The Florida Senate began debate Thursday on a controversial plan to end teacher tenure and introduce merit pay based heavily on student performance.

Former Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a similar measure last year following a major campaign against SB 6 by the state’s teachers’ union. But fast-forward a few months and the new, slightly modified bill (CS/SB 736) — dubbed ‘son of 6′ — is on a fast-track.

Critics still abound. But they’re clearly outnumbered.

“I’m an old math teacher. I can count,” said Democratic Sen. Bill Montford of Tallahassee, a longtime educator who has a middle-school named after him in Leon County. “I know this is going to pass.”

Convicted felons who have served their sentences and paid restitution must now wait a minimum of five years before applying to have their rights restored, under changes approved by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet acting as the board of executive clemency today.

The new rules impose a five-year wait period for those convicted of non-violent crimes. Those convicted of violent crimes, including murder or DUI manslaughter, must wait seven years and require a hearing to request to have their civil rights, including the right to vote, restored.

Florida will now join two other states with such severe restrictions limiting former felons from voting.

The board did not release the proposed rule changes to the public until moments before the meeting began and limited public testimony to two-minutes per person for a total of 30 minutes before unanimously approving the changes.

“Felons seeking restoration of civil rights demonstrate they desire and deserve clemency only after they show they’re willing to abide by the law,” Scott said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former prosecutor, first suggested the rule change two weeks ago. But it was Scott’s staff who explained the rules when questioned by Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam Wednesday morning.

“I think they’re fair. I believe that there should be a waiting period and I believe that someone should have to ask to have their rights restored. I believe, as a 20-year prosecutor, any felony is a serious crime,” Bondi said.

Civil rights advocates, including five black lawmakers, objected to the rule changes, saying there is no evidence the current process – approved by Gov. Charlie Crist and the former Cabinet in 2007 – is not working.

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Civil rights advocates are asking the clemency board to hold off on changes to the state’s restoration of rights for felons scheduled for a vote Wednesday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week she was drafting a proposed rule change eliminating Florida’s limited automatic restoration of rights for felons convicted of non-violent crimes, approved by the executive clemency board under former Gov. Charlie Crist’s urging nearly four years ago.

But the sweeping changes proposed by Bondi, including a wait period of three to five years before felons can apply to have their rights – including the right to vote – restored have not yet been released just two work days before the scheduled vote.

In a letter to board members Bondi, Gov. Rick Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, ACLU of Florida executive director Howard Simon asked the clemency board to delay the vote until the public has time to scrutinize them.

“The combination of suddenness, speed and lack of details have created an environment in which needed input is locked out or sitting on the side waiting to review, analyze and offer suggestions and counsel,” Simon wrote to each of the board members. “There is no emergency that requires action at your meeting next week. Rule changes can be made at any time.”

Simon, who met with Bondi earlier this week, wants the board to get public input before doing away with the current system.

“Any changes will impact Florida families and public safety for years to come. It’s more important to get the process and policy right than to get it done quickly,” he wrote.

The Florida Supreme Court ordered oral arguments tomorrow at 3 p.m. on a lawsuit filed by two senators against Gov. Rick Scott over his nixing of a high-speed rail project.

The suit, filed by Sens. Thad Altman, R-Rockledge, and Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, accuses Scott of overstepping his authority when he rejected $2.4 billion in federal stimulus funds for a Tampa-to-Orlando rail project already approved by the legislature and his predecessor Charlie Crist.

Scott argued in his response that it was his privilege to turn down the money and that, at best, the court could order him to spend the $130.8 million already appropriated by the legislature for the project “to build a few miles of railroad for no apparent purpose”

If they did that, the “Court will have created the high-speed railroad to nowhere,” Scott’s response reads.

Sen. Arthenia Joyner of  Tampa and Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston on Friday renewed Democratic call for Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop her push to tighten Florida’s standards for restoring civil rights to felons after they completed their sentences.

 ”With a staggering unemployment rate of 12 percent, I’d think the attorney general would want to support any effort to help Floridians who have fully paid their debts to society, to find work,”  Rich said.

In a shocker for civil rights advocates and Democrats, Attorney General Pam Bondi is looking to undo Florida’s limited automatic restoration of rights for felons. Bondi said she was likely to have a proposal to put before Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet next month.

“I don’t believe any felon should have an automatic restoration of rights,” the Republican Cabinet member told reporters Thursday morning. “I believe you should have to ask, and there should be an appropriate waiting period” of three to five years.

