Florida Gov. Rick Scott is spending Friday in Texas with fellow Republican Govs. Rick Perry of  Texas and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, pitching their respective states to a host of Chinese investors.

The U.S.-China Cross Border Private Investment Summit at Cowboys Stadium is the first stop for a six-city U.S.-China Investment Week conference, which includes an event next week in Orlando. About 50 major Chinese investors are taking part in the tour, looking for investment opportunities in the U.S.

Scott is spending the day in the Dallas-area, capped by a dinner Friday night where former President George W. Bush is slated to address the gathering.

Scott’s trip coincides with new employment numbers being released by the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity. Florida’s unemployment rate stayed at 8.8 percent for the month of August, but with 28,000 new private sector jobs created, it marked the state’s best performance in 16-months.

“This increase in new jobs is proving that the decisions we’re making here in Florida are pointing our state in the right direction,” Scott said. “Employers are aware of the talented and skilled workforce we have here, and the August numbers prove that the economic climate in Florida is one that encourages job creation and economic development.”

The latest state assessment of Florida’s economy continues to cloud Gov. Rick Scott’s claims that his policies are leading to an eye-catching drop in unemployment.

The Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research said Tuesday that the 1.3 percent decline in the state’s jobless level between the end of 2011 and May is largely attributed to Floridians leaving the workforce.

The unemployment rate in December was 9.9 percent and in May was clocked in at 8.6 percent. But EDR found that had the same number of Floridians been seeking jobs in May, that actual unemployment level would have been 9.5 percent, a more modest reduction.

“Sixty-nine percent of the drop in the unemployment rate is due to people dropping out of the labor force,” the analysis concluded. EDR raised similar concerns last month about April’s rate, which marked a three-year low in jobless levels.

The workforce decline is occuring in most states.  But as the nation’s biggest battleground state in the presidential contest, Florida’s improving employment picture is being grabbed by both parties.

Scott says the state’s gains would be even better if the national scene improved.  President Obama, who is scheduled to campaign Thursday and Friday in Florida,  including a stop at West Palm Beach’s Century Village, also has taken credit for brightening the Sunshine State’s out-of-work numbers.

For its part, EDR’s analysis steers clear of praise. The findings show that Florida will need to gain 1 million jobs to match the state’s pre-recession employment levels. Meanwhile, only four counties have gained employment over the past four years — rural Glades, Sumter, Suwannee and Calhoun.

Scott, though, says that since he was inaugurated, the state has created 99,600 jobs through May. His campaign goal: 700,000 jobs in seven years.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Department is still reviewing a complaint by Florida Legal Services and the National Employment Law Project that wholesale changes to how Florida workers file claims have denied unemployment checks to thousands of eligible Floridians.

The latest change occured July 1, when state officials rebranded Florida’s unemployment compensation system. It’s now called reemployment assistance — but critics say it’s still hard to get. 

Critics say frustration with the system  may be fueling the perception of a sharp unemployment drop.

Thousands of job-seekers are more likely abandoning their search or just leaving the state and falling out of Florida’s labor market, they said.

Gov. Rick Scott said Friday that the state’s new 10 percent unemployment rate for November is a sign that “clearly, we have turned the corner.”

The rate was 0.4 percentage points lower than a revised October rate and below the 11.9 percent posted in November 2010.  In Palm Beach County, the jobless rate was 10.1 percent – slightly topping the statewide figure, but still down .2 percent from the previous month.

“That’s a real positive,” Scott said of the statewide decline.

Florida’s unemployment decline tracks what’s occuring nationally. Florida’s rate still is higher than the nation’s 8.6 percent November jobless level, which is also down .4 percent from a month earlier.

 A total of 8,500 new jobs were added in Florida last month. Scott said that brings the total net new jobs for the year to more than 120,000.

Even as Gov. Rick Scott’s administration acknowledges it needs to improve oversight of job-creation money, a national report Wednesday graded the state’s incentive programs as average in terms of tracking the dollars and creating jobs which bring decent wages.

