First, the good news: Florida’s fiscal forecast hasn’t changed much since the last time state economists met in December.

Now, the bad news: The state’s still facing about a $2.2 billion budget shortfall in its general revenue collections.

In December, the economists estimated about $22.5 billion in sales and other tax collections for 2010-2011.

Now, the legislature’s Bureau of Economic and Demographic Research is predicting that tax collections and other fees will bring in about $2.2 million less than the December projection, close to the Department of Revenue’s estimates that the collections will come in about $65.9 million short.

But Gov. Charlie Crist’s office is revising its estimate in the other direction, a reflection of the governor’s perennial optimism.

Crist’s budget gurus think the state will bring in $257.3 million more than they previously anticipated.

The revenue estimating conference will meet throughout the day and provide their final prognostications this afternoon.

But Gov. Charlie Crist’s office is showing about the about meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist’s budget gurus and the Department of Revenue’s economists

After taking billions of dollars in federal economic stimulus money to balance the state budget last year, Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul along with other GOP lawmakers are demanding that the federal government balance its budget to put an end to the escalating federal deficit now surpassing $12 trillion.

“Unless something is done with Washington’s irresponsible fiscal behavior, Florida’s economy will drown in debt,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said at a press conference this morning.

Atwater and his cadre want the feds to balance the nation’s budget as Florida lawmakers are constitutionally required to do in the Sunshine State.

But that didn’t stop the legislature under Atwater and Cretul from accepting at least $12 billion in federal stimulus money - more than $3 billion used to balance this year’s Florida budget and nearly another $6 billion plugged into next year’s. That money helped add to the nation’s rising debt.

“It’s a gaping inconsistency to take that money happily to fill giant holes in our budget and then turn around and criticize the very people who gave you the cash,” said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota.

Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, is sponsoring a joint resolution that, if passed by two-thirds of the Florida legislature, would have the state joining 19 other states asking Congress to convene an amendments convention to propose a constitutional amendment requiring the balanced budget and limit federal lawmakers’ ability to pass mandated spending down to the states.

But Florida lawmakers have done the same thing to local governments over the past decade, forcing them to take up a large share of education spending by passing down mandates and making counties pick up the tab for other items.

Congress would have to call the amendments convention if 34 states make the request. Passage of the constitutional amendment would require ratification by three-fourths, or 38, of the states.

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct wrapped up its business this morning in the wake of former House Speaker Ray Sansom’s resignation last night.

Committee Chairman Bill Galvano:

“As a result of Speaker Sansom’s resignation as a member of the Florida House, further action by this committee is rendered moot. We’re without authority to fulfill the charge of this select committee,” Galvano, R-Bradenton, said.

With more than 1 million Floridians out of work, Florida taxpayers are footing the bill for the salaries for out-of-state workers.

This time, it’s Florida Lottery vendor GTECH’s workers in Texas that are the beneficiaries. GTECH’s call center is located in Austin and that’s where calls regarding the Lottery’s on-line tickets and other products are answered.

And lawmakers don’t even know how many jobs are at stake in Texas because the private contractors hired by the state to handle call lines won’t give up their number of employees or where they’re located, according to legislative analyst Emily Leventhal.

Sen. Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat who sits on the committee, asked Leventhal how many of the 16 private call centers were located outside Florida.

Only GTECH’s, she told him.

“And do you know how many people the state of Florida is paying to work in Austin, Texas?” Deutch asked.

“I do not,” Leventhal replied.

“I think that would be worthwhile information for this committee,” Deutch said.

An incensed Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander agreed.

“If they take the cash or check they can tell us what we want to know,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Last year, the Department of Children and Families got in hot water because the agency’s food stamp contractor, JP Morgan Chase, routed questions about food stamp services to a call center based in India. The vendor stopped sending the calls overseas and instead sent them to Ohio and Illinois.

The head of the state’s tourism agency also earned the wrath of lawmakers last year when lawmakers found out that calls to Visit Florida were being answered in Missouri. The agency later canceled the contract.

Foreclosures could be sped up if lawmakers give the court system about $9.8 million in an era when they’re looking to cut criminal and civil justice spending by up to $500 million this year.

Judge Belvin Perry of the Ninth Judicial Circuit and chairman of the state court system trial court budget committee, told a Senate committee this morning that the courts could set up an “economic default recovery” division staffed by senior judges and hourly workers to serve as case managers until the backlog of foreclosures now clogging the judicial branch is managed.

The new division could be broken up into three tracts for homesteaded, abandoned or commercial properties.

