendment,” Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach said Friday. “This has great dangerous potential for all of us…be very careful about your vote.” The bill’s sponsors have said any religious discrimination is bad, no matter the religion.

The bill passed the Senate 26-10.

– News Service of Florida

The Senate unanimously approved a compromise aimed at stripping Florida of its dubious distinction as the “pill mill capital” of the nation as Attorney General Pam Bondi looked on from the dais and two of Gov. Rick Scott’s top aides watched from the public gallery.

The package, a deal reached in the waning hours of the legislative session wrapping up tonight, bans doctors from dispensing highly addictive narcotics and heightens penalties against rogue pain clinics.

“Florida will no longer be known as the pill mill capital of the world,” said the bill sponsor Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. “It will come to an end in the state of Florida.”

Fasano credited Bondi, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, and his wife Stephanie, a doctor seated beside Bondi as the vote was taken, for insisting on keeping the state’s prescription drug database over the objections of House Speaker Dean Cannon and Scott.

The measure also requires prescriptions for controlled substances to be written on Department of Health-approved prescription pads or electronically, onsite inspections of pharmacies and a mandatory buy-back period for doctors no longer able to dispense the drugs to get rid of them.

The measure goes back to the House for final approval before it heads to the governor, whose aides said he supports it.

The Senate approved a sweeping rewrite of Florida’s Medicaid program Friday, with the House later this afternoon expected to embrace the plan to steer almost 3 million low-income, elderly and disabled Floridians into managed care health coverage.

The House is expected to follow suit later this afternoon.

The Senate voted 28-11 to approve the measure (CS/7107) which was unveiled Thursday for the first time, after legislative leaders worked out myriad details of the House-Senate compromise in secrecy.

Several lawmakers complained about the way the deal was hatched.

“Something that has so much of an impact…to have three or four people sit down and sort it out, is not right,” said Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston.

The Medicaid rewrite needs approval from the federal government. And federal officials have already warned that the package’s plan to allow managed care companies to collect as much as 5 percent profit — while sharing higher levels with the state — may not prove acceptable, and could jeopardize the state’s needed-waiver.

The federal government finances close to 60 percent of Florida’s Medicaid program and must sign-off on any changes advanced by lawmakers. (more…)

With less than 12 hours to go, lawmakers are now close to sealing a deal further cracking down on pill mills.

The final deal will include a ban on doctors dispensing powerful narcotics with no exemption for workers’ compensation physicians, no cap on the amount of doses pharmacies can dispense – a major sticking point for Sen. Mike Fasano, shepherding the bill in the Senate. It does include Attorney General Pam Bondi’s proposed language stiffening penalties against rogue pain management clinics and doctors. It will also ban pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the private foundation that pays for the state’s prescription drug database.

Limiting the amount of highly addictive pain drugs that get on the street has become a priority of Gov. Rick Scott, who testified before Congress on the issue last month touting his plan to track the drugs from the wholesaler to the pharmacy to the doctor. Scott had to give up on capping the dosage amounts after cancer hospitals and hospices complained the limits would keep them from being able to treat patients in chronic pain.

Procedurally, the Senate will take up the House’s bill (HB 7095), put the compromise language on it, and send it back to the House for a final vote before 10:16 p.m. That’s the earliest lawmakers can vote on the budget, the only thing they’re constitutionally required to do during the 60-day legislative session, and they are expected to call it quits shortly after. Gov. Rick Scott plans to join House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos for the traditional sine die hankie drop.

Lawmakers are on the brink of finishing up work without ratifying rules implementing strict regulation of pill mills passed last year.

The Florida Senate unanimously signed off on two bills approving the new rules for doctors (SB 1990) and pain management clinics (SB 2168) a week ago but the House has yet to take them up with less than 18 hours left in the session.

The rules include penalties for doctors at the clinics who do not comply with a 72-hour prescription limit.

Efforts by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, to strengthen the regulations also are flailing, but even if passed would be difficult to implement without the current rules in effect.

“A lot of what has to be put in place has to be done by rule. It’s in the House’s hands. I don’t know what their intentions are,” Fasano said late Thursday night.

Palm Beach County’s Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, and former state Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat now working as Bondi’s drug czar, were instrumental in getting the pill mill regulations passed last year.

Lawmakers last year overrode Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto of a measure requiring the legislature’s approval of rules that cost more than $200,000 a year, meaning they must now sign off on rules regulating pill mills.

If they fail to act before Friday, it could be until the legislature reconvenes in January before they could be approved.

An elections overhaul likely to wind up in court that would cut nearly in half the number of days for early voting and impose tougher restrictions on groups registering voters is headed to Gov. Rick Scott.

The GOP-dominated legislature easily pushed through the elections revamp over the objections of Democrats who argued the bill will make it harder for Floridians to vote and get their ballots counted.

