Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, addressed a crowd of about 600 at a “We the People” rally Thursday afternoon on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee. The rally was one of thousands that took place across the country on tax day.

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A proposed statewide referendum that wouldn’t really do anything to balance any budget but would send a statement to Congress generated a lot of heat in the House Rules committee this morning.

“Basically House memorials are meaningless. They’re like toilet paper,” House Democratic leader Ron Saunders said of the proposal.

The “nonbinding statewide advisory referendum,” pushed by GOP leaders including Senate President Jeff Atwater and already passed by the Senate, would ask voters the following question:

In order to stop the uncontrolled growth of our national debt and prevent excessive borrowing by the Federal Government, which threatens jobs, robs America and our children of their opportunity for success, and threatens our national security, should the United States Constitution be amended to require a balanced federal budget without raising taxes?

“This sends a message today that federal spending is out of control and we need to have a balance,” House budget chief David Rivera, R-Miami, told the Rules Committee this morning.

But Saunders and other Dems objected to the strongly-worded proposal as election-year “propaganda,” “incendiary” and “hypocritical” because lawmakers raised millions of dollars in drivers “fees” and cigarette taxes to balance the budget last year.

“The language here is unnecessary and just an opportunity to demagogue,” said Saunders, D-Key West, who offered an amendment changing the language to “Should the U.S. Constitution be amended to require a balanced federal budget?”

His amendment failed, and the referendum passed along partisan lines.

UPDATE: Folks connected to the ad say its running in the West Palm Beach and Tallahassee markets.

The ad is from No Tallahassee Takeover Inc., a group registered to teachers union attorney Ron Meyer. It’s in response to a merit-pay plan approved by Jeff Atwater‘s chamber last week — the same plan that forced House Speaker Larry Cretul’s office to add extra phone lines to handle all the calls coming in from irate teachers.

We posted video from incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon earlier today.

We’re still waiting to talk with Senate President Jeff Atwater, whose opposition to offshore drilling has his fellow Republicans lawmakers making plans for 2011. But in the House, incoming Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, says he hopes President Obama’s announcement today will jar something loose in the other chamber.

Cannon introduced a measure last year that would have allowed drilling up to three miles of the coast. His bill this year could be introduced as soon as next week. “And then we’ll see how our partners in the Senate are doing and make a decision from there,” Cannon said.

Democratic state CFO Alex Sink, who hopes to be governor next year, said 125 miles would be fine, but… “I have long been opposed to the near-beach drilling proposal currently in the Florida legislature that puts our tourism economy at risk,” she said in a statement.

Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against Democrat-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration has sparked a political feud not only in the nation’s Capitol but in the state’s as well.

Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson took offense at Senate President Jeff Atwater’s congratulatory press release lauding McCollum’s legal disparaging of the president’s health care reform.

The president’s office issued an unusually partisan release entitled “Florida Senate Leaders Support AG McCollum’s Legal Challenge to Unprecedented and Unconstitutional Government Health Care Scheme.”

The GOP leaders are “like little boys who are playing marbles and the ones who lost went home,” Lawson, D-Tallahassee said.

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With a slew of lawmakers, including Senate President Jeff Atwater, running for higher office this year, Senate Rules Chairman Alex Villalobos delivered a stern warning to members about using staff for campaign purposes.

Villalobos, who would have been in Atwater’s presidential shoes were it not for a coup staged by Atwater and his backers more than two years ago, sent a memo to the Senate’s 40 members outlining what their aides can – and mostly cannot – while on the clock.

Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is leaving office early to run statewide for chief financial officer. Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, forced out because of term limits, is running for Congress, along with Democratic state Sens. Frederica Wilson of Miami, Charlie Justice of St. Petersburg and Palm Beach County’s own Ted Deutch of Boca Raton. Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, is also expected to run for Congress.

And Sens. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres and Dan Gelber of Miami Beach are running statewide in a Democratic primary for attorney general.

Senate staff can’t use annual leave or comp time to work on campaigns, nor can they work on a campaign during their lunch hour, Villalobos wrote.

They can volunteer after hours, that means outside the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

But aides can’t take a paying job with a campaign unless they get permission from Atwater and take leave-without-pay first.

“A Senator who uses staff paid by the Senate to work on his or her campaign while ‘on duty’ may be liable for theft,” Villalobos wrote. If the employee earned more than $5,000 or more as a state worker, the crime is a felony.

And the staffer who works on the campaign could also be liable for theft.

Oh, and no using state equipment like telephones or computers for campaign stuff. That’s a misdemeanor.

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.

With Florida suffering from its highest unemployment in three decades, pumping life into the state’s dismal job market is at the top of almost every lawmaker’s to-do list this year.

