A Tallahassee judge has ordered Gov. Rick Scott‘s administration to “cease and desist” the bidding process for a prison privatization plan she earlier ruled was unconstitional.

Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford late Friday night put the brakes on Department of Corrections officials’ attempt to bypass her earlier decision that the way lawmakers ordered the privatization of the 18-county region in the southern portion of the start violated the state constitution.

In her order, Fulford pointed out that corrections officials reneged on a pledge made Thursday not to move forward with the bidding before a Nov. 16 hearing. Later the same day, the department announced it was reopening the procurement and bids would be accepted after Nov. 10, Fulford wrote.

Fulford ruled on Sept. 30 that lawmakers should not have included the privatization plan in the must-pass state budget but instead should have ordered it in a stand-alone bill.

Scott opted not to appeal, but Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a last-minute appeal late Monday on behalf of state lawmakers, setting the stage for Friday’s court showdown.

In granting the emergency stay to the Florida Police Benevolent Association, Fulford wrote that “defendants are not likely to succeed on the merits on appeal.”

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UPDATE: Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford will hold a hearing at 4:30 p.m. today on the privatization lawsuit. The Florida Police Benevolent Association is asking for an emergency stay to stop the procurement process.

Gov. Rick Scott‘s administration has re-opened bids on privatizating prisons in an 18-county region in southern Florida despite a recent court ruling that the way lawmakers ordered the privatization plan is unconstitutional.

Scott opted not to appeal. But Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday filed an appeal on behalf of the legislature challenging Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford’s ruling. That appeal opened the door for state Department of Corrections officials to re-open the bids, Department of Corrections officials said in a press release issued late Thursday.

Bids will be due within a week but because of the ongoing court battle “the agency will not sign a contract until the litigation is complete,” the release said.

The Florida Police Benevolent Association, which filed the lawsuit, intends to ask the First District Court of Appeals for an expedited hearing and is asking Fulford to reinstate the stay on the bids she previously ordered.

Boca Raton-based GEO Group is one of the contenders for the privatization plan intended to cost the state 7 percent less than what the department is currently spending on the region’s 29 prisons and other correctional operations.
Read the corrections department press release after the jump.

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Staggered by two major budget shortfalls in the past year, the state court system needs a more reliable cash source than the rollercoastering foreclosure fees lawmakers have steered its way, officials told a Senate panel Tuesday.

Polk County Circuit Court Judge John Laurent, who helped lead a workgroup of  judges and court clerks, urged the Senate Budget Committee to allow courts to keep more of the fees and service charges they already collect, but which are skimmed off for use in other state budget areas.

Judges and clerks also recommended that certain basic costs — salaries for judges, interpreters and court reporters — should come from state dollars, rather than from fees, the workgroup said in its report to lawmakers.

Close to $300 million in revenue raised by the courts are plowed into general revenue and other areas of government, officials said. If courts had been authorized to keep a larger portion of that money, they would have avoided shortfalls that are projected to demand $153 million in emergency loans in just over a year.

Court clerks needed a $44.2 million bailout last year and are seeking another $36 million to get through March 2012.

Earlier this year, the shortfall forced chief judges in Palm Beach County and other counties to consider employee layoffs, furloughs and other emergency measures. 

“This is not a question of us overspending our budget,” said Laurent, a former state senator. “The moneys have not been appropriated to our trust fund to support our budget.”

Central to the court’s woes: foreclosure fees.

 The trust fund that powers the $1 billion court and clerk system draws the bulk of its financing through these feees. But the court system’s cash flow was disrupted late last year by a nationwide freeze on foreclosures by most major lenders.

“It’s not a good, stable situation,” conceded Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, also questioned the Legislature’s approach in making the court system so reliant on fees.

Without providing specifics, Negron said some fees charged Floridians for court activities are too high — warning that it could lead to legal decisions that amounted to ”cash-register justice.”

“The court system has become too dependent on churning out revenue,” Negron said, adding that more state dollars should be directed to courts. ”This thing has gotten out of whack.”

The workgroup’s full report is here:    http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/

Florida’s budget hole for next year was officially put at $2 billion Thursday — and the revised forecast from state economists also put it in the red through 2015.