The 157-page elections measure will reduce the number of days available for early voting from 14 to 8 but keep the same number of hours – 96 – and allow supervisors of elections to extend weekend hours.

Palm Beach County elections supervisor Susan Bucher estimated the early voting changes would cost her office more than $941 million to secure additional polling places, equipment and salaries.

The overhaul make it tougher for like the League of Women Voters, labor unions and the NAACP to sign up prospective voters by requiring them to register with the state, give voter registration forms to elections supervisors within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines, among other things.
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GOP legislative leaders are in a standoff on a pill mill crackdown with less than 36 hours left until the session is expected to end.

Sen. Mike Fasano, the Senate’s pill mill bill sponsor, said he could not get House counterpart Robert Schenck, R-Spring Hill, to agree to a compromise proposal incorporating much of Schenck’s plan, including a ban on doctors dispensing narcotics and imposing new permitting restrictions on pharmacies.

Fasano also agreed to ban pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, something Gov. Rick Scott has insisted on. Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has offered $1 million to the foundation responsible for paying for the database.

But Schenck sent back a dozen components he wanted in the bill, including a cap on the amount of doses of highly addictive medications that pharmacies can dole out, Fasano said.

Fasano won’t agree to the dosage caps because, he said, they are few below what hospices and pharmacies catering to cancer hospitals need to treat patients in chronic pain.

Instead, Fasano is returning to his original plan to strip the House bill, approved 116-1 last month, and put on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s language tightening penalties on rogue doctors and clinics and reducing the number of days dispensers have to report information to the prescription drug database from 14 to 7 days.

But Scott and House leaders, including Speaker Dean Cannon, have insisted on a comprehensive plan that would include restrictions on wholesalers, pharmacies and doctors to curb the illicit prescription drug market in Florida that some say has been responsible for a national prescription drug addiction crisis.

“We’ve made an offer to them but they’re thus far reluctant to accept it. So my goal is at a minimum to get the language that would enhance the penalties, go after unscrupulous doctors, unscrupulous pill mill owners, all of the AG language along with reducing the requirement of reporting to the PDMP form 14 days to 7 days,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said. “Right now that’s what I’d like to do but nothing’s definite.”

Read more of the differences between Schenck and Fasano after the jump.
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Civic groups like the Boy Scouts of America could find it harder to register voters under a sweeping elections bill (HB 1355) approved by the Senate and sent back to the House this afternoon.

The elections overhaul would, among other things, create tight restrictions on third-party voter organizations – such as the League of Women Voters, unions and the NAACP – and require them to hand over voter registration forms to elections supervisors within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines.

The bill would also shorten the number of days voters can cast their ballots early before Election Day.

Democrats argue the changes are aimed at suppressing Democratic voter turnout in 2012 because Democrats tend to use early voting more than Republicans and relied heavily on third-party groups to register voters in the 2008 presidential election.

“Maybe some people didn’t like the outcome of our last presidential election or the outcome of the ballot initiatives that have passed in recent years,” Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston said before the 25-13 vote. Republican Sens. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey and Paula Dockery of Lakeland joined Democrats in opposition.

Earlier today, union leaders urged Democrats to ask questions about the measure to lay the groundwork for lawsuits later this summer.

Democrats also complained that the changes would make it more difficult to voters to cast their ballots and have them counted.

But Sen. Mike Bennett, a Vietnam vet, said that maybe voting shouldn’t be so easy. He compared Floridians’ voting experiences with voters in new democracies in Africa who have to “walk 200 or 300 miles” to cast their ballots.

“How much more convenient do you want to make it? You want to go to the house? Take the polling booth with us?” Bennett, R-Bradenton, wanted to know. “For the guy who died to give you that right to vote it was not inconvenient…I wouldn’t have any problem making it harder. I would want them to vote as badly as I want to vote. I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who’s willing to walk 200 miles…This should not be easy.”

A few details are dribbling out Thursday afternoon on a rewrite of Florida’s Medicaid law — affecting 2.9 million low-income, elderly and disabled Floridians, but crafted as one of the Capitol’s best-kept secrets.

The Senate is expected to debate the legislation soon, with many seeing the proposed compromise for the first time on the eve of the scheduled end of the legislative session. But — no surprise at the Capitol — health care lobbyists are among those given a heads-up on what’s about to be sprung.

Lawmakers, basically,  have cobbled together portions of dueling House and Senate plans approved earlier this session that steer most of Florida’s Medicaid patients into managed care in a bid to shrink the program’s $22 billion price-tag, which currently commands about one-third of the state’s $69.7 billion budget.