“It’s been an economic tsunami,” Gov. Charlie Crist said of the collapsing housing market and spiraling unemployment that has slashed Florida’s tax collections by 17 percent since he took office three years ago.

Crist, like his fellow Republicans in charge of the state Senate and House, will largely look to tax cuts and incentives to spark job creation as the legislature begins its annual spring session Tuesday day.

Story here.

Senate President Jeff Atwater said he is more than willing to hand over his Republican Party of Florida-issued American Express credit card statements but that the party’s new chairman, Sen. John Thrasher, won’t do it.

Reporters asked Atwater, who is running statewide for chief financial officer, about the notorious AmEx spending that’s embroiled former House Speaker and U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio and former House Speaker Ray Sansom.

“I asked Chairman Thrasher if he would release the statements of the RPOF credit card that was assigned to me and he said no,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said. “He said he has his internal process going on…I have asked him and he has said no. That is the party’s card. It is not my card. I do not have the statements.”

When pressed about why Atwater did not request the statements, he insisted he could not.

“I’m not the card. That would be RPOF. It’s RPOF’s card. So if RPOF were to request those statements I assume they could get them. At this point, it is the party’s card. And I have asked the chairman would you release any card statements that were associated with me? I have no qualms about what anyone would see on that and he said no, we’re doing our process.”

Atwater had one of the AmEx cards while he was recruiting Republican Senate candidates and raising money for the party in 2007 and 2008. He says he used the card strictly for party-related business.

The cards, issued to an undisclosed group of top elected Republicans and party officials, have been a continuing source of embarrassment as details have emerged of lavish spending by former Chairman Jim Greer (including that $3,600 meal at Brasserie L’Escalier), indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom (his $173,000 in AmEx charges included a family trip to Europe and an $893 Starbucks tab) and former exec director Delmar Johnson ($133,763 in a single month last summer).

Rubio got his turn in the AmEx spotlight last week when someone, presumably a supporter of opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s slumping GOP Senate bid, leaked records of Rubio’s $125,000 in charges from 2006 to 2008. No Greer-scale extravagances emerged, but the records showed a $133.75 visit to Churchill’s Barber Shop in Miami that Rubio said he paid himself.

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.

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.”

Gov. Charlie Crist told lawmakers to keep the state’s Public Counsel J.R. Kelly, who represents consumers in utility cases, on the job.

Kelly’s tenure appears to be in question because the Joint Committee on Public Counsel Oversight last week decided to take applications for his post – on the heels of two high-profile wins for Kelly before the Public Service Commission that saved Florida consumers more than $1 billion.

Kelly, appointed by the legislature in 2007, is a “prepared, competent, and compassionate advocate for consumers,” Crist wrote to the committee in a memo released this evening.

“I want to commend him, not only for the preparation of the two significant cases before the Public Service Commission, but also for the outstanding work he has done over the years,” Crist wrote.

St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler linked Senate President Jeff Atwater with the move to oust Kelly, which Atwater denied when asked what he has against the consumer advocate.

“Nothing! Nothing at all,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said this week. “There wasn’t any evidence to suggest that. Only that there was a committee that was acting in a certain way and so someone had to take the whack for it. And so sure enough, (Troxler) whacked me. I have not said one word to any member of that committee as to any displeasure or disappointment I would have of the sitting public counsel.”

Atwater said the committee could not have reconsidered Kelly for the job in the midst of the controversial rate cases, including Florida Power & Light’s proposed $1.2 billion rate hike. The PSC shot that down instead granted the Juno Beach-based utility a $75.5 million-a-year increase, viewed by many as a victory for Kelly.

“Imagine if that committee had gone in in November and chosen not to re-up him with those rate cases pending. Pow. Rockets. So. What the legislature did was not act. This is too important. This man is out there fighting as public counsel on behalf of the public. So delay your time,” Atwater said.

The committee, led by Sen. Lee Constantine, last week discussed the applications and the process of interviewing candidates, Atwater said.

“So once you start that process then the criticism comes that it’s about Mr. Kelly.…but for heaven’s sakes at some point you need to address the process. We’ve now concluded…that a two-year term for the public counsel is too short a period of time to be able to act independently and not be acting in a way that you might see that around every corner is the reappointment of your job,” Atwater said.

“There’s been no discussion in the senate to oust Mr. Kelly whatsoever. I would venture to guess that Mr. Kelly’s going to remain as public counsel,” he went on.

Atwater said he and others want to prolong the two-year term.

“So merely the discussion of that drew the conclusion from some that people wanted Mr. Kelly out. Certainly not myself. I’ve never expressed that to a soul. And I think Mr. Troxler had an opportunity and he took it. And I have no qualms about that. That’s how the process works. I sit in this seat,” Atwater said.

