The Capitol will soon be the stumping ground for GOP White House hopefuls, according to Senate President Mike Haridopolos, who called the Sunshine State “the most important state in the presidential election.”

Haridopolos, who’s seeking the national spotlight himself as a U.S. senate candidate, said the unidentified candidates have “reached out to me” and “I’ve reached out to them” and will announce soon who’s coming to Tallahassee.

“I think it will be beneficial for Florida to find out some of the ideas because we face a multitude of problems in the state and if a person is seeking the presidency I think they should come to Florida and let us know what they think,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters at his weekly Q-and-A this morning.

UPDATE: Sen. Joe Negron successfully attached the children’s services agreement to a bill dealing with early childhood education this afternoon but the Senate didn’t take a final vote on the bill (SB 2014) yet.

The state’s children’s services councils agreed to a deal with Sen. Joe Negron this year because they would likely have fared worse in the future, a lobbyist for the special taxing districts said.

Negron’s deal would require that voters reauthorize the state’s eight children’s services councils that have taxing authority periodically, beginning in 2014 with Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee counties.

The councils voted to accept the deal yesterday but Martin and St. Lucie refused to vote on the plan that would require voter reauthorization every 12 years unless the referendum specified another time frame or no future vote at all.

Negron, already a Senate leader after less than a year in office, will be even more powerful after his reelection in the fall, said the state council association’s lobbyist Ron Book.

Negron believes that all boards, councils or other groups that have the ability to tax citizens should be elected.

The Stuart Republican wants the change because he’s unhappy with the Martin council’s spending on a new headquarters.

Children’s advocates say the councils are an easy target because they have less clout than taxing authorities like water management districts.

“I think they’re right. But that doesn’t mean that he as a policy maker and an elected member of the Florida Senate shouldn’t move legislation that he thinks is right,” Book said.

He said the councils weren’t forced into the deal but they would likely do worse next year.

“There is less incentive for Sen. Negron to negotiate a compromise next year or the year after than there was this year,” Book said. “Sen. Negron becomes an even more significant leader in the Florida Senate after his reelection and I think that that is an issue they had to consider. Will you do better to negotiate a compromise today than later? They were in a better position to negotiate something that they could live with today than they would be next year.”

Negron, who plans to amend a bill with the compromise today on the Senate floor, said he never threatened the councils and that they are working with him to ensure that the House signs off on the agreement.
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Hundreds of thousands of Florida workers – including teachers and cops – say they are under assault by lawmakers using the state’s flopping finances as a way to bust up the unions.

Measures that would cut salaries, do away with teacher tenure and impose pension reductions are speeding through the legislature this session.

“The legislature’s taking advantage of the bad economy to force their opinions of anti-unionism down the throats of the rest of the people. If they had their way, we’d be working weekends, and there would be 13-year-olds on the production lines,” said Paul Brewer, a Department of Transportation printer who is head of his local union comprised mainly of blue-collar workers in Tallahassee.

Read the full story here.

A bill that’s one of House Speaker Larry Cretul’s priorities that would make 911 call tapes secret is on the fast-track in his chamber but lacks a Senate sponsor.

Cretul is pushing the measure on behalf of Florida Farm Bureau President John Hoblick, whose 16-year-old son died from a lethal combination of alcohol and illegal prescription drugs. Hoblick, out of town when his son Jake died, heard his older son John’s 911 call on the news.

House staff and the bill sponsor Rep. Rob Schenk, R-Spring Hill, kept the Speaker’s blessing of the bill hush-hush until this week when Cretul told a St. Petersburg Times reporter that Hoblick asked him to do something about the 911 calls.

Cretul used a seldom-used procedural maneuver today to guarantee that the measure (PCB GAP 10-03) passed. He temporarily assigned one of his lieutenants, House Speaker Pro Tem Ron Reagan, R-Bradenton, to the committee. Cretul didn’t need the insurance, however; the Government Policy Accountability Council approved it with an 8-5 vote.

Despite the Speaker’s clout in the House, the bill lacks a Senate sponsor.

Sen. Garrett Richter had originally agreed to run a companion for Schenk. But an open government shell bill he had sponsored that could have been used for Schenk’s bill was designated to be heard in the Banking and Insurance Committee, which has nothing to do with the 911 calls, he said. Richter backed off the bill even before controversy surrounding it – some victims and First Amendment lawyers staunchly oppose it – began this week. The Naples Republican said he won’t sponsor the measure.

Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law a tax break for businesses ten minutes before he began his state-of-the-state speech this evening.

The measure (HB 7033) will delay about $1.8 billion in unemployment tax payments for Florida businesses that will jump from $8 per worker to $100 per employee on April 1.

The higher tax rate kicks in in April because the number of jobless workers in Florida, among the highest in the nation, has wiped out the trust fund that pays for unemployment benefits.

