Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Two Blocks Of Florida Politics

January 10, 2015

It was possible Tuesday to get a feel for the state of Florida politics within a two-block area.

Just outside the historic Old Capitol building, Gov. Rick Scott and the three re-elected Cabinet members were taking their oaths of office for a second time. Across the street at the Leon County Courthouse, a series of same-sex marriages that one of those Cabinet officials had fought to prevent were underway, part of the first week of gay weddings in Florida history.

http://www.northescambia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/floridaweeklly.jpgThe next great Florida battle was also looming, with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attending Scott’s swearing-in — their visits to an important state in the 2016 primary and general elections serving as none-too-subtle signs of both men’s presidential aspirations.

And the inauguration took place during a lull in the first week of committee meetings in 2015 for the Legislature, which began working on issues ranging from how often students should be tested to how to use billions of dollars of funding that voters insisted go toward land and water conservation.

Call it preparation for when the Florida political scene returns to normal. Or what qualifies for normal in the Sunshine State.

IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID

For anyone who thought Scott’s move toward the middle last year marked some revision of what he sees as the core purpose of his governorship, the inaugural address ended such talk. The word “job” still popped up with regularity, and Scott as much as said his goal hasn’t changed.

“If we can make Florida the worldwide leader for families that struggled like mine did to get a job, then I’ve fulfilled my job as your governor,” said Scott, who spoke for about 20 minutes in front of a crowd of around 500 people.

The event took place on a cool day that was still warmer than some past inaugural ceremonies. The three Cabinet officials — Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, all Republicans — were also sworn in.

Scott nixed the parade and inaugural ball, replacing them with a post-election tour across the state touting economic progress, though festivities still included receptions Monday and Tuesday at the governor’s mansion. A prayer breakfast Tuesday morning also remained.

The governor hawked the state to residents of New York, Illinois, California and Pennsylvania, all of which have Democratic governors (though Illinois is soon to inaugurate a GOP chief executive). And despite overseeing a roughly 10 percent increase in the state budget over his four years in office, and promising additional spending to come, Scott warned against the expansion of government.

“While we are focused on growing jobs in Florida, we must realize that positions our state as a fighter in a great movement against the silent growth of government,” he said.

Democrats were unimpressed — though with their diminished numbers in the House and only slightly more influential minority in the Senate, it wasn’t clear what if anything they can do about it.

“Right now, working people are catching hell in Florida,” said Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa. “These low-paying jobs are not doing it.”

GAY MARRIAGE BEGINS, BUT IS THE FIGHT OVER?

For weeks, advocates of gay marriage in Florida had Jan. 6 circled on their calendars. That was the day U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle’s stay of a ruling striking down Florida’s ban on same-sex weddings was set to expire.

But in Miami-Dade County, things got started a bit early. Circuit Judge Sarah Zabel on Monday lifted a stay of an earlier ruling that found the gay-marriage ban unconstitutional.

Even as the ceremonies began, John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, said the issue is not resolved legally. He said the U.S. Supreme Court could uphold state gay-marriage bans. An appeal about Florida’s ban remains pending at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

“Should the Supreme Court rule for state’s rights, I think you are going to see the Florida marriage amendment immediately reinvigorated, in terms of its authority,” said Stemberger, whose group spearheaded efforts to pass the 2008 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. “Then, we are going to have a confused patchwork of couples who are legitimately married, same-sex couples who now have marriages that are presumptively unconstitutional somehow and same-sex couples who perhaps want to be married but can’t be because of the authority of the Florida marriage amendment.”

On Tuesday, weddings began in most parts of the state. As the oath of office was being administered to Bondi — whose office defended the marriage ban in court — the Leon County Courthouse was open for business to gay couples.

That juxtaposition was not lost on Susan Gage, who prepared to get married to Isabelle Potts, her partner of 23 years in what she called “the longest courtship ever.” They were among about 60 gay and lesbian couples who received licenses Tuesday in Leon County.

“It’s the culmination of a very difficult and hard struggle,” Gage said.

