With more than 1 million Floridians out of work, Florida taxpayers are footing the bill for the salaries for out-of-state workers.

This time, it’s Florida Lottery vendor GTECH’s workers in Texas that are the beneficiaries. GTECH’s call center is located in Austin and that’s where calls regarding the Lottery’s on-line tickets and other products are answered.

And lawmakers don’t even know how many jobs are at stake in Texas because the private contractors hired by the state to handle call lines won’t give up their number of employees or where they’re located, according to legislative analyst Emily Leventhal.

Sen. Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat who sits on the committee, asked Leventhal how many of the 16 private call centers were located outside Florida.

Only GTECH’s, she told him.

“And do you know how many people the state of Florida is paying to work in Austin, Texas?” Deutch asked.

“I do not,” Leventhal replied.

“I think that would be worthwhile information for this committee,” Deutch said.

An incensed Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander agreed.

“If they take the cash or check they can tell us what we want to know,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Last year, the Department of Children and Families got in hot water because the agency’s food stamp contractor, JP Morgan Chase, routed questions about food stamp services to a call center based in India. The vendor stopped sending the calls overseas and instead sent them to Ohio and Illinois.

The head of the state’s tourism agency also earned the wrath of lawmakers last year when lawmakers found out that calls to Visit Florida were being answered in Missouri. The agency later canceled the contract.

Tea party activists march in West Palm Beach's July 4th parade. Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post

Florida Republican leaders bristled at the suggestion Wednesday from Palm Beach County schools Superintendent Art Johnson that the conservative, anti-spending tea party movement could force the district to cut 1,600 jobs in 2011-12.

“If the common-sense approach of reducing government spending and cutting taxes makes me part of the tea party movement, then pass me some sugar,” House Republican Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton said.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander said his spending decisions will be driven by the state’s 11.8 percent unemployment rate, not by a particular political message.

But in a page from the “All Politics is Local” chapter of Florida government, the Republican leader has a tea party activist living next door to his Lake Wales home. Alexander said he’s attended two of his neighbor’s meetings.

“He walks my dog from time to time and I have to go over and say hello to everybody,” Alexander said. “They’re very reasonable people. They are concerned about the course of the country. I welcome everybody’s involvement in the discussion of how we move the state forward.”

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St. Lucie County Property Appraiser Jeff Furst wants to help out frustrated Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander who’s been trying to get a handle on how many buildings the state owns and where they are.

Furst told Alexander’s Ways and Means Committee this morning that he and each of the state’s 67 property appraisers already have a list of state-owned properties that they submit to the state Department of Revenue every year.

There are more than 800 state-owned properties worth at least $400 million in St. Lucie County, Furst told the committee. And that doesn’t include a parcel worth $14 million the state has owned for more than 20 years but never bothered to take title of.

The city of Ft. Pierce donated the land for the building to the state, Furst said. He was surprised to learn that it wasn’t included on the list of state-owned properties and discovered that state officials never took ownership of the property although the warranty deed and other documents were sent to them in 1988.

Alexander, a Lake Wales Republican whose district includes part of St. Lucie County, ordered Department of Management Services Secretary Linda South in January to come up with an inventory of the state’s real property. She hasn’t been able to do that yet. Instead, she wants to hire a private company to help find the missing buildings and create a database of them.

Property appraisers could create the database within 90 days, Furst said.

“Nobody will need anything other than some good cooperation and a state plan,” Furst said.

Management Services officials grabbed Furst after he testified and immediately set up a meeting with him to see what he could do to help them with their task, which Alexander put into state law.

The state is fully aware that it “owns” the building, which still shows up on the tax rolls as belonging to the city of Ft. Pierce. The building is fully occupied by state workers, DMS Chief of Staff Ken Granger said, and the state officials know they “own” it.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander is setting up a new office to help him figure out if the state is spending money wisely.
Alexander and his House counterparts have grappled with the state’s plummeting revenues and are facing a $2.7 billion projected spending gap in next year’s budget.

Alexander said he’s willing to pay an expert up to $170,000 a year to provide a detailed analysis of state spending

“I’m going up against lobbyists who can pay a whole lot more than that,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales. “I need people who can really get into what’s going on here.”

Alexander said he doesn’t have anyone in mind for the job but is hoping to get someone who with expertise in the state’s annual $18 billion spending on Medicaid.

Asked when he plans to bring the new hire on board, Alexander quipped: “Yesterday. I need help tomorrow.”

The “Senate Budget Office” will be “responsible for providing independent analyses of state government agency operations, including overlapping agency jurisdictions and functions, the financial structure of agencies, sources and uses of revenues, expenditure patterns and whether programmatic performance measures exist and are being met,” Senate President Jeff Atwater’s office said in a press release announcing the new office today.

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Senate Ways and Means Committee staff director Cynthia Kelly resigned from her post today.

Kelly leaves her boss Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander without his right-hand-woman as he struggles to chop $2.8 billion from this year’s budget.

Kelly, who’s spent 20 years working for the state, is quitting to spend more time with her family, according to an e-mail distributed within the Senate. She’ll stay on for up to a month.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, had this to say about Kelly. (more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist again succumbed to pressure from Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander regarding no-bid contracts inked by the governor’s executive agency staff.

Crist said yesterday he would re-open a $20 million contract to market Florida citrus.

Florida Citrus Commission staff recently recommended re-upping the contract with a Texas-based corporation without a public hearing or taking new offers despite a significant drop in citrus sales since the agency took over the contract.

“I think every contract ought to be open bid. Every time,” Crist said when asked whether he would re-open bids on the advertising contract.

When asked if he would order the commission to do so, he replied: “I think I just did.”

The orange juice struggle is the latest in what is becoming an increasingly sour relationship between Alexander, an heir to Ben Hill Griffin’s citrus fortune, and Crist.

Crist vetoed a bill Alexander sponsored that would have given lawmakers more control over high-dollar contracts with private vendors.

Since then, the Lake Wales Republican has publicly asked Crist to re-open bids on two multi-million dollar contracts that would have been automatically renewed had he not intervened.

Last week, Alexander asked Crist to re-bid a $44 million contract with Convergys for the troubled PeopleFirst human resources system.

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Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander launched another assault on multi-million dollar no-bid contracts issued and approved by Gov. Charlie Crist’s agencies, this time objecting to an agreement with a Texas corporation to advertise the state’s citrus industry.

Alexander’s contract watchdog radar seems to have kicked into overdrive since Crist vetoed a bill he sponsored that would have given the legislature more oversight of high-dollar contracts with private vendors.

Alexander, a citrus baron himself, wrote Crist a letter asking for a re-bid on the $20 million contract with The Richards Group, based in Dallas, Tex., that the Department of Citrus was ready to renew for three years without any public oversight.

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Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker, left, and Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami, talk during House session Tuesday.(AP Photo/Phil Coale)

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