The three years of tax returns for Scott and his wife Ann show that they paid more in taxes – nearly $3.7 million – than his Democrat opponent Alex Sink and her husband reported as their total adjusted gross income, $2.9 million.
Scott’s release of the 412 pages of documents includes a side-by-side comparison of his earnings and tax payments with Sink and her husband’s, apparently to illustrate that he’s the bigger taxpayer.
But, according to Scott’s analysis, he and his wife paid a lower percentage of their adjusted gross income from 2007-2009. The Scotts paid 14.6 percent and Sink and McBride, who filed separately, paid a combined rate of 15.8 percent.
Sink’s been after Scott, who made his millions as the founder and CEO of the HCA/Columbia hospital chain, to release five years of his tax returns as she did last month.
But Friday night’s reports didn’t satisfy her campaign.
They want to know why he didn’t release the full five years worth of returns as he previously said he would.
“The list of why Rick Scott can’t be trusted keeps getting longer and longer, and not following through with his promise to release a full five years of his taxes is the latest example of not following through on his word and just another reason why he’s not fit to govern this state,” Sink campaign spokeswoman Alexandra Fetissoff said in a press release.
GOP governor hopeful Rick Scott released another attack ad slamming Democrat opponent Alex Sink, continuing his negative ad campaign against the chief financial officer.
Scott’s same strategy helped him defeat Attorney General Bill McCollum in the August GOP primary. Scott spent $50 million of his own money in the primary campaign, most of it on ads attacking McCollum.
Sink and the other Florida Cabinet members signed off on the contract based on the recommendations of the state Division of Bond Finance, she said, her investments are in a blind trust so she did not have a conflict of interest on the vote.
UPDATE: Alex Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Kyra Jennings calls Scott’s ad a lie.
“This is just one more deceptive ad from Rick Scott. The facts are that this is a company Alex Sink flat-out did not run and even the lawyer from the suit mentioned in Scott’s ad said today that Alex Sink was not involved in any way. But obviously Rick Scott has a very hard time telling the truth and can’t be trusted,” Jennings said in an e-mail.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott released a new attack ad today slamming Democrat opponent Alex Sink for $6.75 million in fines her former bank was forced to pay the federal government for selling risky investments, mostly to seniors.
NationsBank and its securities division was also forced to repay $30 million to customers duped into buying the investments. Sink was head of NationsBank’s Florida operations.
How close a business is to where oil actually washed up on the beach won’t be a factor in determining whether it is eligible to be paid for lost revenues, BP claims czar Ken Feinberg has decided.
Today, Kenneth Feinberg, Administrator of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, announced that geographic proximity to the BP oil spill would not prevent a legitimate individual or business claim from being processed.
“I have heard from elected officials in Florida, including Governor Crist, Attorney General McCollum, CFO Sink and others, about their concerns regarding Floridians’ proximity to the spill and how, regardless of distance, there has been economic impact beyond the areas closest to the spill. After listening to these concerns, I have concluded that a geographic test to determine eligibility regarding economic harm due to the oil spill is unwarranted,” Feinberg said in the statement.
Claimants must “rove damages resulting from the spill itself and not other causes, but “physical proximity from the spill will not, in and of itself, bar the processing of legitimate claims,” he said.
His reversal on proximity is a victory for Florida hotel and restaurant owners, who hired a legal dream team to fight Feinberg and help businesses get their claims paid.
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and state elected officials objected to Feinberg’s inclusion of proximity as a factor in paying claims. They said tourists stayed away from the Sunshine State because they had the perception that oil had contaminated areas of Florida even where it hadn’t.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink has setup a web site to let disgruntled Floridians vent about their problems getting paid by BP claims czar Ken Feinberg.
Her new website – www.myfloridacfo.com/FloridaClaimsHelp/ – invites visitors to share their stories “if you’ve filed your claim and provided the documentation requested to the best of your ability but have not received a response or are getting the runaround.”
Feinberg, who took over the Gulf Coast Claims Facility on Aug. 23, this week promised larger, faster claims even as he tries to manage a backlog of more than 10,000 claims, many of them in Florida.