Like Stemberger, Bondi didn’t seem to think the arguments were over — though she also wouldn’t say one way or the other whether her office would continue to appeal Hinkle’s ruling. Bondi said she hoped the U.S. Supreme Court, which has repeatedly refused to consider similar cases, would settle the matter.

“Because that’s what we need again. We need uniformity. And best wishes to all of the couples who are married,” she said.

READY TO DO SOMETHING

Committee meetings to lay the groundwork for the 2015 legislative session also began this week. While many of the meetings were the usual introductory chatter — here’s the staff director, here are the new members, there’s our jurisdiction — other panels quickly moved into meatier business.

The Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee, for example, quickly began to consider how to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars set aside by the Florida Water and Land Conservation Amendment. How many hundreds of millions of dollars is one of the items still to be determined.

Committee Chairman Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, said he intends over the next couple of months to take a “meticulous” approach to the amendment, which over the next two decades requires 33 percent of the revenue from a tax on real-estate transactions, known as documentary stamps, to go into conservation efforts.

Pepper Uchino, committee staff director, estimated that the amendment, approved by 75 percent of voters, will generate $757 million for conservation efforts during the upcoming 2015-16 fiscal year.

Eric Draper, state director of Audubon Florida, put the conservation-money total from documentary stamps at $662 million, which is closer to the $648 million offered last year in a state analysis.

In any case, it’s a large enough pot to draw plenty of interest in how the funds will be divvied up. Some lawmakers say the measure allows funding for stormwater, sewer and similar projects as long as the intent is to preserve the quality of water in Florida.

“We’ve been given an awesome opportunity to solve a major issue that is going to affect generations,” Altamonte Springs Republican David Simmons said. “What is the goal? It is to make sure our water is preserved in a pristine situation.”

Eric Draper, state director of Audubon Florida, said the money could go to the pipes involved in distributing water or to wastewater treatment, but only in limited cases.

“We’re saying except where you can really show a high state priority in doing that, that is not what the voters thought they were doing,” said Draper, who during the meeting represented the group Florida’s Land and Water Legacy, which led the amendment drive. “Wastewater treatment is traditionally a local government expense and we don’t believe that we should transfer that local expense of wastewater treatment on to the state of Florida.”

Meanwhile, the Senate Education PreK-12 Committee zeroed in on the number of tests that the state’s students are taking.

“I’ve got a message very clearly from our members that they’re interested in doing something,” said committee Chairman John Legg, R-Lutz.

But as for the details of the would-be bill, Legg conceded that “I don’t know what it looks like yet.” Issues that might be addressed range from which grades of students should be tested, to how many tests should be administered, to whether “assessments” required by the state necessarily have to be tests at all.

Even lawmakers who spearheaded the state’s accountability movement, which led to many of the testing requirements now on the books, are beginning to rethink things.

“Here’s what I’ve learned today: We don’t know how much time is consumed by state-mandated tests. We don’t know how much money it costs to perform state-mandated tests. We don’t know whether tests that are performed by state mandate are valid and reliable,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who has long backed education reform.

In a potentially related development, the state’s largest teachers union said Thursday it will stop challenging a 2014 law that included expansion of a voucher-like program that helps send children to private schools.

The Florida Education Association said it will not appeal a ruling last week by Leon County Chief Circuit Judge Charles Francis, who dismissed the challenge to the law. Francis said the named plaintiffs in the case, a Lee County teacher and two parents, did not have the legal standing to sue.

In a prepared statement, the union said it decided against appealing after a series of meetings with Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando.

“We have opened a dialogue with the Senate president on a broad range of issues, including testing, special needs students and other public education concerns of paramount importance to the FEA,” union Vice President Joanne McCall said. “We look forward to working together for the benefit of our children.”

STORY OF THE WEEK: Gov. Rick Scott and members of the Florida Cabinet were sworn in Tuesday for their second terms.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “My lawyer called me this morning and said, ‘We’ve changed the world, Jim,’ ” Jim Brenner, who, along with his partner Chuck Jones, filed the initial lawsuit against the state challenging the gay marriage prohibition, on the first day of same-sex marriages in Florida.

by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News