The shortfalls reverse what had been an optimistic forecast delivered to lawmakersonly last month — by the same analysts. But that was before the European debt crisis deepened and sent shockwaves through consumer confidence across the nation, including the Sunshine State.

Tax collections “hit a wall,” in mid-summer, said Amy Baker, head of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

Baker and other analysts told the Senate Budget Committee they have downgraded earlier state revenue forecasts by $600 million for the current year and almost $1 billion for next year. Rising program costs — especially in public schools and Medicaid — also must be layered-in, resulting in what she said would be a $2 billion shortfall facing lawmakers when they begin crafting the 2012-13 budget in January.

The Senate Budget Committee took the bad news in stride Thursday. But Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said he also feared that if the economy stumbled further, tax collections wouldfall even further off projections.

“We could have more challenging numbers,” Alexander conceded, adding, “or they could be better.”

After blistering Department of Juvenile Justice officials earlier this week in her own committee, Sen. Ronda Storms again took the agency to task over its use of psychotropic medications, this time during a budget presentation in the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee.

The department is conducting an internal investigation into the use of drugs after The Palm Beach Post revealed that agency has plied jailed kids with heavy doses of psychotropic medications and that one in three DJJ psychiatrists had taken payments or gifts from the makers of the drugs.

Storms compared DJJ’s use of the mind-altering medications to that of the Department of Children, Families and Elder Affiars, which her committee oversees and with which she has also butted heads on the use of the meds.

“We have children who have been scalded and burned and had acid poured on them, who have been starved, who have been beaten, who’ve had bones broken, who have had horrible things happen to them. In that population, only 14 percent of the population is medicated. Of your population, over 34 percent of your population is medicated with psychotropic drugs,” Storms, R-Valrico, told DJJ director for administrative services Fred Schuknecht. “As you know, the ongoing invetstigation is whether or not the department was using psychotropic drugs possibly as a result of bribery or as a result of discipline.”

Storms ordered Schuknecht to come back with a financial analysis of DJJ’s spending on psychotropic drugs “for your entire population for whatever the reason.

“And I would like that post-haste,” Storms added.

“We’ll do it,” Schuknecht assured her.

Florida’s 1,633 special districts — which range in scope from behemoth water management districts to small town community development authorities — are being dragged slowly under the microscope of the state’s biggest government entity, the state Legislature.

Gov. Rick Scott has targeted the authorities for action, acknowledging that he’s stunned by the fact they command $15.5 billion of taxpayer money. The Republican governor wants to rein them in– somehow.  And legislative committees also are struggling to craft legislation that shrinks their ranks.

Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, has introduced a measure (SB 192) aimed at merging some districts or abolishing those seen as having outlived their usefulness.

But special taxing districts go back to log cabin Florida. Hospital taxing authorities, which draw a lot of ire from Scott and lawmakers, date to the 1920s. Finding a one-size, fits-all fix won’t be easy, lawmakers concede.

On Monday, the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee heard a couple hours worth of testimony on the districts. At least 23 of these government units, including the West Palm Beach Downtown Development Authority, are listed as being in a state of financial emergency by Scott’s inspector general, mostly for debt or cash-flow problems.

Dozens of other districts have drawn letters from the handful of state agencies which oversee them — usually for a snafu involving their financial audits or annual reports.

Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, questioned whether these letters ever result in penalties.  Ken Reecy, an administrator within the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity, acknowledged that doesn’t happen. But he defended the current oversight system, saying, “it works pretty well.”

Still, Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa, seemed unconvinced — and incredulous.

“With all these agencies watching them, and there’s still no penalties?” Norman said.

A day after unveiling his latest seven-step themed plan – this one toward creating jobs and spurring economic development — Gov. Rick Scott turned into saleman-in-chief Thursday, pitching his plan at appearances in Jacksonville, Panama City and on talk radio.

Scott gained some additional talking points with Congress ending a deadlock that spanned two presidencies and approving a series of free trade agreements, including those with Panama and Colombia.

In his jobs’ plan, Scott highlighted the prospect of enhanced trade with Central and South America as a motive behind his push for more public works projects at Florida’s 14 deepwater sea ports.