Joyner, though, said she felt Bondi’s move was aimed at placating tough-on-crime tea party advocates.

“From fighting Floridians access to family doctors, to withholding civil rights, it seems the Republican politicians are more interestedin hurting Florida than helping her,” Joyner said Friday.

Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi’s call Thursday to erase Florida’s already restricted system for automatically restoring civil rights to felons is leaving some Democrats shaking their heads — and blaming politics, of both the tea party and presidential election variety.

Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, said he plans to sponsor legislation that runs counter to the Republican attorney general’s stance – effectively making it easier for felons to obtain occupational licenses after they complete their criminal sentences.

Smith said Bondi was appealing to conservative voters with her calls for slowing down rights restoration.

“It’s tough on crime, bumper-sticker politics,” Smith said. “But that flies in the face of what we’ve seen in other states – even Texas – where people are looking at the economics of crime. Corrections is costly, and the quicker you can integrate someone back into society after they serve their time, the better.”

Controversy surrounding civil rights restoration has clouded Florida before. Thousands of Floridians – including many Democratic-leaning black voters – were purged from state rolls before the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, sparking widespread criticism of then-Gov. Jeb Bush, whose brother was on the ballot both years.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist relaxed the rights restoration process during his term. But Smith said Bondi appears poised to turn back the clock on the eve of another big presidential year.

“I think it’s somewhat motivated by that,” Smith said. “But maybe more by the perception that you have to pander to the tea party, which wants tougher sanctions on crime.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi wants to do away completely with the state’s limited automatic restoration of rights for felons even as civil rights groups are seeking an expansion of it.

In Florida, certain felons automatically get their rights restored upon completion of their sentences and restitution.

But Bondi, a Republican and former prosecutor, says the current system goes too easy on criminals.

“I don’t believe any felony should have an automatic restoration of rights. I believe you should have to ask and there should be an appropriate waiting period,” Bondi told reporters after a clemency meeting this morning.

Bondi said she wants a three-to-five year waiting period before convicted felons can appeal to have their rights restored.

The years-long waiting period will help clear up a backlog of more than 100,000 convicted felons trying to get their rights back.

Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet, acting as the board of clemency, approved new rules nearly four years ago making it easier for felons convicted of nonviolent crimes to have their civil rights restored.

Bondi’s predecessor Bill McCollum cast the lone dissenting vote on the rule change.

Now, felons convicted of nonviolent crimes who have fulfilled their sentences will be allowed to vote, hold public office, apply for occupational licenses and sit on juries without applying for clemency, a cumbersome process that can take years. The 2007 change also expedited the process for felons convicted of some violent crimes.

Florida first banned voting by felons in 1845, and the ban was put into the state constitution in 1868.

Voting rights for felons was one of the issues in the disputed 2000 presidential election, when many people, mostly black, were wrongly purged from voter rolls because of an error-riddled state voter database that misidentified them as felons.

The Senate Budget Committee fired the starter’s gun Wednesday for what is certain to prove a fast — and highly partisan — opening of the 2011 Legislature next month.

In party-line votes, the Republican-ruled panel okayed four bills that effectively represent most of the campaign promises made last fall by Gov. Rick Scott and other Florida GOP candidates. Two measures would put ballot proposals before voters next year — one, attempting to cut Florida out of the federal health care overhaul, while the other would set a strict new spending limit on state government.

Rounding out the ripped-from-the-campaign-trail ideas: a product liability bill opposed by Democratic-allied trial lawyers, and legislation that would eliminate teacher tenure and enact new evaluations and merit pay, opposed by the state’s largest teachers’ union, another big Democratic base.

“They’re all obviously being moved on a fast track for the first week of session,” Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston told fellow Democrats. (more…)

Former Gov. Charlie Crist and former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink will lead a bipartisan rally today to support a constitutional ban on offshore drilling today.

Crist, a Republican-turned-independent, and Sink, a Democrat, will appear with lawmakers and others at an event at 12:30 on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee.

Crist called lawmakers in for a special session last year to pass a similar amendment to put on the November 2010 ballot, but they snubbed him. The legislature met briefly and adjourned without doing anything after Crist abandoned the GOP and became an independent to avoid a Republican primary in the U.S. Senate race, which he eventually lost to Marco Rubio.