By MICHAEL C. BENDER and DARA KAM

Here are some notes from an interview today with Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach:

FIRST DAY OF SESSION: With bipartisan support to delay unemployment tax payments, the plan is waive the rules and pass it to Gov. Charlie Crist before the end of the first day. The Senate will also name a Jacksonville roadway for the late Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville and debate reforms to the Public Service Commission.

Atwater choked up when speaking of the road designation for King, a former Senate President who passed away last summer.

“Though that may seem as ceremonial, for those of us who had the honor of serving with him, it’s far more than that. It’s really,” Atwater said haltingly, on the verge of tears. “It’s important.”

Also on the first day, the Senate will take up changes to the Public Service Commission that will put into effect suggestions from a grand jury report left on the shelf since 1992 to improve the integrity of the maligned regulatory agency.

LAST DAY OF SESSION: What Atwater doesn’t want to happen is another breakdown in budget negotiations and be forced to extend session past April 30. With that in mind, Atwater is planning on planning to encourage more transparency, which would require more time for the budget process

“I’d like to test some things this session and recommend them to the next administration of the legislature,” Atwater said. “Last year we did our very best. So now, we’re going to try to see if we can lay that down in writing.”

Atwater didn’t say if he planned to specifically include the allocation process (when the two chambers decide how much money to spend on broad areas, like education, health care and transportation), but it sounded like he would:

“I would want every bit of the process to be discussed in public and the conversation completed in public.”

BUDGET PRIORITIES: There will be winners and losers. Atwater said he’s not interested in across-the-board cuts and anything that can be considered a job generator will be more likely to get money.

“We will have to go deeper in some places to create any initiative for job creation: incentives, venture capital funding, all of that,” Atwater said. “I don’t know where those places will be or the depth of those reductions.”

The economic incentives could include lowering the bar for some programs already in existence or loan programs for small businesses.

Atwater’s “seed” programs won’t include the $10 million economic gardening loan incentive hurriedly pushed through by Gov. Charlie Crist more than a year ago that still hasn’t gotten off the ground.

“I can’t tell you that we would measure any level of success there,” he admitted. “We may try again a loan program. We may try some more in the area of venture capital. But that’s fair criticism. We’ve got to get them out on the street and get them working.”

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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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Gov. Charlie Crist’s proposed $500 million boost to education spending based on an unlikely gambling agreement is unrealistic, Senate President Jeff Atwater said this morning.

“The numbers that I would see at this moment that were included in that release did seem to be a bit optimistic,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said at a meeting of reporters and editors.

Crist’s $22.7 billion public education budget, released Monday, relies on about $433 million from the Seminole Tribe of Florida now sitting in the bank as part of a deal with the state allowing certain types of gambling at the tribe’s casinos.

But the legislature has refused to sign off on a deal inked by Crist and the tribe and early indications show that an agreement this year remains in doubt.

“We worked hard on a gaming compact and we’re not done but to just plug in the numbers that I saw was rather optimistic,” Atwater, who is running for chief financial officer said.

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.

Senate President Jeff Atwater kicked off a meeting detailing the state and the country’s dire economic condition with a stern, no-new-taxes speech as lawmakers prepare another belt-tightening budget.

Atwater contradicted questions about how to close what could be up to a $3 billion spending gap this year, saying the premise was incorrect.

Florida will not spend more than what it brings in, Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said.

“The people of Florida do not have one more dime to send us. So let me be clear. When it comes to constructing a state budget to meet the critical needs of the people in this state, I am not starting in a hole. I am starting from scratch,” said Atwater, who is running for chief financial officer. “We will not extract one more dollar from the small business owner of the state or from any Floridian’s wallet to accomplish the task.”

Atwater delivered his campaign-sounding remarks to a Ways and Means Committee meeting that he asked each of the Senate’s 40 members to attend. Most of them showed up.

“We should not allow the shrieking cacophony of special interests to drown out this simple fact. We have faced up to and made the difficult decisions. What we have not done and what we will not do is leave our sons and our daughters and future generations of Floridians with an intolerable burden of taxes and debt,” Atwater said, drawing the applause of the GOP members in attendance.

The committee is now hearing from university of Florida economist David Denslow and will hear from the legislature’s economist Amy Baker later.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush is supporting Senate President Jeff Atwater in his statewide run for chief financial officer, even though Atwater has a Republican opponent in the primary.

Atwater’s campaign released the announcement Wednesday, along with a link to a YouTube video in which Bush, still influential in GOP politics in Florida, says of Atwater, “It’s his life experience of being a committed family person, of being a successful businessman and also having served in positions of increasing responsibility in the Florida Legislature that have made Jeff uniquely qualified to handle this job.”

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