“Free trade with Panama and Colombia will benefit Florida’s economy and businesses for years to come,” Scott said after the bipartisan vote in Congress.  “By eliminating the need to pay tariffs in order to export Florida goods and products to those expanding economies, Florida companies will now be able to invest their money in creating jobs.”

Scott on Thursday is scheduled to tour an aviation center at Jacksonville’s Cecil Field and an industrial and retail complex near the year-old Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport outside Panama City.

Rising government costs and crumbling tax collections are leaving lawmakers facing a $2 billion budget shortfall next year, Senate President Mike Haridopolos said Thursday, a prospect few saw coming only months ago.

“Everything is on the table,” said Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, although he acknowled that tax increases are not. “But in June, I thought we’d be in a continuation budget. All the signs had us pointing in the right direction….But now we’re very concerned with revenue shortfalls.”

The House budget committee earlier Thursday estimated that lawmakers could come up between $1.1 billion and $2.2 billion short next year. The current year’s $69 billion budget was balanced by cutting spending, pulling cash from trust funds, and making government employees pay 3 percent of their pay to help cover pension costs.

A similar balancing act looks likely to commence in January, when lawmakers convene the 2012 session.

Florida economists are scheduled to meet Tuesday. They are expected to revise the state’s revenue forecast downward, with tax collections declining in the increasingly fragile economy.

Glimmers of trouble were evident this week, when funding for courts, road projects and school construction all reported shortfalls linked to the economy. But the news is a sharp departure from early last month, when economists forecast three years of clear budget sailing.

At that time, though, another leading senator, Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, conceded lawmakers would be wise not to celebrate over what appeared to be sufficient revenues to cover state spending through 2015.

Gaetz, in line to lead the Senate following next year’s elections, said last month that Florida’s economy is “on a knife’s edge.”

“We can’t move much, one way or the other, without some real damage,” Gaetz said.

House Budget Chair Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, said next year was beginning to look all to familiar.

 “2012 is going to be another challenging year as we face a potential $2 billion shortfall; however, I am confident we will once again solve our budget challenges while keeping taxes low and encouraging private sector economic activity,” Grimsley said. 

 

The exodus following the ouster of former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss continued this week: Buss’s chief of staff Dan Ronay quit his $120,000-a-year job yesterday.

The department’s spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said new DOC chief Ken Tucker accepted Ronay’s resignation yesterday, but did not say whether he was asked to step down.

Ronay was one of more than a dozen staffers Buss brought with him from Indiana, where Buss served as corrections chief. Gov. Rick Scott forced Buss to resign in August in the midst of a prison privatization effort ordered by the legislature that a Tallahassee judge recently ruled was unconstitutional because it was included in the budget instead of in a stand-alone bill.

Buss was fired late in August but will remain on the state payroll earning $145,000 until October to help with the transition, according to Scott’s office.

Although he supports prison privatization and is committed to a broad expansion of it in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said he disapproves of the legislature’s use of the state budget to establish policy – exactly how lawmakers ordered the privatization this spring.

“I should have the power to veto things that are major policy changes. I got elected as governor to mamke decisions on behalf of all the citizens of the state and to watch how all the money was spent. I ran a whole campaign on accountability,” Scott told reporters after Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

Scott appeared to be siding with a Tallahassee judge who ruled last week that the legilsature’s inclusion of the prison privatization effort in the state budget was unconstitutional.

In her ruling against Scott’s administration last week, Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford wrote that, if the legislature wanted to expand the prison privatization, it “must do so by general law, rather than ‘using the hidden recesses of the General Appropriations Act.’”

Scott said he hasn’t decided yet whether to appeal Fulford’s ruling, but was confident the 18-county region privatization of 29 prisons ordered by lawmakers would eventually take place.

“We’re going to do prison privatization in the state as long as we save money. I believe that we’re going to save a lot of money,” he said. During his campaign for governor, Scott said he wanted to slash prison spending by $1 billion – about half of DOC’s total budget.

Still, Scott said he’d like it if lawmakers restrict the budget to spending matters.

