The Florida Senate is supposed to hold a budget meeting today to take up four controversial items – an overhaul of Citizens Property Insurance, immigration reform and two abortion measures.

Senate rules require a four hour notice before the meeting can be held. With no notice yet, senators are still trying to work out deals on the contentious insurance and immigration issues.

The possibility of a committee meeting is “looking doubtful right now,” Senate President Mike Haridopolos’ spokesman David Bishop said in an e-mail.

After taking weeks of heat, Gov. Rick Scott said Thursday he’s withdrawing his order cutting payments to caregivers for Floridians with Down Syndrome, spinal bifida, autism and other developmental disabilities.

Scott confirmed what he hinted earlier this week — during a visit to the state’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities. The House and Senate have agreed to find dollars in their budget proposal to cover the $174 million deficit that prompted his 15 percent rate cut, which he said will be lifted by the beginning of next week.

“I became concerned that we would run out of money, and as you know, this is a group of people who are very dependent on what the state does….so we did an emergency order to deal with that,” Scott said Thursday.

Scott’s emergency order — issued with little warning — sent shockwaves through community agencies. Many said they would likely close some group homes, lay-off staff and curtail services because of how Scott chose to “deal with,” the deficit.

Dozens of developmentally disabled Floridians crowded Scott’s Capitol office last week ago protesting the cuts. The governor, though, was out of town that day.

“I’ll be pulling my emergency order, and making sure that our providers have the funds that they need to take care this group of individuals who really need this care,” Scott said Thursday.

South Florida contractors were among those appealing Tuesday to Gov. Rick Scott’s job-creation push, urging him to seek more funding for Everglades restoration for economic, as well as environmental, purposes.

In his budget proposal, Scott has recommended cutting state restoration money from $50 million to $17 million. He also has called for 25 percent property tax cuts from the state’s water management districts, which environmentalists say also could reduce dollars for Everglades work.

House and Senate budgets advancing also tighten-up environmental spending, as lawmakers look to close a spending gap nearing $3.8 billion.

“Continued state funding of Everglades restoration will help ensure that the federal government stands by its commitment to fund these important projects and will allow construction to move forward,” the ten contractors wrote Scott. “The Everglades stand at a crossroads.”

Contractors included engineers, environmental consultants, and road graders from South Florida to Jacksonville and Mississippi.

Senate President Jeff Atwater sent a letter to the state’s Congressional delegation today asking them to back legislation requiring a balanced federal budget like Florida’s own laws mandate.

Atwater, a North Palm Beach banker, is running for chief financial officer.

“Unfunded mandates, insurmountable debt, and unconscionable spending are mortgaging our children and grandchildren’s future. Therefore I ask for your help to protect our Nation’s economic liberty. A strong economy is nothing short of the very foundation on which our Republic stands. That is why we need a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment,” Atwater wrote to Florida’s Congressional delegation leader U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Atwater asks the Florida delegation to sign a “Pledge for America’s Future comprised of spending-related “whereases” that Atwater and his staff crafted on their own, Atwater spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof said.

Here’s a sample:

“WHEREAS, the Federal Government has for too long relied on revenue increases and borrowing against our future rather than on prudent spending decisions within the limits of current revenues, and
WHEREAS, lasting resolution of this nation’s budget deficit can be achieved only by addressing the spending habits of our Federal Government, not by increasing the tax burden under which our citizens already labor.”

First, the good news: Florida’s economic woes have hit bottom, the legislature’s chief economist Amy Baker told the Senate yesterday.

Now, the bad news: The state’s unemployment rate is expected to climb to 12 percent as early as Friday when the most recent job numbers are released, Baker said.

And more bad news for lawmakers as they struggle to craft a budget with up to $3.3 billion – about 4 percent – less than they had for this year’s $66.5 billion spending plan.

Although the national recession is over, Florida’s not going to show an economic recovery for at least another year, Baker and University of Florida economist David Denslow told the Ways and Means Committee, which about 30 of the 40-member chamber attended after Senate President Jeff Atwater asked them to sit in.

“We think we’ve hit bottom and we’re going to hover around the bottom for a wile before we start picking up,” Baker said.

The economy will start picking up next spring, she said, but even with normal growth rates, the recovery is coming off a very low base level so the turn-around will be very slow.

It will be three years “before you’re going to be out of the hole on a lot of measures,” Baker said.

Read the story here.

On the other side of the fourth floor rotunda, House Democrats wrote a letter to GOP leaders saying they don’t like their approach in determining what the state’s critical needs are.

They want to look not only at expenditures but at revenues as well. (Translation: higher taxes?)

But that’s not likely to happen on the Senate side.

Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, told his members yesterday he “won’t extract another dollar” from Floridians.