Florida Weekend Recap – March 13

Florida Weekend Recap – March 13

A recap of this week’s best political and policy happenings; Historic City News brings you what you missed this week in Florida policy and politics.

Week in Review for March 9-13, 2015

BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
Two new reports, one from Florida International University and another from the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, concluded that Florida had the fourth lowest short term unemployment insurance recipiency rate, meaning that the state has few short-term unemployed workers actually receiving benefits. The FIU study and the EPI study both cited the relatively short duration of Florida’s benefits program as one of the prime causes of the low recipiency rate. ♦ A plan that drew controversy over a section that banned red-light cameras from citing drivers for illegal right hand turns got the green light from a House panel Tuesday despite the objection of some representatives and the opposition of the Florida Police Chiefs Association and the Florida League of Cities. ♦ A new poll, commissioned by the Florida Greyhound Association, an association of greyhound breeders and owners, found that a sizable majority of Floridians (77 percent) wants the Legislature to require more race track safety features to prevent injuries to the dogs.

ECONOMY
Gov. Rick Scott is on his way to California to lure shipping companies whose businesses are currently hampered by an ongoing labor dispute with California port workers in the latest of a number of high-profile marketing trips aimed at convincing new businesses to leave their high tax home states for Florida. ♦ ADP Payroll Services released their monthly job report, which found that Florida placed third in the nation for job creation with the addition of 15,500 private sector positions in February, mostly concentrated in the historically lower paying services industries. ♦ A new proposal to replace the states’ current film incentives program with a “tax rebate” program (which is definitely not an incentive, according to bill sponsor Sen. Nancy Detert) passed the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee. The bill is supported by most of the major players in the industry, but stridently opposed by advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, who say the idea runs counter to free market principles. Legislators who want to include pet projects in the states’ annual budget will have to provide more information about their proposals and will not be able to roll the projects into larger appropriations.

EDUCATION
The House education accountability bill passed its final committee stop. HB 7069 eliminates certain statewide assessments, allows districts to use teacher assistants to administer tests and changes the school start date. Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville, proposed holding off on school grades during the transition to new standards and assessments — something superintendents, school board members and parent groups have long been asking for. The proposed amendment was rejected. ♦ Sen. John Legg, R-Lutz, is pausing his plan to establish classroom technology standards. Legg, the chairman of the Senate Education Pre-K Committee, plans to work with Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, to further address the IT component in SB 1264. ♦ Class size limits could be eased for Florida’s schools under a bill now moving in the Florida Legislature. A 2002 state constitutional amendment limits classes in core subjects to 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school. The state now penalizes districts for every class over those limits. The bill (HB 665) would impose penalties only if a school’s average class size violates the limits. ♦ Florida Polytechnic announced the four finalists in the school mascot election: The Hydra, Pioneers, Technocats, and Wizards. The winner will be announced April 22. (Our vote is for Technocats, whatever that is.)

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
A pair of bills (HB 1291 and HB 1295) sponsored by Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, change the underlying distribution of documentary stamp revenues to implement Amendment #1. The two measures passed through their first committee amid concerns for its Senate companion (SB 586) which some critics say unnecessarily reduce the share of money that goes into the state and local housing trust fund. ♦ The sun was shining at the Florida Capitol as two bills extending residential property tax exemptions to renewable energy passed their first committees. SB 400 and HB 865 proposes a state constitutional amendment extending a tax abatement to commercial properties using solar panels. The same abatement is already available to residential properties. ♦ Two bills sponsored by Rep. Brad Drake, R-Eucheeanna, also passed through their first committees. HB 687 repeals a deadline to ban the spreading of septic tank waste on land and HB 841 eases up requirements for the cleanup of brownfield contamination sites if human activity has increased the level of contamination. But environmentalists like the Sierra Club’s David Cullen are giving the proposed measures the stink eye because they say it takes management and testing authority from the Department of Environmental Protection.

HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
A Senate panel moved forward a bill (SB 7044) that would effectively expand Medicaid in Florida through a private-sector alternative that requires enrollees be working or looking for work and pay copays. Recipients would be required to pay monthly premiums of $3 to $25, be employed or looking for work and face co-pays for using emergency care services in non-emergency situations. But according to Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center of Children and Families, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services might not approve of Florida’s plan. Alker said the plan requires people to pay monthly premiums whether they’re above or below the poverty line and Alker says CMS might see that as a barrier to coverage. ♦ Two Democrats are feuding over the state licensure of national child care groups like the Boys and Girls Clubs. Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, have traded barbs over Smith’s proposed measure clarifying that certain national child care groups are exempts from state licensure requirements. For the second time, Sobel, the chair of the Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, pulled Smith’s bill from discussion, citing a lack of information.

LAW & ORDER
A bill to allow individuals to carry firearms during the course of a state mandated emergency passed its final committee Thursday and is now on its way to the Senate floor. A similar measure died in the Senate last year. ♦ That wasn’t the only good news for guns right activists, as another proposal to allow superintendents to authorize some individuals with a history of law enforcement or military service to carry guns at K-12 schools also passed its first subcommittee this week. ♦ Several Department of Corrections inspectors, both current and former, testified under oath before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Tuesday, where they alleged that the agency’s inspector general repeatedly impeded investigations that could have embarrassed DOC or led back to high-ranking prison officials. “We are at the point where we can no longer police ourselves,” a veteran law enforcement officer involved in an ongoing whistleblower dispute with the state said.

POLITICS
The House passed its bill to move the 2016 presidential primary to March 15. The Senate version of the bill is awaiting a vote by that chamber. Moving the primary to a date past March 14 allows the state Republican Party to distribute delegates to the primary victor in a winner take all fashion, in turn making the state more important in the primary process. ♦ Word broke that Charlie Crist is making calls and talking about the Florida Senate race. But he’s not seriously phoning people about a 2016 campaign, his inner circle says, and the calls he’s on are with his friends and political allies who have been phoning him about the death of his sister two weeks ago. “A lot of folks have been talking to Charlie in the past few weeks, and I’m not aware of any focused effort on his part to run for Senate,” said Dan Gelber, a top Crist adviser who regularly speaks with him. “Of course the subject comes up because these are political people, and they talk about politics.”

PUBLIC SECTOR
A contentious measure to shield public university and college presidential searches from public records laws was unanimously passed through the House Higher Education and Workforce Subcommittee. The bill also creates an exemption for meetings held for identifying and vetting applicants. Under the House measure, once a group of finalists is selected, their names would be released under the state’s public records law and all meetings related to the final selection would be public meetings. ♦ A bill (SB 562) that would eliminate the state process for reviewing large developments, referred to as Developments of Regional Impact or DRIs, cleared its first committee stop. ♦ Another measure (SB 484) that would eliminate one of 11 regional planning councils also passed through its first panel. Both measures are being sponsored by Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby. ♦ A ridesharing regulation measure (HB 817) passed through its first committee Tuesday. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, attempted to drive members of the House Transportation and Ports Subcommittee through the winding patchwork of local ordinances that are currently the only form of ridesharing regulation. But traditional taxi cab services opposed the measure saying it puts their businesses at a competitive disadvantage.