“That would be nice,” he said.

After getting a bill for more than $10,000 from the State Board of Administration, state Sen. Mike Fasano is asking Senate President Mike Haridopolos to subpoena the documents from the Cabinet agency regarding a $125 million investment in the state pension fund earlier this year.

Fasano is seeking public records demonstrating the “due diligence” the SBA used before it invested $125 million in Starboard Value and Opportunity, a hedge fund spin-off of Ramius LLC. Ramius’s president is a former client of SBA executive director Ash Williams. Williams told Fasano it would cost $10,750.13 for 360 hours of staff time and possibly take months to produce the documents.

An SBA spokesman said the investment – which took more than two years to research, negotiate and complete – was already in the works before Williams came to work for the SBA in July 2008 and neither the agency nor Williams has done anything wrong.

But on Friday, Fasano wrote a letter asking Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, to use his legislative authority to subpoena the documents or order Williams to appear before a committee to explain the investment.

In his letter, Fasano said the SBA’s estimated cost of the records is “chilling to the concept of governmental transparency” and sets a dangerous precedent.

“It is a disgrace that the SBA could merely set a price tag on information that it does not want the public to see. Florida’s Government in the Sunshine laws are a protection that prevent secret deals and other behaviors from being hidden from public view. Circumventing these laws by slapping a price label on the requested material must not be tolerated. Not only will it damage access to information for the legislature, the greater danger is that it will damage access to information for Floridians as a whole,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, wrote.

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UPDATE: Gov. Rick Scott has appealed the appellate ruling ordering former DOC Secretary Ed Buss to give a deposition in the prison privatization lawsuit. Scott’s lawyers are asking that the full First District Court of Appeals reconsider yesterday’s three-judge panel’s ruling.
Scott spokesman Lane Wright said the governor’s office is appealing the decision about the deposition on principle because state law gives high-ranking officials immunity from testifying in lawsuits.
“It’s not about this specific case. It’s about all cases. The doctrine protecting high-ranking officials from being deposed is a bedrock principle of Florida law. It’s about the principle of the thing,” Wright said.

An appeals court ordered former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss, ousted by Gov. Rick Scott last month, to testify in a lawsuit over prison privatization filed by the union that represents correctional officers.

The First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee had temporarily halted Buss’s deposition last week, overturning a lower court ruling ordering him to be deposed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association, which filed the lawsuit.

But yesterday the appellate court agreed that Buss must give his deposition. Scott’s administration tried to block Buss’s testimony because Florida law protects high-ranking officials from having to testify in most court cases.

On Sept. 15, Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford ordered Buss to give his deposition, agreeing with the union in her ruling that the former secretary is “reasonably likely to have unique discoverable knowledge of potentially relevant subject matter.”

Scott forced Buss to resign late last month citing “differences in philosophy and management styles arose which made the separation in the best interests of the state.” One of the reasons for Buss’s ouster was his apparently less-than-enthusiastic support of the privatization of the 30 prisons from Manatee County to Indian River County south to the Keys.

Lawmakers ordered all of the prisons in the 18-county region south of Polk County to the Florida Keys to be taken over by a private vendor in the budget passed this spring. The PBA is objecting that including the policy change in the must-pass spending plan is unconstitutional.

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A judge ordered former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss to testify in a lawsuit about the state’s privatization of prisons in the southern part of Florida.

Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford denied the state’s request to keep Buss, fired by Gov. Rick Scott late last month, from having to give a deposition in the lawsuit filed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association.

Buss left the agency amid the privatization of more than one-third of the state’s prisons, the largest privatization effort in the country.

His abrupt resignation came after Scott’s office twice rebuked the former Indiana prisons chief over state contracts and after the termination of a contract with Elizabeth “Betty” Gondles, one of Buss’s hand-picked aides, for a possible conflict of interest with the privatization of the department’s health services.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, representing Scott’s administration in the lawsuit, argued that, because he is no longer secretary, Buss should not have to give a deposition.

But Fulford sided with the PBA, saying that Buss is “reasonably likely to have unique discoverable knowledge of potentially relevant subject matter” and that the PBA had tried unsuccessfully to get the information elsewhere.

