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Florida Weekly Government Roundup: Budget And Polls Focus On Jobs

If the focus of the 2011 budget was supposed to be jobs, the week that included the signing of the spending plan did seem to include a lot of talk about whether certain people would or could keep their positions.

As Gov. Rick Scott signed a budget that will prompt payroll reductions across state government, but he promised would create private-sector employment opportunities, polls assessed the obstacles the governor faces in convincing Floridians to rehire him in a few years. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seemed more likely to avoid getting a pink slip, at least from Florida’s voters.

At the same time, the Public Service Commission said goodbye to an involuntarily resigning executive director in the latest shake-up to hit the beleaguered agencies that regulates utilities.

SCOTT SIGNS BUDGET, SLASHES AWAY
Perhaps aware that the Legislature’s budget was even more unpopular than he was — it’s approval rating was only at 24 percent, which made Scott’s 29 percent figure look healthy by comparison — Scott signed the spending plan at the Villages but hacked deeply into the blueprint, slicing everything from suspect college construction projects to $12 million in funding for the National Veteran’s Homeless Support Group.

But first, Scott’s administration set off a kerfluffle about who was allowed to witness him wield the budget ax. Familiar with Scott’s rules about who can and can’t be somewhere, reporters on the scene say the governor’s bodyguards asked deputies to remove audience members with anti-Scott signs from the crowd. Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU, promptly put out a statement blasting the move.

“While it may be legal to conduct public business at a private, partisan event, it is inconsistent with the spirit of open and transparent government that Floridians deserve,” Simon said.

Scott’s press secretary later denied to a political website that the governor’s men were involved in having the protestors removed, but a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times stood by his account in a blog post.

Once the crowd was organized to Scott’s — or the sheriff’s office’s — liking, the governor proceeded to compliment lawmakers on their hard work putting the budget together before blasting some of their decisions as examples of “short-sided, frivolous, wasteful spending programs” and using his veto pen to rip a record amount of it to shreds.

Scott called for the money to go to schools instead — a message he repeated Friday on his weekly radio address.
“I am confident that all of us can agree that school funding is far more important than spending those dollars on alligator marketing, or boat racing, or anything else that the Tallahassee insiders seem to think is so important,” Scott said.

Lawmakers, who had spent some of their time taking shots at Scott’s education program before trying to shovel some more money into schools, were shocked.
“The Governor communicated numerous priorities during session, and we did our best to accommodate him,” sniped House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park. “It would have been helpful if the Governor had shared this new found emphasis with us before the budget was finalized.”

Meanwhile, state agencies started to outline job cuts as a result of the budget. The Department of Juvenile Justice sliced 1,200 jobs from its payroll — 500 of which are vacant — and the Department of Children and Families said it will shed 500 workers in addition to closing out 280 empty positions.

PSC DIRECTOR OUT
The Public Service Commission will also shave 27 jobs from its workforce, but the most surprising personnel change came at the top, when Executive Director Tim Devlin resigned under pressure for reasons that are known to a few, including PSC Chairman Art Graham, who asked Devlin to step down.

“Out of respect for the executive director, I think that’s a private matter,” Graham said.

Graham did deny an article in The Miami Herald that said Graham had ousted Devlin after talking with Florida Power & Light attorney Ken Hoffman.

Further complicating the issue was Graham’s suggestion that the PSC name General Counsel Curt Kiser as interim executive director, an idea that other commissioners rejected.

They instead decided to divvy up some of the duties previously held by Devlin, a 35-year veteran of the agency who became executive director in January 2010 in the wake of a series of scandals that rocked the commission, between Kiser and Deputy Executive Director Charles Hill.

POLLS: OBAMA UP, SCOTT DOWN, NELSON SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
The bad news for Rick Scott was that his disapproval rating kept climbing to 57 percent and his approval rating slipped down to 29 percent. The good news is that voters who think they disapprove of him for a given reason might be wrong.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University showed the wrong direction in Scott’s poll numbers, but also showed that only 42 percent of voters were aware that Scott had honored his pledge to not raise taxes in this year’s budget. Still, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: “There’s no way to spin these numbers that they’re good for the governor.”

President Barack Obama, whose re-election hopes could hinge on winning Florida, got better news: His approval rating is up seven points, at 51 percent. Fellow Democrat and U. S. Senate Bill Nelson holds a lead of at least 20 points over each of his three main Republican rivals in polling for 2012 — but two-third of voters say they don’t know who they’ll vote for.

The poll of 1,196 registered voters had a 2.8 percentage point margin of error.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Gov. Rick Scott signs a 2011-12 budget plan that now weighs in at around $69 billion at The Villages, slicing $615 million from the spending plan using his line-item veto authority.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Where I’m from, rainwater can be caught with a $2 bucket.” — Gov. Rick Scott on his decision to veto a $250,000 line item funding a plan to collect rainwater at state prisons

By Brandon Larrabee
The News Service of Florida