The $9.8 million for the new division would come from the court’s trust fund made up of court filing fees.

Lawmakers increased the foreclosure filing fees last year and they went from $295 to up to $1,900, depending on the value of the mortgage.

“This is a way to take the money that they’ve paid in filing fees to give them the services that they paid for.
About 80 percent of our trust fund is generated by the filing fees in mortgage foreclosures and they’ve gotten absolutely no additional services as a result in the increase in fees,” Perry said.

Perry said that a proposal floating in the legislature that would allow mortgage lenders or banks to foreclose on properties without going through the courts probably won’t have any impact on the cases clogging the courts now.

That’s because current mortgages - more than 500,000 in the foreclosure pipeline already - are based upon contract law and must be dealt with in the courts.

Mortgages would have to be written as trusts for foreclosures to avoid being processed by the courts, he said.

“I think it would be difficult to do,” Perry said.

A race for an open Panhandle state Senate seat may stymie success of a jobs package.

State Rep. Dave Murzin, House Economic Development and Community Affairs committee chairman, took a swipe at the Senate’s jobs package sponsored by Sen. Don Gaetz.

Murzin, a Panhandle Republican who is running for a Senate seat neighboring Gaetz’s district, was asked about the Gaetz proposal at an Associated Industries of Florida event in Tallahassee yesterday.

“It’s a great package. If I had a $150 million it might be some good ideas. But quite frankly I don’t have $150 million. I think I stopped counting at about $150 million,” Murzin, R-Pensacola, told the crowd of business lobbyists.

Gaetz’ bill includes a $1,000 tax break for businesses that hire an out of work Floridian and a variety of other corporate tax breaks or incentives to induce them to put the unemployed back on the job and to get them off Medicaid and other state benefits.

Murzin said his package will be more realistic.

“So yeah, we’ll take a look at some stuff but quite frankly we’ll roll out a jobs package, an economic incentives package, an economy package that actually works, doesn’t necessarily cost a lot of money because …an economic package that Floridians can afford,” Murzin said. “I’m not really into it for the is still trying to figure out exactly how much it will cost and how much it could save).headlines. I’m actually into it to put Floridians back to work.”

Gaetz, who is backing Murzin’s opponent Rep. Greg Evers in the Senate race, expressed tongue-in-cheek surprise at Murzin’s inability to come up with the money to pay for the package. (Gaetz says his staff

“Well, Rep. Murzin is welcome to his opinions. I wish him well this session. And in his future. I wish him well in everything except his aspirations to be a senator. In all other cases I wish him well,” Gaetz, R-Destin, said.

Tea party activists march in West Palm Beach's July 4th parade. Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post

Florida Republican leaders bristled at the suggestion Wednesday from Palm Beach County schools Superintendent Art Johnson that the conservative, anti-spending tea party movement could force the district to cut 1,600 jobs in 2011-12.

“If the common-sense approach of reducing government spending and cutting taxes makes me part of the tea party movement, then pass me some sugar,” House Republican Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton said.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander said his spending decisions will be driven by the state’s 11.8 percent unemployment rate, not by a particular political message.

But in a page from the “All Politics is Local” chapter of Florida government, the Republican leader has a tea party activist living next door to his Lake Wales home. Alexander said he’s attended two of his neighbor’s meetings.

“He walks my dog from time to time and I have to go over and say hello to everybody,” Alexander said. “They’re very reasonable people. They are concerned about the course of the country. I welcome everybody’s involvement in the discussion of how we move the state forward.”

(more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist told lawmakers, who spent much of Wednesday belittling Crist’s budget recommendation, that they have until May to come up with their own spending plan.

“We make a recommendation. This is a process. The legislature appropriates. And they’re beginning that process,” Crist said.

“I know that they will do it in a respectful way and the people of Florida will appreciate that. We have until the beginning of May.”

A bipartisan House panel rejected Gov. Charlie Crist’s budget proposals, telling his budget chief the governor’s plan was as sketchy as building a household budget on winning the Lottery.

“There’s nothing here that I can use,” House health care budget chief Denise Grimsley, R-Lake Placid, told Jerry McDaniel, Crist’s budget guru.

Democrats and Republicans alike peppered McDaniel about the assumptions built into Crist’s $69.2 billion budget, including $1.1 billion in Medicaid funding that Congress has not yet approved, $443 million for education spending in a gambling compact that the legislature last year rejected, $300 million in local property taxes that 24 counties have not yet levied, and the absence of $350 million to comply with constitutional class size requirements based on a measure that has not even gone on the ballot yet.