Putting off the tax hike for two years means that Florida lawmakers today agreed to continue to borrow from the federal government to replenish the fund and rack up $675 million in interest payments. Those costs will be passed on to businesses over the next five years.

“Decisions are being made as we speak. Business owners are trying to determine what they’re going to do next to be able to deal with this Friday’s pay roll. This is what this bill’s about,” said Sen. Rudy Garcia, R-Hialeah.

The Senate unanimously approved the bill (HB 7033), which the House also unanimously passed earlier today.

Senate President Jeff Atwater launched his opening day remarks with an attack on his federal counterparts for wanton spending, then laid out a pro-business agenda for the 2010 session and a push to water down class size restrictions put into the Florida Constitution in 2002.

“Over the next sixty days you will each search your souls, come to your own personal decisions, but for my part, I will not participate in the evisceration of the American dream, I will not lower my vision, I will not choose the easy path, and I will not stand idly by while Congress smothers the next generation with its self indulgence and irresponsibility,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said early in his speech.

Atwater, who is leaving office this year to run statewide for chief financial officer, also recognized seven senators leaving office this year because of term limits, including Alex Villalobos of Miami. Villalobos would have been at Atwater’s place at the podium today were it not for a coup that Atwater and his supporters staged more than two years ago.

Atwater, a descendent of Florida Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, was joined by other family members in the audience who were in town for the opening of an exhibit on Broward at the Old Capitol.

Listen to Atwater’s speech here.

Or read the text of his speech here.

The 60-day 2010 legislative session began with the usual pageantry as Senators, their families, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet and the Florida Supreme Court crowded into the Senate chambers for Senate President Jeff Atwater’s opening day speech.

The chamber was filled with opening-day flowers, one of the only exemptions in the gift ban law barring lawmakers from accepting presents of any kind, including food.

Among the guests attending this morning: Linda King, widow of the late Sen. Jim King, the Jacksonville Republican who died earlier in July after a bout with pancreatic cancer and who once served as Senate President.

The Senate dedicated a committee room to King and read a resolution honoring the veteran lawmaker who was instrumental in getting end-of-life legislation passed.

Stay tuned for audio of Atwater’s remarks and other opening day treats, including the House’s session kick-off, winding up with Crist’s 6 p.m. state-of-the-state address.

The Florida Senate will kick off the 60-day 2010 legislative session at about 9 a.m. setting off a day of pageantry culminating with Gov. Charlie Crist’s prime-time state-of-the-state speech this evening.

Stay tuned to postonpolitics.com for continuous blogs throughout the day, beginning with the Senate session at 9 a.m., followed by the House session at 10 a.m. and then later sessions in the afternoon. Then keep Post’ed with Crist’s final state-of-the-state address at 6 p.m.

Expect to hear lots of talk about jobs, jobs, jobs and what the legislature and Crist want to do to help small businesses weather the prolonged economic storm.

The House and Senate plan to pass a delay of the unemployment compensation tax hike that could increase taxes on some businesses up to 5,000 percent unless lawmakers act quickly.

The business tax increase is necessary to replenish the trust fund that pays out-of-work Floridians and to repay the federal government $1.1 billion the state borrowed after the fund ran out of money last year.

Last year, lawmakers approved an increase in the unemployment tax to speed up the repayment of the federal loans and beef up the trust fund.

But the increases, originally signed off on by the business community, turned out to be significantly higher than expected, ranging from 21 percent to more than 5,000 percent.

The minimum rate for employers with a good employment track record is slated to skyrocket from $8.40 to $100.30 per employee per year unless lawmakers do something by April 1.

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.

House budget chief David Rivera is abandoning his state Senate run and jumping into the race for Congress to replace U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who’s switching seats.

Rivera, a Miami Republican close to former House Speaker Marco Rubio, made the announcement this morning.

Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla is expected to get into the race but took an uncharacteristically subtle approach to Rivera’s decision with the following statement, entitled “First Things First.”

With the beginning of the 2010 legislative session just days away and unemployment in the double-digits and a $3 billion budget gap to close, DLP says he’s going to focus on the issues at hand.

The Majority Leader’s primary job is to ensure that Republicans have the votes they need to pass leaders’ priority bills.

“As Senate Majority Leader, these issues weigh heavily on my shoulders each and every day because I know how they impact families and small businesses across our state. It would be unfair to Floridians for me to take my focus off finding real solutions to the problems we are facing and instead turn my attention to my next campaign or career opportunity. As I continue the process of deciding whether to seek higher office, I will not make my decision based on the artificial pressures of time or the actions of others. Instead, I am humbled by the grassroots supports and will continue to receive input from my friends, family and supporters and I will announce my decision when the time is right,” Diaz de la Portilla wrote.

Both of the GOP Cuban-American lawmakers from Miami are term-limited out of office this year.