All but a baker’s dozen of GOP state House and Senate members are backing Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott, who ran as an “outsider” in a brutal GOP primary against Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Scott released a list of campaign co-chairmen that included nearly all of the state legislature’s Republicans, some of whom backed McCollum in the primary and objected at the time that Scott, who spent $50 million of his own money in the primary, couldn’t be trusted.
McCollum has refused to endorse Scott in the general election against Democrat Alex Sink.
The list of GOP legislators who haven’t signed on either, according to the campaign document, include:
Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Sens. Victor Crist, Nancy Detert, Rudy Garcia, Steve Oelrich, and Alex Villalobos, who publicly endorsed Sink this week.
Also missing was Ft. Lauderdale Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, who’s running against Democrat Rep. Kelly Skidmore in the race to replace Senate President Jeff Atwater. Atwater’s stepping down to run for chief financial officer.
A new CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corp. poll shows Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat, and GOP opponent Rick Scott tied in the race for governor.
The survey shows Scott with the backing of 47 percent of likely voters and Sink with 45. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.
The poll also showed Sink with a one percent edge among all voters, a drop of seven points from early this month.
Scott held a 13-point advantage with independents likely to vote, with 50 percent said they were likely to cast a ballot for the former health care executive compared to 37 percent who said they’d vote for Sink.
In the three-way U.S. Senate race, the poll found Republican Marco Rubio in the lead with the support of 42 percent of likely voters, independent candidate Gov. Charlie Crist with 31 percent and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, with 23 percent.
UPDATE: GOP officials appear to be linking Attorney General Bill McCollum to billions of dollars in losses – on paper – to the state pension fund during the 2008 financial meltdown.
McCollum has steadfastly refused to join other GOP elected officials in their support for Rick Scott, who defeated the attorney general in the August GOP governor’s race primary.
The Republican Party of Florida paid for a series of ads attacking Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the Democrat nominee for governor, for her role in the pension fund losses.
“Under current oversight, the fund has lost billions upon billions – and now Alex Sink is actually running ads on her questionable record overseeing SBA,” RPOF spokesman Dan Conston said in an e-mail in response to a reaction to McCollum’s pointed questioning yesterday to refute recent reports that the State Board of Administration made risky investments that endangered the pension fund.
Attorney General Bill McCollum may have finally put to rest speculation that he may eventually endorse Rick Scott in the governor’s race in the spirit of party unity.
Instead, he helped Scott’s opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the Democrat candidate for governor, debunk ads bashing Sink for her role in the state pension fund’s loss of billions of dollars in value during the financial meltdown in 2008.
McCollum, who lost the GOP primary bid in a brutal battle against Scott last month, sits with Sink and Gov. Charlie Crist on the board of trustees that governs the State Board of Administration, which handles the pension fund and other investments.
In a public meeting yesterday, McCollum repeatedly asked SBA chief Ash Williams about reports that the pension fund is troubled and that the SBA made risky investments.
Williams assured the trustees the $119 billion fund is sound.
“The SBA is stronger and different then it was only two years ago,” Williams said.
He also refuted allegations that the investments were risky.
“The truth is they are performing,” McCollum said. “They are assets that pay back.”
The Florida Democratic Party released two new TV ads today, one a hard-hitting attack piece bashing GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott and the other a softer piece promoting opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.
The first ad, titled “Trust,” features clips from television news reports of Scott evading reporters asking questions about the $1.7 billion in fines Scott’s former company Columbia/HCA was forced to pay the federal government for Medicare fraud.
It ends with a reporter asking Scott “The question is how could you have missed such an abuse by your own company?” (more…)
Add state Sen. Dan Gelber, the Democrat candidate for attorney general, to the list of pols criticizing BP claims czar Ken Feinberg for his handling of payments to Floridians harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Gelber, a former federal prosecutor from Miami Beach, sent a letter to Feinberg asking him to include the costs of preparing claims to payments to individuals and businesses. Feinberg said he won’t pay for legal or accounting fees associated with the filings.
“Citizens of our state are rightfully frustrated. They see promises from BP actors in commercials suggesting the company is prepared to do the right thing. Yet on the ground, they see obfuscation, and a process that is filled with more chutes than ladders,” Gelber wrote.
