Lawmakers approved a $69.7 billion spending plan and quietly ended the 2011 legislative session at 3:35 a.m. without any pomp and circumstance.

Instead, the 60-day session ended with Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon publicly rebuking each other over with Haridopolos accusing Cannon of playing “silly games” and Cannon claiming to “take the high road” by rejecting a controversial Senate tax break.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, called his members back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up a tax-break proposal that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Haridopolos apologized for asking them to return about an hour after he sent them home and instructed them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

Shortly before Haridopolos recalled the Senate, Cannon gaveled down the House without passing two claims bills that were Haridopolos priorities. Eric Brody was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon was slated to get less than $1 million after being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades for a crime he didn’t commit.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
Gov. Rick Scott left the building around midnight as the legislative session devolved into chaos. Scott had been scheduled to participate in the ceremonial white hanky drop but instead went home to bed because he had a busy schedule this weekend, his spokesman Brian Burgess said.

The House approved the budget shortly before 2 a.m., about two-and-a-half hours after the Senate and following some very hard feelings between the two chambers.

The House then took up the disputed tax break bill (CS/SB 7203).

But the House remained angered by the Senate’s killing a pair of professional deregulation bills earlier in the night — with House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, saying that move broke an agreement between the two chambers.

“In light of the Senate’s inability to meet that obligation, I’ve decided that our chamber would take the high road…and send it all to the Senate tonight, and leave no ambiguity,” Cannon said.

The House took up the tax-break bill, voted to remove the Jacksonville track provision, repackaged the measure as HB 143 and sent it back to the Senate. With the budget behind them, and the tax-break package structured to their liking, Cannon and House members adjourned at 2:07 a.m., Saturday.

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Senate President Mike Haridopolos apologized to his members shortly before the 2011 legislative session fizzled to an end in the wee hours of the morning Saturday.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, brought the chamber back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up and pass a tax-break measure that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Instead of the usual fanfare celebrating the end of the 60-day session, the 36 senators who showed returned to the Capitol after Haridopolos sent them home two hours before were somber.

Haridopolos apologized for calling them back so quickly after he had told them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

The big losers of the session were two Floridians whose claims bills the House refused to pass before Speaker Dean Cannon adjourned for the year: Eric Brody, who was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon, a wrongfully convicted Brevard County man who would have received less than $1 million for nearly 30 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. The claims bills for the two men were priorities of Haridopolos.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.

The Senate sine die’d at 3:35 a.m. The 2011 legislative session is officially over.

As the Senate began debating the budget in anticipation of a vote late this evening, President Mike Haridopolos dropped into the press gallery to chat with reporters at the close of the 60-day legislative session.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, boasted that he’s achieved the goals he set out at the onset of the 60-day legislative session: a balanced budget, no new taxes, Medicaid reform, and passing “Smart Cap,” the proposed constitutional amendment limiting how much government can spend he’s championed for 11 years.

The result is “hopefully that people will be able to see Florida as a business-friendly state,” he said. “That was my goal and I’m happy to report on the final day of session we met those goals.”

But cutting $3.6 billion from the state budget without raising taxes and creating sweeping new policies on Medicaid, education and pensions wasn’t easy, Haridopolos said, .

“This was a very difficult year, a very trying year in many cases,” he said.

The biggest – if not only – issue left undone is immigration, Haridopolos said. The Senate passed its measure but House Speaker Dean Cannon said the proposal is dead because it doesn’t go far enough for the super-majority of his 120 members needed to take it up.

Haridopolos said he hoped the House would consider what he called solid, common-sense legislation that would deport criminals after their sentences are served and would have required anyone receiving state or federal benefits be a legal resident of the state.

“Too often politicians operate through bumper stickers,” Haridopolos said. “This is what the legislative process is about…
It’s not just a public opinion poll that says do this. We’ll come back next year with more information.”

Asked how much influence Gov. Rick Scott – who Senate budget chief JD Alexander said earlier should take a “victory lap” – had on the session, Haridopolos said: “He was a rock” because “you knew he was not going to raise taxes” and would veto any measures that did.

The Senate president, also running for U.S. Senate in the GOP primary, took a couple of campaign-related questions as well.