Scott is seeking $230 million in next year’s budget for incentive dollars for his newly created Department of Economic Opportunity, more than doubling the cash available to lure businesses to relocate or expand in Florida.

But lawmakers have questioned just how well the state can vouch for the $739 million in incentives it has spread across some 1,600 contracts since 1995.

The report by Good Jobs First, Inc., a non-partisan, nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., gave Florida a C grade for its ability to follow the dollars and turn them into jobs.

 ”With unemployment still so high, taxpayers have a right to expect that economic development investments create significant numbers of quality jobs,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First. “The days of ‘no strings attached’ are largely gone, but the fine print in many states is still full of gaps and loopholes.”

 Good Jobs’ review found Nevada, North Carolina and Vermont did best in applying job standards to their major subsidy programs. The District of Columbia, Alaska and Wyoming rated worst.

Oversight and performance of Florida’s big five economic development programs placed the state eighth best on the national survey.  Although laws governing four of the five subsidy programs set some kind of wage standard, none require employers to provide health benefits to workers, analysts said. 

“This study provides a roadmap for Florida legislators and economic development officials as they attempt to require more accountability from corporations receiving job subsidies,” said Alan Stonecipher, a spokesman for the Florida Cetner for Fiscal and Economic Policy, which co-released the Florida findings.

The report is here: www.goodjobsfirst.org

Gov. Rick Scott laid out the “job creation and economic growth agenda” he’s been hinting at lately — a wide-ranging plan aimed at repealing more than 1,000 state rules and regulations, reducing the corporate income tax, and pouring money into port and road projects to spur more jobs.

The Republican governor — who has promised to create 700,000 jobs in seven years — has conveniently settled on seven steps toward jump-starting Florida’s sputtering economy.

Scott unveiled the plan Wednesday morning at a metals and plastics plant in Orlando. With an election year coming, Scott also used the event to draw contrasts between his plan and the jobs proposal pushed by President Obama, now languishing in Congress after a negative vote Tuesday in the Senate.

“Unlike our elected leaders in Washington, D.C., I realize that it is Florida’s families and businesses, taking risks with their ideas, capital and time, that create jobs and grow an economy,” Scott said. “We will continue to attract new jobs by consistently lettting businesses know through our actions that we want Florida to be their home.”

Scott’s latest proposal builds on many of the themes he endorsed in his first-year as governor.

 After scaling back benefits for Florida’s almost 1 million unemployed — to reduce costs for businesses — Scott now wants to require job training for those drawing assistance. He also wants to double the corporate income tax exemption approved last year by the Legislature, an increase that would eliminate the levy for about 25 percent of the companies still paying.

Scott also puts more pressure on state colleges and universities to produce more graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — which he said will help promote economic growth. He also wants the K-12 system to do its part in advancing STEM education.

“Florida will become the nation’s leader in job creation and economic growth by consistently doing the right things month after month to create the nation’s premier environment to start, relocated or expand a business,” Scott said.

Florida Democrats teed-off on Republican Gov. Rick Scott on Friday over July unemployment numbers, which showed the state losing 22,100 jobs that month.

The statewide  jobless rate held steady at 10.7 percent in July from a month earlier. In Palm Beach County, unemployment climbed to 11.2 percent that month, up from 11 percent in June.

Jobs, meanwhile, vanished.

Scott has been boasting of the state’s job creation levels, which had climbed by 85,500 positions since he took office in January. But with July’s drop, that level is down to 64,300 jobs, according to the state’s Agency for Workforce Innovation.

 Earlier this week, he told the Orlando Sentinel editorial board that he was well on his way to making good on his campaign promise of creating 700,000 jobs in seven years — even though he also made it clear to the paper that he was casting his pledge differently than last fall. 

Last fall, Scott promised to add the 700,000 positions on top of what economists forecast as a roughly 1 million additional jobs that will come with Florida’s population growth. Now, Scott said he’s counting every job toward his goal.