Before leaving office in January, Sink struggled to get BP claims czar Ken Feinberg to improve his claims process after tens of thousands of Panhandle residents, and hundreds of Floridians throughout the state, complained about problems with his Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

That system remains troubled as Feinberg is set to begin making final payments to more than 500,000 applicants for damages caused by the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Yesterday, senators discussed creating a state system for victims of BP’s massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to expedite the claims system.

Next Friday, Feinberg will appear before a House committee at the behest of House Speaker Dean Cannon. Hundreds of Panhandle officials and residents are expected to show up. Complaints about Feinberg’s payments from the $20 billion fund set up by BP include delays, an inability to find out where claims are in the process, and inconsistencies in who gets paid and how much.

A federal judge recently ruled that Feinberg is not independent of BP, as he contends, and ordered him to quit saying that he is.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is so fed up with Feinberg’s erratic claims system that on Monday he asked a federal judge to take it over “to facilitate the timely and just processing of claims.”

Gov. Rick Scott today reappointed all four Public Service Commission members put on the panel by his predecessor Charlie Crist.

PSC commissioners Eduardo Balbis, Ronald Brisé, Julie Brown and Arthur Graham were among the hundreds of Crist’s appointees Scott yanked from Senate consideration earlier this week.

The Senate still must confirm the four appointees to the five-member panel, but Scott’s actions puts to rest concerns about possible instability on the panel that oversees utility rates.

Supporters of two voter-approved constitutional amendments changing the way Florida lawmakers draw Congressional and legislative districts filed a lawsuit today demanding that Gov. Rick Scott move forward with the federal approval needed to implement the changes.

Shortly after taking office, Scott put the brakes on predecessor Charlie Crist’s request to the U.S. Department of Justice for the “pre-clearance” required whenever Florida makes changes to its elections laws affecting voters’ rights.

Scott reappointed Kurt Browning as Florida’s secretary of state. Browning, originally appointed by Crist, left his post last year to lead the fight against the “Fair Districts” amendments approved by voters in November that now bar lawmakers from drawing districts that favor political parties or incumbents.

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Florida voters who were dazzled by Charlie Crist after his first month in office four years ago are viewing new Gov. Rick Scott much more warily, a new Quinnipiac University poll released this morning shows.

The new poll shows 35 percent approve of the way Scott has done his job in his first few weeks in office, with 22 percent disapproving and 43 percent undecided. Scott is viewed favorably by 28 percent of voters and unfavorably by 24 percent, with 45 percent saying they don’t know enough to form an opinion.

After Crist’s first month in office in 2007, a Quinnipiac poll found 69 percent approval for his job performance and only 6 percent disapproving, with 25 percent undecided.

The new survey of 1,160 registered voters was taken Jan. 25-31 and has a 2.9 percent margin of error. By a 52-to-34 percent margin, Florida voters like Scott’s approach of cutting government programs and services rather than raising taxes to handle the state’s budget problems. But 58 percent say they don’t believe Scott can keep his pledge not to raise taxes or fees.

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Gov. Rick Scott’s campaign manager Susie Wiles has gone to work for Brian Ballard’s lobbying firm and is opening a new office for Smith & Ballard in her Jacksonville hometown.

Ballard, one of Gov. Charlie Crist’s chief advisors, was the top fundraiser for Scott’s inaugural campaign and has long ties with GOP governors beginning with Bob Martinez, for whom he served as chief of staff. Ballard’s partner is his father-in-law Jim Smith, a former state attorney general who also served as secretary of state.

Wiles’s husband Lannie Wiles, who was an integral part of Scott’s crackerjack advance team during his campaign for governor, recently went to work for former Republican Party of Florida Al Cardenas’ lobbying firm.

UPDATE: A spokesman for Gov. Rick Scott responded to his withdrawal of redistricting amendments for federal approval.

“Consistent with Governor Scott’s effort to assess the rules, regulations and contracts of the previous administration, he has withdrawn the letter requesting a DOJ review of Amendments 5 and 6. Census data has not been transmitted to the state yet and the Legislature will not undertake redistricting for months, so this withdrawal in no way impedes the process of redrawing Florida’s legislative and congressional districts,” Scott spokesman Brian Hughes said in an e-mail.

In his first few days on the job, Gov.Rick Scott quietly withdrew the state’s request for a federal go-ahead to move forward with two redistricting amendments overwhelmingly approved by voters in November.

