Some believe the state should only spend upwards of $40,000 per day in a special session addressing a constitutional amendment if Florida has a constitutional crisis.

Gov. Charlie Crist says lawmakers should put an amendment on the November ballot in the wake of an environmental crisis.

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The proposal from House and Senate Democrats would ban future drilling within 10 miles of Florida’s coast. But it would not address the oil flooding the Gulf of Mexico and threatening Florida beaches.

More from Crist this morning:

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Attorney General Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, urged the state to hire George Rekers to defend a ban on gay men and women adopting children. News of McCollum’s letters to the Florida Department of Children and Families was first reported by Tallahassee reporter Gary Fineout.

Rekers reportedly just got back from a European trip in which he brought a gay escort hired from Rentboy.com. That story was first reported by the Miami New Times.

Meanwhile, McCollum says he wouldn’t hire Rekers again. “It’s nice to quarterback in 40-40 hindsight, but we didn’t know his background that we know today,” McCollum said. “And nobody else did.”

Gov. Charlie Crist and state CFO Alex Sink as support a constitutional ban. Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson is against it.

Attorney General Bill McCollum is somewhere in the middle. He says he would “never” support offshore drilling, but in the same sentence says he wants a caveat in an amendment to allow for “new developments in science.”

Former Florida Attorneys General Jim Smith and Bob Butterworth were appointed today to a “special legal advisory team” that will prepare the state for a potential lawsuit against BP over the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We would hope at the end of the day that there would be no litigation, that everything will be able to be worked out,” Butterworth said. “But obviously we have to be prepared if there is to be litigation.”

Gov. Charlie Crist has signed an agreement for BP to provide an immediate $25 million in economic aid to the state. But Crist said he told company officials today that the state will need more.

“We all continue to hope and pray that this doesn’t impact our state in a negative way, although probably already has been some economic impact,” Crist said.

Click here for continuing coverage of the oil spill.

Here’s our story about the loyalty oath. And another from earlier this week about Republicans beating Crist to the punch.

More videos here.

Veto.

That’s the decision today from Charlie Crist on what he called the most controversial issue in his two decades in public office.

“We must start over,” Crist said. “This bill has deeply and negatively affected the morale of our teachers, our parents and our students. They are not confident in our system because they do not believe that their voices were heard.

Crist said he found little in the bill – or how Republican leaders “rushed” it through the process – to support.

He compared it to the federal health care changes, which he and other Republican leaders had criticized as a hasty attempt from Democrats to flex their political muscle in Washington.

“About a month later after that happens, the very same thing happens here in education. It’s the wrong process,” Crist said.

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More Post On Politics videos from the past couple weeks here.

Supporters of the controversial bill to overhaul how teacher contracts and salaries are negotiated attempted to win back Gov. Charlie Crist’s support with a press conference this morning where they insisted the changes would make Florida a world leader in education.

“The Senate Bill 6 is about rewarding high quality teachers, paying them more, getting better teachers into our low income schools and making sure every single child has a high quality teacher in the classroom,” Foundation for Florida’s Future President Patricia Levesque said. “We’re thankful that Gov. Crist has supported these issues in the past and we’re really looking forward to his support this week.”

Levesque and others dismissed the outcry from the education community, saying teachers have been ginned up by a union campaign of misinformation.

“I’m frankly a little surprised that out of about 144,000 union members that there’s only about 30,000 that are up in arms about this,” Florida Chamber of Commerce President Mark Wilson said. “What’s happening is they’re getting e-mails, they’re getting phone calls, they’re getting rhetoric about what this bill does not do.”

Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith and state Public Schools Chancellor Frances Haithcock were supposed to join supporters of the bill. But both were last-minute scratches when Crist’s staff asked for meeting to go over the bill again. With Crist seemingly leaning toward a veto, the timing of the meeting was interesting.

Not much new this morning from Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who met with reporters before the twice-a-month Cabinet meeting. But with all the interest in the issue, you can watch the entire six-minute press conference above.

During the briefing, Crist said he did not promise Sen. John Thrasher, the Republican Party chairman sponsoring the bill, that he’d sign the controversial teacher legislation. Crist said that yesterday, as we reported here and here.

Crist said he still hasn’t made his decision yet on whether to sign or veto the bill — he has until Friday — and implied that he favors accountability more than eliminating teacher tenure.

He also said that former Gov. Jeb Bush left him a voicemail asking him to sign the bill.

“Shocking,” Crist laughed.

No, it wasn’t a robo-call. But Bush’s education group is also airing an ad asking people to call Crist and urge him to sign the bill.

Top Florida House Republicans Dean Cannon of Winter Park and Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel say they’re still supporting Gov. Charlie Crist in his U.S. Senate campaign against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Crist is trailing Rubio be a 2-to-1 margin in a poll released Monday and the two House GOP lawmakers have not been particularly vocal about their candidate.

The video is from Gov. Charlie Crist’s press conference this morning. Some background here, here and here.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist just said he would veto any bill that favors the property insurance industry.

That seems to spell certain doom for the bill that would let insurers raise rates without prior approval from the state.

UPDATE: Republicans voted down all nine Democratic amendments, most along party lines. Rep. Faye Culp, R-Tampa, joined Democrats on two amendments that would have let districts base pay raises on advanced degrees and length of service.

For background, here’s our story after the merit pay proposal passed the Florida Senate last month.

If you count Florida’s Bill McCollum (and we always do), three of the 12 Republican attorneys general who say they’re suing over the Democratic health care reform bill are also running for governor of their respective state next year (Michigan’s Mike Cox and South Carolina’s Henry McMaster are the others).

Of the remaining nine, five are seeking re-election in 2010 and four don’t have to run again for two more years.

McCollum, whose gubernatorial platform to lower health care costs is to limit lawsuits, said his lawsuit is not political. Perhaps he should remind his campaign, which has sent seven press releases about health care reform in the past seven days.

Story here.

It would be more difficult to sell carburetor pipes, chillums and chillers in Florida under a bill approved today by a panel of state lawmakers.

Don’t know what those items are? Most members of the House Finance and Tax Council didn’t either. Not that that stopped them from approving the bill 16-0.

Story here.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum today said messages sent between Blackberry devices, known as PINs, are indeed public records and that the state is capable of retaining the documents.

For years, PIN messages — regularly used among lobbyists, lawmakers and governor’s office officials — have fallen into a loophole in state Sunshine Laws because state officials have maintained the messages could not be recorded by government e-mail servers. (Press release here.)

McCollum, who is running for governor in 2010, said today that’s not true. He said PINs and other instant messages can be capture by, essentially, flipping a switch on a server. He said his agency would start keeping those records starting today and urged Gov. Charlie Crist, his fellow Cabinet members, state agencies and the legislature to do the same.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Crist said later in an interview with The Palm Beach Post. “We’ll follow suit.”

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Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink refused to say whether she supports Congressional Democrats’ government-backed health insurance proposal, known as the “public option,” despite her GOP gubernatorial opponent Attorney General Bill McCollum’s demands.

Attorney General Bill McCollum, the presumptive GOP candidate for governor, pilloried President Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ public option and challenged Sink state her position on the issue.

Sink, however, maintained her neutrality but hammered on the Medicaid portion of the health care reforms. She said she would not support anything that increased the state’s share of Medicaid payments, something that McCollum, as her campaign pointed out earlier this week, did numerous times during his long tenure in Congress.