After four years of close relations with his predecessor Charlie Crist, most black lawmakers believe they’ll have a much cooler relationship with Gov. Rick Scott.

“I’m not optimistic at all,” said Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, whose district includes a portion of Palm Beach County.

But don’t look for any sit-ins, yet.

After two months on the job, Gov. Rick Scott has yet to appoint a black or Hispanic to a high-level post.

And at a luncheon for black lawmakers at the mansion yesterday, he further alienated some of the members by suggesting he grew up like them – in public housing and with a parent who had a sixth-grade education.

He also told them he wants their help hiring minorities although he also said he insisted he believe in giving preferences to applicants based on race or ethnicity.

Today, black lawmakers set up an e-mail address to help Scott round out his hires.

Blacks and Hispanics interested in getting to work for Scott should send their applications to iamqualified@live.net, caucus leader Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, said at a press conference today. Minority business owners seeking contracts with the state should also send their information, Siplin advised.

The lawmakers want Scott to reconsider his decision to whack money for historically black private colleges – except the financially ailing Edward Waters College near Jacksonville – from his budget.

Siplin said they’ll meet again with Scott and forward the qualified applicants to his office.

Siplin said Scott was simply sharing his background with the black caucus by mentioning the public housing and parents’ lack of education.

“Quite frankly, all black folks are not poor,” Siplin said at a press conference Wednesday.

Smith, whose mother has a master’s degree, said he was shocked at Scott’s comments at yesterday’s lunch and considered walking out.

“He just assumed because he was sitting with a bunch of black people that we had all grown up in public housing,” Smith said.

Scott is “tremendously disconnected” from the realities of being black or Hispanic in Florida, Smith said.

“He doesn’t see the need for diversity or inclusion,” Smith said. “Any diversity that happens (in his administration) is going to happen by happenstance.”

Gov. Jeb Bush started off by alienating blacks when he did away with minority preferences in university admission and state contracting.

Bush’s actions prompted two black lawmakers – then-Sen. Kendrick Meek and Sen. Tony Hill, then a House member – to stage a sit-in in his office.

Haiti’s ambassador to the United States got a surprise before giving a speech to the legislative black caucus this evening: $23,400 for earthquake relief.

Ambassador Raymond Alcide Joseph said he expected a free trip to Tallahassee and a free lunch but had no idea that he’d be going home with a fistful of checks.

“I’m at a loss for words,” Joseph told the audience gathered in the House chambers before giving a speech celebrating Black History Month. Two Democratic white lawmakers, Reps. Ron Saunders of Key West and Richard Steinberg of Miami Beach, also attended.

The donations included $5,000 from Hispanic lawmakers; $4,000 from a view-a-thon held by state Rep. Alan Williams, D-Tallahassee, and others; and $5,000 from the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators, the first of many the black caucus said are yet to come.

“I can tell you, this warms my heart,” Joseph said.

Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, organized the fundraiser for Joseph, a journalist who founded a Haitian newspaper.

The money will go into into a bank account opened by the Haitian embassy because so many people wanted to contribute to relief efforts but were leery of giving to some of the organizations collecting the funds, Joseph said.

Haiti’s ambassador to the United States Raymond Alcide Joseph made an impassioned plea for help from the U.S. government at a press conference with black legislators in the Capitol today.

“We need tents. Tents to house the people because there are more than a million of them displaced. Right now they have make-shift tents with sheets and things like that. But unless we have those tents within the next six to eight weeks we’ll be in deep trouble because that’s when the rainy season starts,” Joseph said at a press conference in the office of Sen. Gary Siplin, head of the legislature’s black caucus. “So I am asking, I cannot plead too much, please help us get as many tents as possible.”

More than 1 million Haitians have been displaced by the devastating earthquake that razed the island nation’s capital Port-au-Prince last month, leaving more than 200,000 dead and as many injured.

Venezuela has sent 30,000 tents and an unnamed Caribbean nation has pledged another 10,000, Joseph said. But that’s far fewer than the 200,000 Haitian President Rene Preval is pleading for before the onset of the rainy season.

Joseph described his visit to Port-au-Prince Friday with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders.

“I’m not a very emotional person, but I cried. I had cried before, in private. But this time I cried in public. The devastation cannot be explained,” the soft-spoken founder of a Haitian independent newspaper, now run by his brother, Joseph said.

Joseph also asked the U.S. and Canada to make it easier for Haitian Americans living in those countries to return to Haiti to help with the nation’s recovery.

“We have a wealth of resources of Haitian Americans in this country and in Canada who want to give some of their time, some of their expertise to Haiti. But so far their getting there has been stymied,” Joseph said.

The first wave of volunteers assisted the military rescue efforts, Joseph said.

More than 83 percent of Haitian-born professionals have left the country, most of the living now in the United States, Canada and France.

Joseph said those workers need – and want – to return to their native land to help with recovery.

Joseph will address lawmakers at 5 p.m. today as part of the legislative black caucus’ Black History Month celebration.

He said he came to Florida as a reminder of President Barack Obama’s pledge that the United States would be with Haiti for the long haul.

“This is part of why I’m here. For the long haul. I want the story to continue. Because rebuilding Haiti is not going to be one week, two months, a year. It’s going to take quite a few years and I want you to be with us. That’s why I’m here,” Joseph said.

House Speaker Larry Cretul offered a compromise of sorts with black lawmakers after refusing to delay the special session to accommodate a scheduling conflict.

The black members are hosting the National Black Caucus of State Legislators’ annual conference in Ft. Lauderdale, an event that began today. Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, is chairing the gala which was two years in the planning.
.
House Democrats asked Cretul repeatedly to postpone the session, which begins Thursday and lasts through next Friday, until the conference ends this weekend.

He turned them down saying that he had promised Senate President Jeff Atwater the House would send a bill over to the Senate by Monday afternoon.

Now, Cretul is having a briefing session for the black lawmakers – all but one of whom are Democrats – next week and will allow them to offer amendments to the bill on second and third reading.

“They weren’t backing down. We weren’t backing down. So this avoided a confrontation,” said Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, who is attending the conference.
But, he added: “We’re not happy with it.”

He said it was disrespectful of GOP legislative leaders to schedule the special session during the time when they knew the conference was taking place.

Cretul and Atwater have offered excused absences for black lawmakers who are at the event.

“We would be totally embarrassed, nationally, by not being here. We have people from the White House here, from Congress here, from all over the nation,” Gibbons said. “It would be like we invite them to dinner at our house and then we’re not going to be home.”

A racially-charged mail piece targeting former House Speaker John Thrasher will cost the state’s trial lawyer association more than embarassment.

The Florida Justice Association has hired former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan to conduct an investigation into the flier that elicited outrage from the legislature’s black caucus.

“It was the most blatant display of racism I’ve seen in 27 years,” Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, who is black, said at the legislature’s black caucus meeting last night.

The mailer was especially offensive to black lawmakers because they have historically sided with the trial lawyers in votes and considered them their friends, Lawson said.

“This experience really threw me for a loop,” Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said.

(more…)