But Friday, he had to get out the eraser with July’s shrinkage.

Florida Democratic Party executive director Scott Arceneaux said the decline was “another indication that Rick Scott and the Republicans care more about promoting their Tea Party agenda then creating the jobs they promised and Floridians need.”

Gov. Rick Scott unsuccessfully tried to privatize Florida’s three remaining state mental hospitals.

But Monday, those same facilities in Gainesville, Chattahoochee and Macclenny look like they’re going to absorb the brunt of some 500 layoffs planned by the Department of Children and Families to cover a $48 million agency reduction, included in the $69.7 billion budget now before Scott.

DCF Secretary David Wilkins sent a memo to the agency’s 13,000 employees Monday outlining the effort to spare “front-line” employees “who are acting as first responders for children, adults and families in need.”

“However, we have many opportunities to improve our administrative operations. By consolidating many back office services, improving automation and simplifying many of our processes,” he added.

The layoffs are expected to take place by June 30, Wilkins pointed out. That’s the end of the state budget year. (more…)

Road builders are upping the pressure on Gov. Rick Scott to veto the Legislature’s decision to pull $150 million out of the state’s transportation trust fund and scatter it across the budget, filling holes.

The Florida Transportation Builders Association delivered close to 3,600 petition signatures to Scott on Monday, urging he strike the fund shift. Builders say losing the money will hurt construction efforts and cost 8,400 jobs.

The association’s president, Bob Burleson, said in a letter to Scott the move “will only add to Florida’s strained unemployment compensation and healthcare systems.’

Joining Burleson in the pitch are six transportation building organizations, along with Associated Industries of Florida and Florida TaxWatch. The $69.7 billion budget now before Scott is almost certain the cause more layoffs in Florida economists warn,  even as the state’s April unemployment level fell to 10.8 percent, its lowest level since September 2009.

Scott, though, has voiced little support for public spending as an economic driver. “I”m focused on building private sector jobs,” Scott said last week, when he raised the possibility of vetoing millions of dollars spending on university and college construction.

At the time, Scott said he worried about deepening the state’s debt — which may help road builders seeking to erase the $150 million trust fund shift. Those dollars are generated chiefly by motorists paying gas tax.

The $69.7 billion state budget now before Gov. Rick Scott will send tremors through Florida’s struggling economy, with school districts, hospitals and other big employers soon cutting jobs and programs because of a sharp drop in taxpayer dollars, economists say.

Scott has generally praised the spending plan for shrinking government, cutting regulations and reducing taxes. He says it will spur private business expansion and fulfill his campaign pledge to create 700,000 jobs over seven years.

Many analysts aren’t so sure.

More certain, they say, is that state government’s pullback will lead to at least a short-term reduction in dollars coursing through Florida. It could add to the state’s 10.8 percent unemployment rate, they warn.

“A reduction in state spending? Well, first, that’s just going to reduce jobs,” said David Denslow, head of the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Demographic Research.

“It’s going to be another headwind in the economic recovery,” said Denslow, an occasional adviser to the Republican-led legislature. “You’re cutting employment, reducing infrastructure spending and lowering the amount of money going to communities. That’s going to have a negative effect.”

When Florida’s unemployment rate dropped in March by its largest margin in eight years, Gov. Rick Scott was quick to grab credit.

Another decline for April — announced Friday — prompted the Republican governor assuring that the state is headed in the right direction. And his policies are helping, Scott added.

“I remain focused on job creation, so it is great news that this trend is continuing in the right direction,” Scott said. “With tax relief for property owners and elimination of taxes on about half of the businesses that currently pay, I believe we are on the path to getting Florida back to work.”

Florida’s 10.8 percent jobless rate is the state’s lowest level since September 2009. It’s down from 11.1 percent in March and includes 996,000 out-of-work, the first time the ranks of the state’s unemployed dropped below 1 million since October 2009, according to Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation.