Democrats are using a coloring book based on the single-copy book Haridopolos wrote and was paid more than $150K for as a fundraising tool on the last day of session.

Haridopolos shrugged it off and even signed a copy for Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo.

“Welcome to the NFL. I guess I’m in the NFL now and I’m playing on the field. Look, it says something if they’re constantly attacking me. So I must be doing something they don’t like if they spend so much time and attention on me,” Haridopolos said.

Then came a little bashing of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

“I think the contrast is pretty darn clear between me and Bill Nelson. Bill Nelson’s been in office since I was two years old.
And other than getting a ride on the shuttle, name me something major in this building, in Washington, D.C., that he has accomplished since I was two years old,” the 41-year-old said. “I like to think I get things done. He’s a person who holds a press conference….a press conference is not legislation.”

With less than 12 hours to go, lawmakers are now close to sealing a deal further cracking down on pill mills.

The final deal will include a ban on doctors dispensing powerful narcotics with no exemption for workers’ compensation physicians, no cap on the amount of doses pharmacies can dispense – a major sticking point for Sen. Mike Fasano, shepherding the bill in the Senate. It does include Attorney General Pam Bondi’s proposed language stiffening penalties against rogue pain management clinics and doctors. It will also ban pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the private foundation that pays for the state’s prescription drug database.

Limiting the amount of highly addictive pain drugs that get on the street has become a priority of Gov. Rick Scott, who testified before Congress on the issue last month touting his plan to track the drugs from the wholesaler to the pharmacy to the doctor. Scott had to give up on capping the dosage amounts after cancer hospitals and hospices complained the limits would keep them from being able to treat patients in chronic pain.

Procedurally, the Senate will take up the House’s bill (HB 7095), put the compromise language on it, and send it back to the House for a final vote before 10:16 p.m. That’s the earliest lawmakers can vote on the budget, the only thing they’re constitutionally required to do during the 60-day legislative session, and they are expected to call it quits shortly after. Gov. Rick Scott plans to join House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos for the traditional sine die hankie drop.

UPDATE: Rep. William Snyder insisted late Wednesday night the Senate plan is a no-go in the House. “I think it’s thoroughly impossible,” Snyder said. Even if he had the two-thirds votes to take up the measure – which he said he does not – he likely wouldn’t because it’s nowhere near the comprehensive change he supports.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos urged the Florida House to take up and pass his chamber’s immigration proposal despite House GOP leaders’ insistence that the issue is off the table.

“This is an issue we’ve talked about for almost a decade. I would trust the House to take up that bill,” the Merritt Island Republican who is running for U.S. Senate told reporters late this evening. “I think it’s the right thing to do…I’d like to see them do it. These are common-sense items I think everybody would agree with.”

The Senate plan is too weak for conservative Republicans in the House and too strident for Democrats to get the two-thirds votes needed to consider the measure, according to Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, the House plan’s sponsor.

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Hundreds of immigrants continued their protests inside the Capitol on Monday as Senate GOP leaders craft reforms that would ease up on the House’s penalties against businesses that don’t use the E-verify system.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos said this afternoon that the Senate will take up and vote on its bill (SB 2040) tomorrow.

Before and after the Senate’s lunch break, immigrants – many of them children – and knelt in prayer outside the hallway leading into the back entrance to the chamber.

During the recess, they swarmed senators’ offices – including Palm Beach County’s Lizbeth Benacquisto’s – pleading with them to abandon their effots.

Senate budget chief JD Alexander, in charge of the chamber’s immigration package, has yet to release his proposal. During the lunch break, U.S. Sugar – one of the many agricultural businesses opposed to the reforms – lobbyist Robert Coker was inside Alexander’s office as immigrants lined the walls outside.

Alexander’s proposal is likely to include a modification of the House’s plan that would require businesses to use E-verify when hiring new employees and punishing those who do not use the federal system by yanking their licenses to do business in Florida. His plan include a fine for businesses that don’t comply with E-verify and take out the licensing provision, said Senate GOP leaders and business lobbyists working on the deal.

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The Florida Senate may “the most conservative Senate ever,” as President Mike Haridopolos boasted at the onset of the legislative session.

But it’s apparently not conservative enough to pass House Speaker Dean Cannon’s sweeping overhaul of the Supreme Court that would, among other things, split the court in two.