“The validity of any decision-making process is always based on the assumptions you make,” said Rep. Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City, chairman of the House transportation committee.

Crist’s assumptions are too iffy, Glorioso said.

“I can’t live with that. If I was doing this budget for myself with these assumptions I would be making a vast mistake. We need a better product soon. What if these things don’t come in? You always plan on a worst scenario…It’s always easier to add back into a budget than it is to come back six months out and do another cut. I’d like to see another proposal without all these basic assumptions in here,” he said.

McDaniel said the governor might offer a revised budget a week or two before the end of session if there was no chance a compact was going to pass. But that didn’t placate House budget chief David Rivera.

“I will tell you that as far as this committee is concerned, we need a budget. We have to work on a budget. I’m disappointed that we can’t start on that budget process together because our assumptions are so far apart,” Rivera, R-Miami, told McDaniel. “I hope that we will have other recommendations before the end of session thinking that it’s always better late than never. But this committee in the House of Representatives doesn’t have the luxury of waiting.”

Gov. Charlie Crist’s proposed $500 million boost to education spending based on an unlikely gambling agreement is unrealistic, Senate President Jeff Atwater said this morning.

“The numbers that I would see at this moment that were included in that release did seem to be a bit optimistic,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said at a meeting of reporters and editors.

Crist’s $22.7 billion public education budget, released Monday, relies on about $433 million from the Seminole Tribe of Florida now sitting in the bank as part of a deal with the state allowing certain types of gambling at the tribe’s casinos.

But the legislature has refused to sign off on a deal inked by Crist and the tribe and early indications show that an agreement this year remains in doubt.

“We worked hard on a gaming compact and we’re not done but to just plug in the numbers that I saw was rather optimistic,” Atwater, who is running for chief financial officer said.

First, the good news: Florida’s economic woes have hit bottom, the legislature’s chief economist Amy Baker told the Senate yesterday.

Now, the bad news: The state’s unemployment rate is expected to climb to 12 percent as early as Friday when the most recent job numbers are released, Baker said.

And more bad news for lawmakers as they struggle to craft a budget with up to $3.3 billion - about 4 percent - less than they had for this year’s $66.5 billion spending plan.

Although the national recession is over, Florida’s not going to show an economic recovery for at least another year, Baker and University of Florida economist David Denslow told the Ways and Means Committee, which about 30 of the 40-member chamber attended after Senate President Jeff Atwater asked them to sit in.

“We think we’ve hit bottom and we’re going to hover around the bottom for a wile before we start picking up,” Baker said.

The economy will start picking up next spring, she said, but even with normal growth rates, the recovery is coming off a very low base level so the turn-around will be very slow.

It will be three years “before you’re going to be out of the hole on a lot of measures,” Baker said.

Read the story here.

On the other side of the fourth floor rotunda, House Democrats wrote a letter to GOP leaders saying they don’t like their approach in determining what the state’s critical needs are.

They want to look not only at expenditures but at revenues as well. (Translation: higher taxes?)

But that’s not likely to happen on the Senate side.

Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, told his members yesterday he “won’t extract another dollar” from Floridians.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander is setting up a new office to help him figure out if the state is spending money wisely.
Alexander and his House counterparts have grappled with the state’s plummeting revenues and are facing a $2.7 billion projected spending gap in next year’s budget.

Alexander said he’s willing to pay an expert up to $170,000 a year to provide a detailed analysis of state spending

“I’m going up against lobbyists who can pay a whole lot more than that,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales. “I need people who can really get into what’s going on here.”

Alexander said he doesn’t have anyone in mind for the job but is hoping to get someone who with expertise in the state’s annual $18 billion spending on Medicaid.

Asked when he plans to bring the new hire on board, Alexander quipped: “Yesterday. I need help tomorrow.”

The “Senate Budget Office” will be “responsible for providing independent analyses of state government agency operations, including overlapping agency jurisdictions and functions, the financial structure of agencies, sources and uses of revenues, expenditure patterns and whether programmatic performance measures exist and are being met,” Senate President Jeff Atwater’s office said in a press release announcing the new office today.

(more…)

Senate Ways and Means Committee staff director Cynthia Kelly resigned from her post today.

Kelly leaves her boss Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander without his right-hand-woman as he struggles to chop $2.8 billion from this year’s budget.

Kelly, who’s spent 20 years working for the state, is quitting to spend more time with her family, according to an e-mail distributed within the Senate. She’ll stay on for up to a month.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, had this to say about Kelly. (more…)

The Florida Police Benevolent Association endorsed Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s U.S. Senate campaign today in Tallahassee. The group has been a long-time supporter of Crist.