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.

Lawmakers remained divided Wednesday night on efforts to limit unemployment compensation in Florida — with the House reworking a Senate plan linking the number of weeks a jobless worker can collect benefits.

Instead, the House dug-in, mostly — around the plan it approved in the session’s opening week. The House wanted to reduce the state’s current 26 weeks of benefits to 20 — but boosted that by three weeks as the session’s horse-trading entered the homestretch.

“It has a long-term, positive effect on businesses, because it lowers the unemployment taxes,” said Rep. Doug Holder, R-Sarasota.

The Senate has resisted a direct cut in weekly benefits, instead tying the duration of benefits to the state’s unemployment rate. A full, 26-weeks would only be available to those out-of-work when unemployment hit 12 percent. The current 11.1 percent jobless rate would allow for 24 weeks.

The House also supports a sliding scale. But it wants to roll-back the maximum benefits to 23 weeks.

“How does this help the unemployed find jobs?” asked Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Pembroke Pines.

The bill also demands that those seeking benefits take a skills test aimed at matching them to jobs. It also gives employers more authority to challenge a worker’s bid for benefits, with Florida’s biggest industry organizations saying the current system overly favors those out of work.

Holder, a Sarasota Republican, said he thought his Senate counterpart, Nancy Detert, R-Venice, would meet him on the middle-ground.

“We feel it’s an appropriate compromise,” Holder said.

Florida’s unemployment rate dropped last month by its largest margin in more than eight years, and Gov. Rick Scott was ready Friday to take plenty of credit for the improving economy.

Florida’s March rate stands at 11.1 percent — down from 11.5 percent the month before. Scott also pointed out, “While that number is still too high, that is the lowest unemployment rate we’ve seen in more than a year. And it represents a nearly one percent decrease since I’ve become governor.”

“We’re seeing an encouraging trend…We’re clearly heading in the right direction. But we’ve got a long way to go,” Scott said.

He also used the findings to again push the Legislature to embrace his call for cutting state regulations, reducing the corporate income tax and consolidating job development agencies — and their millions of incentive dollars –under him.

Scott acknowledged that the national unemployment rate — at 8.8 percent, still well below Florida’s — had declined by only one-tenth of one percent since February.

But Scott failed to point out — as state economist Rebecca Rust did after Scott exited his news conference without taking any questions — that the national unemployment rate also has dropped by 1 percent over the past four months.

That basically mirrors Florida’s drop.

Some 43,800 jobs have been added in Florida since Scott took office in January. But have Scott’s policies helped spark that economy?

“We can’t say,” Rust conceded.

The House approved overhauling the state’s unemployment compensation system, cutting benefits and reducing tax rates in a strict, party-line vote.

The 81-38 vote in the Republican-dominated House was designed as a first-week-of-the-session message that the GOP is looking to help businesses rebound — possibly at the expense of Florida’s jobless.

The move came even as the state’s Agency for Workforce Innovation reported Thursday that the state’s unemployment rate hit 11.9 percent in January, down slightly from December’s 12 percent level. The state lost 13,000 jobs in January, AWI said.

But Rep. Doug Holder, R-Sarasota, said the House bill (HB 7005) will help turnaround what he called a “capsized economy.”

“It sends a resounding message to the business community: Florida is the place to be,” Holder said.

But Democrats, who unanimously opposed the measure, said the measure would hurt out-of-work Floridians.

“I’m pro-business. But I’m also pro-people,” said Rep. Alan Williams, D-Tallahassee. (more…)

The Republican-dominated House beat back Democratic attempts at weakening a tough new rewrite of Florida’s unemployment compensation laws.

The legislation (CS/HB 7005) cuts eligibility for Florida’s jobless and makes it tougher to claim benefits.

“It’s designed to balance the needs of the employer and the unemployed,” said Rep. Doug Holder, R-Sarasota, whose Economic Development and Tourism subcommittee crafted the bill.