As the clock winds down until lawmakers sine die on Friday, the Senate plan today is to remove at least that part of the proposed constitutional amendment, keep the provision allowing the legislature to have control over the court’s rules and send it back to the House for another vote.

“Our members have felt pretty strongly about splitting up the Supreme Court,” Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said. “What you’re going to see is an option sent back to the House.”

Senate GOP leaders (who have a 28-12 majority) won’t say out loud that they don’t have the 24 votes needed to pass the proposed constitutional amendment.

But Gardiner, whose job is to count votes and corral the GOP caucus, conceded the speaker’s priority measure wouldn’t pass as is.

“You never count out votes until you sine die but I do think there’s a strong sense amongst our members about the Supreme Court piece,” Gardiner said.

Senate budget chief JD Alexander, a citrus farmer who’s now shepherding a developing immigration reform package, expressed his reservations about the push to deport illegal immigrants, many of whom have lived in the state for decades picking fruit and vegetables for his colleagues.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said he’s concerned about the fallout from the federal E-Verify program to check on potential employees, something Gov. Rick Scott has already initiated for state government workers and a component tea party activists are pushing lawmakers to pass.

“My personal struggle with E-Verify is that many of these folks have been here for decades for good or for bad,” he said.

In “a perfect world” the federal government would control the borders but instead has given tacit permission for illegal workers to remain in the country, Alexander said.

“It seems challenging to suddenly ask them to not be able to be here. I personally believe we need a federal guest program to allow for some sort of normalization of these folks status where they can be protected by our laws without fear of deportation,” he said. “Because some of these things have been going on for so long, I’m personally troubled by the broad net that could be cast.”

Alexander said he’s having a hard time balancing his duties as budget chief and agricultural baron as he tries to get his blueberry crop harvested.

“I’m probably short about 100 people to get my blueberries picked,” he said, adding that he and other blueberry farmers can find less than half the workers they need to get their crops in.

“For all the unemployment there just aren’t folks who want to pick blueberries,” he said.

The Senate is slated to take up its immigration package on Monday. Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, had pledged that each bill would pass through at least three committees before being sent to the floor for a vote. But he reversed himself on the contentious immigration measure (SB 2040), which was heard in a single committee. Haridopolos also took the bill away from its sponsor, Sen. Anitere Flores, and gave it to Alexander this week. Flores, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, refused to go along with the Arizona-style bill proposed by the House, sponsored by William Snyder, R-Stuart.

Hundreds of immigrants, including undocumented workers, and children whose parents have been deported have swarmed the Capitol over the past several weeks demanding that lawmakers abandon the immigration package.

Dog tracks would no longer have to run dog races but could continue to operate the more lucrative card rooms under a measure passed by the Senate and awaiting secondary House approval.

Sen. Maria Sachs, the bill sponsor, said the bill is needed so the state can stop bailing out the dying greyhound racing industry while keeping the tracks alive.

Palm Beach Kennel Club owners support the measure in part because fewer races will make their dog races more valuable when broadcast over simulcast at other tracks. Only three of the state’s existing 16 dog tracks, including PBKC, are expected to continue to keep running the dogs if the bill becomes law.

The measure would also benefit PBKC because it is one of the seven tracks that now purchase tax credits from other tracks who are eligible for the tax breaks but don’t generate enough revenue to use them.

Critics of the measure include the dog owners and breeders, who claim that doing away with the races will put thousands of workers out of a job.

But Sachs, D-Delray Beach, said the state would no longer have to subsidize “a business model that’s no longer profitable” through tax breaks as public interest in the races – and revenues from them – decline. Revenues generated for the state from dog racing have plummeted by more than half over the past 10 years, from about $40 million in 2000 to about $5.2 million last year.

The measure created a stir on the floor as some Republicans tried to amend the bill to accommodate the state’s thoroghbred industry.
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The Florida Senate scrubbed a rare Saturday meeting scheduled to take up a Medicaid overhaul and possibly immigration reform.

Before breaking for lunch after the morning floor session, Senate President Mike Haridopolos said told his members that he is “going to give you a little bit of a break before you come back to work on Monday.”