The PBA is challenging the privatization, alleging that it is unconstitutional because it was included in proviso language in the state budget instead of a stand-alone bill creating state policy.

A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.

Florida TaxWatch, the business-backed public policy group, has come up with more than $4.1 billion in potential state savings — if lawmakers and state government implement 135 cost-cutting recommendations.

Among the highlights: increasing good-behavior gain time for prison inmates, expanding electronic monitoring of criminals, and cutting back on stiff penalties for marijuana and cocaine possession. Reducing Medicaid fraud — which has bedeviled officials at the state and federal levels — could save $223.8 million alone, a TaxWatch cost-saving task force found.

TaxWatch said similar recommendations made since 2009 have saved the state more than $1 billion.

Some of the recommendations appear obvious: urging state agencies to buy generics over name-brand products could save $305 million, the organization said. And some of the ideas show some out-of-the-box thinking: selling ads on some DOT road signs could pull in $75 million, TaxWatch estimated.

Some proposals also carry plenty of controversy. Boosting eligibility requirements for students earning Bright Futures scholarships, eliminating the state’s traditional pension plan, ending the state’s Deferred Retirement Option Program for public employees are put in play, but would surely face stiff opposition from some fronts in the Legislature.

The full report is at www.FloridaTaxWatch.org

A legislative panel gave Gov. Rick Scott’s administration approval Wednesday for a $3.4 million grant drawn from the federal Affordable Care Act, the measure backed by President Obama which Florida’s Republican chief executive ridicules regularly.

The Legislative Budget Commission agreed to take the cash to provide home visiting services to at-risk families. But Sens. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, urged lawmakers to reject the funding, warning that the program’s services were murky and that if federal dollars dry up, the state could be left covering the cost.

“It’s overly intrusive,” Negron said, adding he was wary of what he called the government’s “amorphous assistance.”

Scott and the state’s Republican-led Legislature has drawn national attention for rejecting federal grants aimed at moving nursing home patients back into their homes and providing in-home counseling to families where child abuse was a looming threat. Funding for these services and others were turned down because they stem from the Affordable Care Act — which many in the GOP deride as ObamaCare.

The Legislative Budget Commission, though, went along with the Scott administration’s request to accept this latest round of grant money Wednesday. A Republican majority on the panel endorsed the move, chiefly because rejecting it would have made Florida ineligible for as much as $100 million in future learning and development grants under the federal Race to the top legislation.

House budget chair Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, said she was offended by the linkage. But she made it clear she didn’t like the program and felt such steps created a dependency for at-risk families.

“We have generations of individuals depending on government,” Grimsley said, adding, “it’s a no-win situation.”

 

More than a week after they began filming at a Panhandle prison, Gov. Rick Scott sent MSNBC‘s “Lockup” crew packing.

Scott’s office this week canceled the contract. Department of Corrections Ed Buss had agreed to allow the film crew to shoot at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton for about two months. The department would have received about $110,000 for the disruption.

Buss lacked the authority to sign the contract, Scott spokesman Brian Burgess said, because it did not deal with the day-to-day operations of the state prison system.

Late last week, Buss’s office issued a press release touting the filming of the reality show in which prisoners, often heavily-tattooed, reveal what life is like behind bars.

A team from 44 Blue, the production company in charge of the series about life behind bars, began filming last week at the Milton facility. The series was scheduled to run sometime next year.

Buss worked with the production company while at his previous post as Indiana’s prisons chief.

“I have no qualms about them coming into our prisons. I’m proud of our staff and how well our facilities are run, and I hope this will help Floridians understand the challenges we face with our inmate population, as well as the benefits prisons provide to their communities through our programs and re-entry efforts,” Buss said in a press release last week. The release said Buss gave the film crew “unprecedented access” to inmates and staff who agreed to be on film.

Sources within Buss’s office said the warden sent the film crew home yesterday after hearing from Scott’s office.

Buss failed to vet the contract with Scott’s executive staff before signing it, Burgess said.

“The feeling is that it was outside the scope of the Department of Corrections purview to engage the state in an entertainment-related contract,” Burgess said. “Right now the “Lockup” contract is locked up and I don’t’ know if it’s going to be unlocked. It’s not going forward at this point.”