But Democrats said the measure effectively is a handout to businesses that could hurt the economy by barring out-of-work Floridians from drawing needed cash, and might even spike the state’s already sky-high foreclosure rate.

“I’d suggest we strike the balance in favor of Floridians and not in favor of out-of-state corporations,” said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando.

(more…)

Gov. Rick Scott continued his tour of state agencies Monday — stopping at the Florida Department of Transportation and seeming to give a couple hundred tense employees some reason to believe they’ll keep their jobs a while longer.

Scott praised the performance and efficiency of DOT employees. And he said that during his campaign last fall, no voters complained about the agency, unlike — he named names — ridiculing the Department of Community Affairs.

“You’re helping to make sure that this state is going to be the jobs creator over the next 20 to 30 years,” Scott told the crowd gathered inside the agency’s auditorium.

The new boss acknowledged that if anyone was “a high-speed rail enthusiast, I’m not your best friend.” And he gave advocates of Central Florida’s SunRail commuter train little reason to gain confidence.

“That’s one project I’m looking at,” Scott said.

He only had to field two questions from DOT employees. But one came from Florida Democratic Party activist Jon Ausman, also a DOT staffer, who quizzed the Republican governor about how cutting benefits and reducing state agency payrolls helps Florida’s economy.

“We have to make sure we treat taxpayers and government workers fairly. Both,” Scott said.

Facing the worst budget year in memory, new Republican Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-packed Florida Legislature begin the 2011 session this week, pledging to slash spending and make good on campaign pledges that powered them last fall.

With the approach of the opening day Tuesday, unions, teachers and scores of groups in the cross hairs of budget cuts have been rallying against Scott and fellow Republican leaders who, in turn, are pulling support from tea party loyalists eager to shrink government.

Though it hasn’t commanded the national attention of Wisconsin and other partisan battlegrounds, purple state Florida is in for a bruising spring, with lawmakers looking to close a $3.6 billion budget hole and revive an economy flat-lined by an almost 12 percent jobless rate.

“Priority number one is the budget,” said House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park. “Everything else is number two.”

But it’s not a simple numbers game.

Political ideology is shading most of the exchanges between Republicans in power and Democrats pushed to Florida’s fringe by the November elections.

Read full story here:   http://bit.ly/fY27Vb

Organizers across the political spectrum Friday began taking aim at the state Capitol for next week’s opening of the two-month legislative session.

The Facebook-drive Awake The State protest has about 30 rallies planned Tuesday from Key West to Pensacola — with critics of Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature’s budget-cutting the focus.

 Teachers, government employees, cops and firefighters form the core of those pushing back against proposed pension overhauls, but expected reductions in schools and health-care programs are drawing more opponents, said Damien Filer of Progress Florida.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people who say, `this is going to be my first rally of any kind,’” Filer said. “I’ll be interested to see what kind of momentum remains among people after next week.”

A West Palm Beach rally is planned from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday, in the 100 block of Clematis Street.

Tea Party activists expect to counter-punch, with several thousand Scott supporters expected in Tallahassee. (more…)

In the ‘let’s get to work’ House, Speaker Dean Cannon told lawmakers in a memo Thursday that one of the first bills slated for action next week will dramatically change the playing field for Florida’s jobless.

Cannon, R-Winter Park, said the House’s rewrite of state unemployment compensation laws will be poised for final approval the opening week of the session.

CS/HB 7005 would cut the maximum weeks of state benefits from 26 to 20, and make it easier for employers to challenge those seeking unemployment benefits.

Business organizations have been clamoring for the changes — warning that a sharp hike in the unemployment tax rate paid by employers will lead to more job losses. Florida has 1.1 million people out-of-work, almost 12 percent of the population.

The legislation poised for House action also ties the length of benefits to the state unemployment rate. Benefits would last 20 weeks if the unemployment rate is 9 percent or higher, but would fall to as low as 12 weeks as the economy improves. (more…)