That puts off until at least Monday the Senate’s discussion of immigration reform as Senate budget chief JD Alexander grapples with crafting a proposal he can sell to a chamber divided on the issue, let alone to the Florida House that wants an Arizona-style package. Yesterday, Haridpolos, R-Merritt Island, assured reporters that the Senate would vote on the issue before the session ends on May 6.

Sen. Anitere Flores, the Cuban-American Republican from Miami initially shepherding the Senate’s immigration plan until Haridopolos gave it to Alexander this week, summed up the difficulty.

“This is a severely complicated, complex issue where there are hundreds of different people that have hundreds of different opinions,” she said. “There are employment provisions. There are law enforcement provisions. There are business owner provisions. And there are just individual human emotions. There are political considerations. All those considerations are all there. To try and make that into a bill that you can get a majority of votes on in the House and the Senate is a problem.”

Immigrants, many of them undocumented, children of parents who have been deported, students in the country illegally and their advocates have thronged the Capitol pleading with lawmakers to abandon immigration reform as the clock winds down on the legislative session.

As budget talks on health and human services appropriations stalled, the Senate is moving forward with its Medicaid overhaul. Senate GOP leaders have not scheduled the immigration bill for Saturday, although only two hours of notice are required to add it to the agenda.

The Senate will take up its proposal (SB 1972) on Saturday along with dozens of local bills and Senate confirmations of Gov. Rick Scott’s appointees. But no word yet on whether the chamber will address immigration reform, still in flux as Senate Budget Chief J.D. Alexander, now shepherding the bill (SB 2040), weighs his options.

The House and Senate are both looking to put most of the state’s 2.9 million Medicaid patients into HMO-style plans. But differences abound between the two approaches. The Senate would divide the state into 19 regions, based on state court circuits; the House proposes eight.

The chambers are far apart on immigration reform as well. The House’s Arizona-style plan is on hold as the Senate considers a more moderate approach.
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The Florida Senate will vote on its pill mill bill tomorrow and remove the $1.75 million for the state’s drug database Senate President Mike Haridopolos said was mistakenly included in the package.

The chamber spent a lengthy session repeatedly rebuking Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff’s efforts to require law enforcement officials to get search warrants before they can access the database before hurriedly approving an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Fasano dealing with “funding for the prescription drug monitoring program.”

Gov. Rick Scott and House Speaker Dean Cannon, who have both reversed their positions on scrapping the prescription drug database, have insisted that no taxpayer funds be used to pay for the program, as current law prohibits.

“First and foremost, I found out after the fact today that that was done. I did not anticipate that. I expect that to be removed tomorrow on third reading,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters later in the day. Haridopolos has been an ardent proponent of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program and has even said he believes the state should foot the bill for it.

“There’s been no bigger proponent of making sure we have this legislation done in the right fashion,” Haridopolos said. “I was told after we got off the floor. As soon as I was made aware of it, I let the governor and the Speaker know that that was an area that we were going to make adjustments on. I think a mistake was made today. When you make a mistake, you fix the mistake.”

With or without the money, the House and Senate plans remain far apart as the clock winds down on the legislative session.

The House plan restricts doctors ability to dispense narcotics, creates stricter permitting requirements for pharmacies and limits the amount of doses of highly addictive pain medications pharmacies can dispense. The Senate proposal instead strengthens penalties against pill mills and rogue doctors .

The Senate plans to take up the House’s measure (HB 7095) tomorrow, strip it out, put its bill on it and send it back to the House.

The Florida Senate will be in session on Saturday, Senate President Mike Haridopolos said.

Haridopolos has ordered the rare weekend session to try to finish up work before the scheduled end of the legislative session next Friday.

“We want to give everyone the opportunity on a bill to have their voice heard. I think that’s worked out very well for us. It’s reduced a lot of the tension,” said Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island.

Haridopolos, who is running for U.S. Senate, said that lawmakers would be in town anyway as they negotiate differences between the two chambers’ budgets and other priority bills.

“It just makes sense that we would have a Saturday session and make the best use our time since we’re all going to be here anyway,” he said.

Adding to the delay is a postponement to a Senate Budget Committee meeting where an immigration package hangs in the balance as GOP leaders from the House and Senate try to work out a deal with Gov. Rick Scott before taking a floor vote.