The contract was canceled the same week the department rescinded requests for proposals for privatizing health services in all of the state’s prisons.

Despite a credit rating downgrade and more than 100 layoffs, Gov. Rick Scott said Tuesday he supported the dramatic changes occuring at the South Florida Water Management District, saying “absolutely the right things are happening.”

Legislation signed into law by Scott cuts property taxes across Florida’s five water management districts by $210 million. The South Florida district, the state’s largest, is slicing spending by $120 million, or about 30 percent of its property-tax collections, sparking scores of layoffs and buyouts.

The financial hit also led the ratings agency, Standard & Poor, to downgrade the district’s credit rating a notch, to AA+. Although the district has no immediate plans to issue bonds, S&P’s action could raise the future cost of borrowing by water managers.

“Why should they be out borrowing more money?” Scott said. “They should be doing what the state is doing…especially in tough times like this. What would you do in your own house? What do Floridians have to do now? They have to watch every penny.”

“That’s exactly what they should expect out of government,” Scott concluded.

 

Gov. Rick Scott overstepped his authority and violated the separation of powers by freezing state agency rulemaking, the Florida Supreme Court ruled today.

Shortly after he was sworn in as governor on Jan. 4, Scott suspended agency rulemaking and required the proposed rules be vetted by his office. He later created the “Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform” to review the rules, saying he wanted to make sure they did not slow down government, create barriers for businesses or cost taxpayers money.

But in a 5-2 ruling, the court found that Scott’s executive orders “infringe upon the very process of rulemaking and encroach upon the Legislature‘s delegation of its rulemaking power as set forth in the Florida Statutes.”

Chief Justice Charles Canady and Judge Ricky Polston, both appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist, dissented. Scott acted within his constitutional authority as the state’s chief administrative officer whose duty is “to manage, plan, and hold agencies under his charge accountable to State laws, including the APA. The actual facts before us do not demonstrate otherwise,” Polston wrote.

Canady called the majority opinion an “ill-conceived interference with the constitutional authority and responsibility of Florida‘s Governor.”

Scott also saw it that way.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Scott said of the court ruling. “I don’t think it follows the constitution. It’s a disappointment.

“Think about it, the secretaries of these agencies report to me, they work for me at will, and I’m not supposed to supervise them? It doesn’t make sense,” he added.

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Florida officials have opened the gates at a Panhandle prison to MSNBC‘s “Lockup” film crew for two months, according to a Department of Corrections press release.

A team from 44 Blue, the production company in charge of the series about life behind bars, began filming this week at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton this month, the release said.

DOC Secretary Ed Buss worked with the production company in his previous post as head of Indiana prisons.

“I have no qualms about them coming into our prisons. I’m proud of our staff and how well our facilities are run, and I hope this will help Floridians understand the challenges we face with our inmate population, as well as the benefits prisons provide to their communities through our programs and re-entry efforts,” Buss said in the release.

The film crew will have “unprecedented access” to inmates and staff who want to be on film, the release said. The prison houses up to 1,614 adult males of all custody levels, including some with mental health issues, according to the release.

The series is expected to go on the air sometime next year.

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater said Monday he will sign off on a $5,000 payment to cover funeral expenses for Eric Perez, an 18-year-old who died in state custody in West Palm Beach on July 10.

The Palm Beach Post and The Miami Herald reported this weekend that Atwater blocked the payment. His office told Department of Juvenile Justice officials they lacked statutory authority for the payment although the agency has had a policy for two years to pay up to $5,000 for funeral costs of children who die while in their custody and has issued the payments twice before.

On Monday, Atwater blamed Department of Juvenile Justice officials for what he called “a tragic delay” in a press release Monday afternoon. Atwater promised to send a check to the Perez family’s attorney within 48 hours.

“Regrettably, this tragic delay would not have occurred if the Department of Juvenile Justice had not blatantly ignored guidance from my office,” Atwater said in the release. “In the future, I would hope that DJJ would be more transparent in its dealings with the public and with taxpayer monies.”