“We’re gonna hate to lose you as our governor, but we know we’re going to enjoy you as our U.S. senator,” said Florida PBA President John Rivera.

Crist is facing a Republican primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

State Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, questioned the need for Gov. Charlie Crist’s grand jury, which would probably recommend a host of laws to smother public corruption.

Gelber

Gelber, a state attorney general candidate, said has been searching for a House Republican to help sponsor his proposal to let state attoneys prosecute under the theft of honest services, which was one of the recommendations from Palm Beach County’s grand jury. Gelber introduced a similar bill last year but it did not receive a hearing.

Gelber also pointed to a constitutional amendment he plans to run this year that would tighten the open records laws for the state’s budgeting process. “If you want to clean up government, let the sun shine on it,” he said.

TALLAHASSEE – Florida’s treasure chest – including a 13-carat solitaire diamond ring, Greek coins dating to 350 B.C. and a 100 ounce bar of silver – will be up for bid at the state’s annual auction of unclaimed property this month in Fort Lauderdale.

A sampling of the items the state will put up for bid this month.

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House special investigator Stephen Kahn:

“The speaker (Larry Cretul) hired me and gave me very simple instructions. He said .. as best as I can remember, ‘Mr. Kahn, I want you to conduct fair, independent and through probable cause investigation. I want a written report with your determination whether probable cause exists to conclude if Representative Sansom violated that rules.’ At that point he shook my hand, stood up and walked out.”

“If nothing else were a factor, the timing of the action of the board of trustees in confirming the hiring of Representative Sansom on the same day that he ascended to the speaker’s chair created an appearance of quid pro quo upon which I found it was reasonable that Miss Smith could base her complaint of diminished respect for the House of Representatives.”

“The precise factual issue that likely will be presented to you … is exactly when Representative Sansom first knew he was creating a $6 million facility that was intended at that time to be used at least some of the time as a hangar Mr. Odom, a constituent with whom Representative Sansom enjoyed long-standing, close, complicated, intertwined relationships.”

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Santamaria

“I don’t like politics. Running for a second term is politics. … I’m only interested in serving for four solid years of public service,” Santamaria said in 2007.

But that wasn’t a flat declaration against running again.

(more…)

From the L.A. Times:

All 50 states moved quickly to qualify for their share of the money. But since then the pace has slowed considerably, particularly in California and Florida, where the effect of the economic crisis has been especially severe.

…

In Florida, not a single highway project had been given the go-ahead to start construction by July 10 — even though the state, with an unemployment rate of 10.6%, had 272 projects valued at more than $1 billion approved by the federal government.

Dave Lee, the administrator in the policy office of Florida’s Department of Transportation, said four projects were approved after July 10.

Florida was actually one of the earliest states to submit highway projects for funding under the Recovery Act. Asked what happened after that, Lee paused for a long while before saying, “We’re all trying to do the best we can.”

Bud Chiles is asking Gov. Charlie Crist to keep his promise.

The son of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles who secured an historic $11.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies, wants Crist to appoint the panel established in Florida law to oversee the endowment named after his father.

Chiles first asked Crist in December to appoint the panel after lawmakers and Crist diverted more than $350 million from the fund, then worth about $2 billion, which pays for health programs for children and the elderly.

That never happened.

Instead, lawmakers took another $700 million from the endowment, raising the total trust fund raid to more than $1 billion, as they struggled to balance the budget with a two-year $6 billion spending gap.

Bud Chiles today sent Crist a letter asking him to appoint the 16-member panel, which has apparently not met in about five years. Under Florida law, the advisory group is supposed to give recommendations about the fund to the governor by Nov. 1 each year.

Chiles said he and his lawyers considered filing a complaint but decided to bank on Crist’s goodwill instead. He thinks the legislature and Crist might not be so keen on raiding the fund in the future with the oversight the panel should provide.

“If these people aren’t doing it then whose going to protect the rights of these children that are not getting the funds?” he said.

The committee established by law to make recommendations to the governor about how to spend the state’s historic tobacco settlement has not met in more than a decade.

his latest raid on the fund brings the total taken from the endowment to over $1 billion. In 2008, Gov. Charlie Crist convinced legislators and children’s advocates to allow a withdrawal of more than $350 million from the endowment to meet a budget shortfall, then surprised advocates with a second raid on the fund that led to today’s $700 million withdrawal.