That meeting won’t meet today, Haridopolos said, but could meet tomorrow, making it possible the Senate could take up its immigration proposal on Saturday.

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.

Clad in black caps and gowns, a handful of college students are sitting it out in Senate President Mike Haridopolos’ waiting room trying to get him to promise to oppose immigration reform.

They may have a long wait, however.

Haridopolos’ spokesman David Bishop said the president is too busy during the last few days of the legislative session to meet again with the immigrants and their advocates. Yesterday, Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, made an impromptu visit with dozens of Palm Beach County immigrants, including children, who pleaded with him to publicly denounce the House and Senate plans to crack down on illegal immigration.

The student sit-in is part of an all-out push to convince lawmakers to drop immigration reform before the session ends on May 6.

St. Thomas University student Felipe Matos, an undocumented immigrant from Brazil and one of the leaders of the group, said he and his cohorts would stay as long as the building was open.

“We’re going to stay seated. We’re not here to confront anyone,” Matos said as Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Donald Severance cleared the room of those sitting on the floor.

Matos is trying to get Haridopolos to sign a pledge to oppose HB 7089 and SB 2040. Both bills are currently stalled as lawmakers await Gov. Rick Scott’s input on the measures. Scott has said he wants to give law enforcement officers the ability to ask for proof of immigration but has not elaborated on how far he thinks the law should go. Scott is expected to reveal more about his plans today.

Haridopolos, who removed the doors to his inner office after assuming the helm of the Senate as a symbol of his openness, won’t sign the pledge, Bishop said.

“This is a symbol that he’s against us,” said Matos.

National immigrant advocates issued a press release calling for a boycott of Florida unless the bills are abandoned, Matos said.

“We want to make sure Florida doesn’t get seen as anti-Latino, anti-employment. This is a job killer,” he said.

Stalled budget talks between the two chambers aren’t much of a concern to Senate President Mike Haridopolos, who showed up at the Senate Budget Committee this afternoon to speak in favor of a joint resolution telling Congress to balance the federal budget.

“The good news is that we are in our side-by-side spending the same amount of money and we’re not going to raise taxes or fees,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said. “We’re going to be here every day working hard…We’re going to work this out.”

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander and his House counterpart Denise Grimsley haven’t agreed on the allocations for the major areas of the state spending plan. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said he made an offer to the House on Thursday evening but hasn’t heard back yet with just two weeks left in the 2011 legislative session.

Haridopolos said he’s not worried about finishing up on time as Alexander and his cohorts carve nearly $4 billion from last year’s budget – with no stimulus funds to help soften the cuts.

“We’ve never seen reductions like this. This is the real deal,” he said.

Haridopolos, who’s running in the U.S. Senate GOP primary, said he’s “in no rush” to hit the campaign trail and said he intends to keep up the hectic pace established since the session began.

“I’m dedicated that however long it takes we will be here, working on the weekends, late into the nights. I’m a college teacher…I’m used to pulling all-nighters. We might have to do it again here to make sure we finish. But I’m here. The Senate will be here. We’re ready to negotiate and we are negotiating,” he said.

A rewrite of the House’s plan to shut down pill mills brings the chamber closer to the Senate, bringing a standoff between GOP legislative leaders closer to resolution.

The House’s latest plan, which will be voted on by the budget committee this morning, keeps the current pill mill regulations, maintains the prescription drug database House Speaker Dean Cannon and Gov. Rick Scott previously wanted to scrap, and limits the amount of narcotic prescription doses pharmacies can dispense. Senate President Mike Haridopolos has refused to back down from his support for the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, now underway after two years in limbo.

The strike-all amendment on the bill (HB 7095), which will be introduced this morning, also prohibits doctors from dispensing all Schedule II and III medications. Those include highly addictive oxycodone and hydrocodone.

And the proposal also requires all doctors and health care practitioners except those treating chronic, non-cancer patients to register with the state before they can prescribe controlled substances. The Senate’s plan does not include the limitations on doctors.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who supports the House revision, is expected to testify before the committee at 10:30.

The state’s long-awaited prescription drug database is back on track after state health officials signed a final order today in a bid dispute keeping the program in limbo for months.