Scott sent the request to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has to sign off on any changes to Florida elections laws affecting voters’ rights, on Jan. 7, just two days after he announced the reappointment of Department of State Secretary Kurt Browning. After Browning left Gov. Charlie Crist’s administration last year, he headed up a political committee that fought Amendments 5 and 6, aka the “Fair Districts” amendments. Crist’s temporary secretary of the state department submitted the application for “preclearance” to DOJ officials on Dec. 10

Scott’s move, offered with no explanation to the feds and no public announcement, left Democrats and supporters of the amendments hopping mad, and the state’s top Democrat is demanding Scott resubmit the preclearance application.

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Florida Department of Health chief of staff Rob Siedlecki, Jr., is headed to Kansas to head that state’s Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican elected as governor in November, appointed Siedlecki to head the agency, the Kansas equivalent of Florida’s Department of Children and Families, subject to the state Senate’s confirmation.

“As SRS Secretary, Rob Siedlecki brings a unique combination of working with the same federal programs that SRS implements in our state and supervising a large staff and budget,” Brownback said in a press release. “He understands the severe budget challenges Kansas faces. He will work to improve the delivery of our health services programs to our state’s most vulnerable in a cost effective way.”

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has yet to name his chiefs of either the Department of Health or DCF. Surgeon General Ana Viamonte Ros, head of the state Department of Health, quit last month – two weeks before Scott was sworn in – after a scathing attack on her department by Scott’s transition team.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon, appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist, remains on the job as one of dozens of Crist holdovers Scott asked to remain in place until as late as March while he gets his administration together.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos started organizing his U.S. Senate bid with a campaign committee to raise money for the 2012 race.

Haridopolos’ committee – “Friends of Mike H” – launched a Website to accept contributions for the Merritt Island Republican.

Haridopolos is inviting big Republican donors to a “private strategy meeting” in Orlando next month and asking them to bring $10,000 checks, according to an e-mail a GOP fundraiser sent out yesterday.

Haridopolos and what is expected to be a host of others have targeted U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the state’s statewide-elected Democratic holdout. Others who’ve expressed an interest in running against Nelson include former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, an attorney with the West Palm Beach-based Gunster law firm and former aide to Gov. Charlie Crist.

Republicans swept the governor’s seat and the Florida Cabinet and nailed down veto-proof majorities in the state House and Senate in the November elections.

Former Gov. Charlie Crist has joined the Morgan & Morgan law firm as expected.

Crist was in talks with longtime political supporter and friend John Morgan before officially leaving office this week.

Crist also said he may take a part-time job as a visiting professor at Stetson Law School in his St. Petersburg hometown.

Crist passed the Florida Bar exam on his third attempt after receiving his law degree from Cumberland School of Law in Alabama.

It’s been 18 years since Crist punched the clock at a private job.

He was first elected to the state Senate in 1992 and has been a public servant ever since.

Gov. Rick Scott has appointed St. Joe Co. executive Billy Buzzett as secretary of the Department of Community Affairs, the agency that oversees growth management.

Buzzett is a lawyer, developer and engineer who helped smooth the way for St. Joe’s massive expansion in the Panhandle.

Buzzett served on Scott’s transition team, which recommended doing away with the agency, something Scott has said he would consider.

Buzzett’s role would be to “better align Department of Community Affairs functions with other functions across state government,” Scott said in a press release.

Scott also reinstated former Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who quit after Gov. Charlie Crist jumped the GOP and became an independent.

And Scott said former Washington DC public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who served on his transition team, would remain as his education advisor. He and Rhee will visit a charter school in Opalocka Thursday morning.

Gov. Charlie Crist is seeking a federal emergency disaster declaration for nearly three dozen Florida counties, including Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie, impacted by severe cold weather and frost.

The disaster would allow farmers and other agricultural business owners to access federal disaster funds to cover the losses from damaged crops.

State officials estimate the cold snap caused at least $270 million in economic losses.

Public relations doyenne Vivian Myrtetus, Gov. Charlie Crist‘s former spokeswoman, is setting up her own communications shop after leaving U.S. Sen. George LeMieux‘s office in Washington.

Myrtetus worked on Crist’s campaign for governor and served in a variety of other PR posts in Florida government before going to work for LeMieux after Crist appointed him to fill in for U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, who retired early.

Myrtetus’ Beacon Communications Group in Tallahassee will go up against a cadre of other former governors’ press secretaries PR firms, including Ron Sachs and April Herrle, who both served under the late Gov. Lawton Chiles.