Gelber also joined Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the Democrat candidate for governor; Gov. Charlie Crist, the independent candidate for U.S. Senate; and Attorney General Bill McCollum, the Republican who lost the primary bid for governor, in demanding that Feinberg pay damages to those located where oil never reached the shore. Feinberg’s consideration of proximity to the oil spill in paying claims has been a major issue of contention since he took over BP’s botched claims process on Aug. 23.
The Florida Police Benevolent Society released a 30-second TV ad today bashing GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s plan to cut $1 billion from spending on prisons to trim the budget.
A corrections department spokeswoman said Scott’s proposal would wind up shuttering prisons. Shutting down prisons would, of course, result in pink slips for union workers.
The ad says that, under Scott’s plan, “tens of thousands of prisoners could be released early, including murderers, rapists, sex offenders, armed robbers and drug dealers.” It ends with a group of tough-looking men in stripes reciting Scott’s campaign slogan, “Let’s get to work!”
The PBA and the state’s other law enforcement union, the Fraternal Order of Police, are both backing Scott’s Democrat opponent, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.
UPDATE: A spokesman for Rick Scott’s campaign responded to Alex Sink’s rant about her GOP opponent Scott’s attack ads, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida.
“As the St Petersburg Times reported, CFO Sink never declared a potential conflict and supported a no-bid contract to her former employer. Instead of looking for a correction from the St Petersburg Times, Sink is trying to draw attention from valid questions over her integrity and competence,” Scott campaign spokesman Joe Kildea said in an e-mail.
As far as her accusation that Scott is scaring pensioners, Kildea wrote: “She is trying to draw attention away from the facts (as reported in the St Pete. Times)”
Chief Financial Officer and Democrat governor hopeful Alex Sink went on a rant in response to questions about her GOP opponent Rick Scott’s attack ads accusing her of benefiting from a no-bid contract that went to her former employer and being responsible for the state pension fund’s $23 billion loss three years ago.
“You know that’s ridiculous,” Sink, a trustee along with Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida’s State Board of Administration, which handles pension funds for state and municipal workers.
“The whole market almost collapsed. Everybody’s 401K took a dive. And the good news is that independent authorities call the Florida pension fund one of the strongest investment pension funds in the country.
We are one of the strongest public pension funds in the country. He is out there scaring our retirees into thinking that their pensions are at risk. He’s irresponsible and shouldn’t be doing it.”
Sink was even more incensed over an ad accusing her of voting to give former employer Bank of America a no-bid contract when she may have held stock in the company. The Republican Party of Florida paid for both of the television ads.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink used an update this morning on Florida’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to blast BP claims czar Ken Feinberg for paying too little, too late to Panhandle businesses and causing at least one company to close its doors.
“I’m kind of of the mind set that enough is enough,” Sink, the Democrat candidate for governor, said at this morning’s Cabinet meeting. “I don’t know about you all but I’m sick and tired of this. These desperate people through no fault of their own having to shut their business down? That’s horrendous!”
Sink said the owners of Harmony Beach Vacations in Destin sent her an e-mail yesterday telling her they were going out of business because their claim for lost revenues has languished under both BP and Feinberg, who took over the oil giant’s maligned claims process for individuals and businesses on Aug. 23.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s campaign released two new ads attacking his Democrat opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink accusing her of steering no-bid contracts to her former employer and slamming her for poor oversight of the state’s pension fund.
Sink spent more than two decades as a banker and ended her career as the head of Bank of America’s Florida operations.
One of the ads accuses Sink of steering at least $770,000 to Bank of America and its subsidiaries in her role as a member of the board of trustees that oversees the State Board of Administration. Sink sits on the board with fellow Cabinet members Attorney General Bill McCollum and Gov. Charlie Crist.
Sink has said she did not declare a conflict of interest in voting on matters affecting her former employer because her investments are in a blind trust.
Villalobos previously broke ranks with his party by endorsing Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist in his bid for U.S. Senate.
Sink’s banking on her business background and reputation as a fiscal conservative to sway Republican voters away from her GOP opponent Rick Scott who defeated Attorney General Bill McCollum in a nasty primary last month.
Villalobos has plenty of reasons to shun his party. Former Gov. Jeb Bush joined Villalobos’ fellow GOP senators four years ago in a campaign to unseat the incumbent by backing his opponent in a brutal primary. Villalobos won.