The Department of Health signed the order moving forward with the contract with Health Information Design Inc., the Alabama-based company that twice won administrative challenges, although Gov. Rick Scott – who scrapped the database in his budget proposal – remains dubious about it.

“The concerns he’s voiced still remain. He’s concerned about patient privacy and wants to make sure that funding this thing never ends up on the backs of taxpayers. He still doesn’t think it’s the silver bullet that so many proponents claim,” Scott spokesman Brian Hughes said.

Those proponents include law enforcement officials from the state’s top cop, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to Palm Beach County state attorney Michael McAuliffe, and Senate President Mike Haridopolos.

“Stopping pill mills has been my top priority since I took office, and the prescription drug monitoring program that the Department of Health will now be implementing is an important tool in combating this crisis,” Bondi said in a statement. “As part of a criminal investigation, the program will enable law enforcement to act more quickly in identifying and arresting pill mill operators.”

Haridopolos has been in a stand-off over the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program with House Speaker Dean Cannon, who wants to repeal the system lawmakers created two years ago but has yet to be implemented. Haridopolos said he not only wants it up and running, he’s willing to have the state pay for it although state law prohibits taxpayer money from being used to create or operate the database.

“The database will provide ‘shock and awe’ in Florida’s efforts to end the criminal abuse of legal prescription drugs,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said in a press release. “In addition to the Senate’s commitment to the database, pending legislation will strengthen the prescription drug monitoring program and provide even stronger privacy protections for individual Floridians.”

The House scrapped oversight of more than a dozen professions, many of which lawmakers began regulating to curtail scam artists in fields like dance studios, so-called charities and auto repair shops.

Senate GOP leaders, who didn’t have a sweeping deregulation plan of their own, agreed to negotiate with their counterparts on the issue.

But it’s unlikely they’ll sign off on deregulating the broad swath of professions the House approved in a party-line vote yesterday.

“If it’s important to the House we want to give it every consideration but we want to be very sensitive to particular areas where there have been the scammers,” Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters today.

Movers and auctioneers are among the professions Haridopolos, a candidate for U.S. Senate, said he’s leery about relinquishing oversight.

“And again, there is a role for government. Let’s not forget about that. We’re not libertarians. We’re Republicans. And we recognize the role for government and we’re going to try to strike that balance,” said Haridopolos, adding that “there’s a difference between regulation and red tape.”

Haridopolos said it’s likely the House and Senate will reach common ground but “some of the areas where we’ve had the historic scam opportunities for bad folks, we’re going to make sure those doors continue to stay shut or at least more in the sunshine.”

Gov. Rick Scott, who’s pushed deregulation of some businesses since taking office in January, said he wants to do away with government oversight that consumers don’t use. (more…)

SunPass users can breathe a sigh of relief. Senate President Mike Haridopolos said lawmakers won’t take away the discounts on toll roads, reversing what the Senate did yesterday.

“The discount stays. Period,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters during his weekly Q-and-A this morning.

The Senate had scrapped the SunPass discounts, which vary on different toll roads, as part of its plan to merge some of the state’s turnpike authorities.

Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa, tried to amend the bill to keep the discounts intact but Haridopolos ruled on a voice vote that Norman’s amendment lacked the two-thirds majority to pass.

Critics said that doing away with the discounts could be considered a tax increase, a potential no-no for conservative Republicans, including U.S. Senate candidates like Haridopolos.

“That is something where there is a legitimate debate going on. Is that a discount or not? How will that be described?” Haridopolos.

Haridopolos said he told Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, who backed the proposal because it would add back about $100 million to the transportation budget that could be bonded to create up to $1 billion in road projects, it’s off the table.

Haridopolos changed his mind within 12 hours of the vote yesterday after talking with other senators and “after taking my opinion,” he said.

“As I got more engaged I thought the discount’s a good idea. I think it encourages people to purchase the pass, to use the pass and that helps with traffic flow across the state,” Haridopolos said.

Haridopolos said the debate could make SunPass buyers more aware that they get the discount and the ability to fly through toll plazas.

“I’ve let it be known that we will not be adjusting those. The discounts will stay in place. We think that especially as you commute across the state of Florida the best thing to do is to keep those discounts in place,” he said.