Among the areas of compromise:

Regions: Senate had wanted 19; House, 8. The House-Senate package settles on 11 regions that track the Agency for Health Care Administration’s  service areas. HMOs, patient service networks (PSNs) and other managed care providers would compete in each;

Developmentally disabled Floridians: Will continue to draw services paid through the Agency for Persons with Disabilities new I-Budget system, effectively keeping these patients out of managed care for now. The Senate had advocated for this stance;

Medically Needy: Costly prescription drug and hospitalization services for these more than 40,000 critically ill and transplant patients would be maintained in the state’s budget. But these patients would have to enroll in managed care plans to obtain treatment;

Doctor payments: Increased doctor payments are “expected” from the managed care companies who gain control over Medicaid dollars. But the proposal stops short of the guaranteed payment boosts earlier pushed by the Senate.

Members of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the Secret Service visited Lynn University this week to check out the campus as a possible site for a 2012 presidential debate, the school announced.

Expect a decision this fall on sites for three presidential and one vice presidential debate before the November 2012 elections.

Said Lynn President Kevin M. Ross: “Lynn University was honored to show the commission staff our beautiful campus and facilities. We’ve already hosted a 2010 mid-term debate (between then-U.S. Rep. Ron Klein and Republican challenger Allen West) and our campus facilities, including the Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center, would be an ideal location for a 2012 presidential election debate. We have the space, the local support infrastructure and services, and the support of the community. I know we would make an excellent choice.”

Check out a list of the other schools competing to be debate venues after the jump…..

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The Florida House approved a $30 million cut in the state’s corporate income tax Thursday, giving Gov. Rick Scott a small share of the deep reduction in the levy the first-year chief executive had sought.

In the usually heavily partisan House, many Democrats joined with ruling Republicans in sending the measure to the governor, who has said he sees the cut as a good first-step. The measure (CS/HB 7185) was OK’d 110-5.

“Florida’s open for business,” said Rep. George Moraitis, R-Fort Lauderdale. “We’re cutting taxes.”

Scott sought a $459 million, first-year reduction in the state’s corporate income tax, by reducing the state’s 5.5 percent rate to 3 percent.

House and Senate budget-writers, though,  agreed only to a $30 million cut,  increasing the state’s exemption on corporate taxpayers.

Currently, businesses are exempt from the corporate levy if their payments would total less than $5,000. The legislation would boost that exemption to $25,000, with supporters saying it effectively exempts almost half of Florida’s 30,000 businesses now paying the tax, taking mostly smaller companies off the tax roll.

Rep. Steven Precourt, R-Orlando, sponsor of the measure, said it would save these companies an average $1,100-a-year.

Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said the tax reduction will eventually help state lawmakers, by helping generated more tax dollars to fuel future budgets. Lawmakers this year struggled to close an almost $3.8 billion budget shortfall in the $69.7 billion spending plan awaiting a vote Friday, the session’s final scheduled day.

“Small businesses are tax collectors,” Baxley said. “I’ve got dozens of small businesses back home and they’ve shuttered their doors and they don’t send taxes to us anymore. That’s why we’re in a $4 billion hole.”

Only a handful of Democrats voted against the cut.

Among them was Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, who said it would do little for businesses and was a move toward eventually eliminating the corporate levy — which he opposes.

Clemens said, “I appreciate the intent,” of helping small businesses. But he criticized lawmakers for not setting aside dollars for teacher merit pay and moving to cut unemployment compensation benefits for Florida’s jobless.

Rep. Elaine Schwartz, D-Hollywood, said she supports the tax cut. But providing better financing for schools and health and human services is what will help businesses prosper, she said.

“We can’t take our eye off that ball,” Schwartz said.

The House added a controversial environmental permit provision to an otherwise, routine rulemaking bill Thursday — reversing a stance adopted only days ago by ruling Republicans.

The House voted 76-39 to add a disputed “burden of proof” standard that critics say effectively will block many citizens and organizations from challenging licenses or permits issued to developers, mining firms or others looking to build in environmentally sensitive areas.

The rulemaking legislation (CS/HB 993) now containing the tougher challenge standard heads to Gov. Rick Scott, who is likely to sign it into law.

House Republicans said lifting the ability for far-flung opponents to weigh-in with lawsuits or other challenges to development permits was hurting the state’s economy.

“Advocates have brought a project to a grinding halt, only because they challenge the permit,” said Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Panama City.

“Now,” Patronis urged House members, “take a chance to take your state back.”

Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, successfully got lawmakers last week to strip the “burden of proof” measure from a bill (CS/HB 991) that would prohibit local governments from requiring that state and federal permits be approved before granting local development projects.

Conservationists had derided the measure — approved in seven minutes late Friday night by the House — as among the worst environmental bills in years.

But critics also have said the local government legislation faced long odds in the Senate, where there’s been some resistence to a wide-ranging overhaul of environmental permitting. But with the Senate already embracing the tougher proof standard, the House joined in Thursday and included it in the rulemaking bill.

Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg, predicted that tightening the legal grounds for challenging land-use permits would not withstand court challenges.

“This is the wrong thing for us to be doing,” Kriseman said.