A new Rasmussen poll shows GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott with a six point lead over Democrat opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.
The telephone poll found that 50 percent of likely voters said they will cast their ballot for Scott with Sink getting 44 percent.
Rasmussen Reports now shifted the race from a toss-up to leaning Republican in its latest Election 2010 Gubernatorial Scorecard.
Earlier this month, Sink had a slight edge over Scott, with a 48 to 47 percent lead.
Both polls included “leaners,” likely voters who initially respond that they have no preference for either candidate but when asked again say they prefer a particular candidate.
Alex Sink holds a 7-point lead over Rick Scott in the Florida governor’s race, according to a poll released today by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.
The poll of 625 likely voters gives Sink 47 percent of the vote and Scott 40 percent, with 11 percent undecided and 1 percent for each of two minor candidates.
Scott’s reputation took a hit during his GOP primary battle with Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, leaving 47 percent of voters with an unfavorable impression of him, Mason-Dixon said. Sink had a negative rating among only 23 percent of voters.
“He is hampered by a very high negative rating that is the result of his brutal primary race,” says Mason-Dixon’s Brad Coker.
How the numbers break down:
Sink leads 56-31 in Southeast Florida, 51-37 in Tampa Bay and 44-41 in Central Florida.
Scott leads 52-37 in North Florida and 47-40 in Southwest Florida.
Scott leads 51-41 among men.
Sink leads 53-30 among women.
Sink leads 44-37 among independents.
The poll’s margin of error is four percentage points.
Ken Feinberg, in charge of doling out billions of dollars in claims to victims of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, said he won’t hire more adjusters to speed up the process but acknowledged his system is not without problems.
“It is true that we’re not moving as fast as we should,” Feinberg said.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Gov. Charlie Crist this week asked Feinberg to appear before them at the next Cabinet meeting to explain why so many Panhandle business owners haven’t seen a dime since Feinberg took over BP’s maligned claims system on Aug. 23.
“We can do better. The criticism of the governor and Sink justifiable. But we’re making amends. And we’re improving the system,” Feinberg said.
Crist and Sink also demanded that he immediately hire more adjusters to help speed up the process.
“I don’t need to hire more people. It’s not a resource issue. It’s an internal ability of us to process claims as fast as we can. Simply throwing more people at the problem won’t solve it,” Feinberg said.
Gov. Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink want BP claims czar Ken Feinberg to appear before the Florida Cabinet and explain why his revamped claims process is in such a mess.
In a letter sent today, Sink, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Crist, the independent candidate in the three-way race for U.S. Senate, also asked Feinberg to immediately hire more people and spend more resources processing claims.
“Floridians continue to tell us that they cannot get their claims paid in a timely fashion,” Sink and Crist wrote. “Many Floridians who have been impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill need immediate relief just to make their next mortgage payment or make their next payroll.”
Feinberg met today with Attorney General Bill McCollum, who said afterward that he was “cautiously optimistic” that Feinberg would tweak his claims process to make it more Florida-friendly for folks trying to get tourism-related losses paid.
Claimants have complained that Feinberg, in charge of doling out much of the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility fund set up by BP, has reneged on his earlier promise to pay individuals 48 within hours and businesses within a week of receiving their claim.
At yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Sink read an e-mail Pensacola business owner Jeff Elbert, also head of the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce, who said that he doesn’t know of a single beach business that’s been paid since Feinberg took over BP’s botched claims process on Aug. 23.
The Democratic Governors Association gave Florida Democrats a $2 million cash infusion to aid Alex Sink in her race against Rick Scott, Politico is reporting this morning.
According to Politico, the DGA wired the cash into the Florida Democratic Party’s account and will be spent on television ads.
Democrats nationally are eying the Florida race with the hope that Chief Financial Officer Sink can score a coup for Democrats, who’ve been out of the governor’s mansion since former Lt. Gov. Buddy McKay lost to Jeb Bush in 1998. Sink’s husband Bill McBride made a losing against Bush four years later.
Scott spent more than $50 million of his own money – much of it on advertising – to defeat Attorney General Bill McCollum in the GOP primary last month.
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