Gollum gets to work, freeing roadside barbers from the socialist constraints of licensing.
According to a schedule released by the governor’s office today, Rick Scott will pay a visit to Florida’s Department of Children and Families (which his budget proposes to slash within an inch of its life) later this afternoon. No word on whether Scott plan to ladle gruel into the bowls of actual children during his visit … So what else is news in the State of Gollum?
No story link, just a question: what does Jennifer Carroll do all day?
To the news!
Gollum starts his day with a lovely Valentine to the opposite-married. The rest of you sinners get thee hence!
Meanwhile, here’s what Tricky Ricky has on offer for the rest of us:
The budget that the governor sent to lawmakers last week communicates that Scott thinks state agencies are less efficient and effective than they could be, so he’s proposing to abolish the state’s growth-management agency, streamline purchasing and contracts, and add performance goals for everything from convict recidivism to high-school graduation.
“What we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to spend state dollars well,” Scott explained.
And by doubling the budget of his own office to $638 million — giving him control over $305 million in incentives to lure companies to Florida — and offering a $459 million corporate-income-tax cut, Scott is saying that it’s more important to nurture Florida’s business climate than to fund its educational system or social services.
Meanwhile, there are lots of tax cuts in Ricky’s mind, but not really any for you:
Two of the three biggest tax cuts — the reduction of the corporate income tax and the changes to the unemployment compensation tax — apply only to corporations. So unless your household is like Rick Scott’s and you own a corporation, you’ll see no direct savings under Scott’s plans. Supporters of the cuts argue that the benefits could trickle down to average Floridians through additional jobs or cheaper prices for goods and services.
But there’s no guarantee either will happen.
The cuts to the corporate income tax and the unemployment compensation tax make up $2.1 billion of Scott’s overall $4.1 billion impact.
In comments to the Senate Budget Committee, Scott budget chief Jerry McDaniel said Scott’s top tax priority is to remove taxes that he says inhibit job creation. McDaniel said Scott particularly wanted to reduce and eventually eliminate the state’s corporate income tax.
We asked McDaniel if he knew whether the per-household figure accounted for the corporate tax cuts. McDaniel said he didn’t know and suggested we e-mail the governor’s press office seeking clarification. We did, but did not hear back.
So we did the math ourselves.
According to the U.S. Census, Florida had 6,337,929 households in 2000 (the last year that precise data is available). However, the state’s Demographic Estimating Conference meets annually to project the number of Florida households, among other things. At its most recent meeting on Oct. 25, 2010, the group estimated that as of Jan. 1, Florida would have roughly 7.5 million households. The group’s estimates are based on the active number of residential electric customers and residential building permits.
Using the most recent household estimate, it’s easy to see the error in Scott’s tax cut math.
Not counting the cuts to the corporate income tax and the unemployment compensation tax, the average household would see in the neighborhood of $267 in tax savings over two years, not $540. ($2 billion/7.5 million=$267 per household). That’s an annual savings of around $134, or less than half of what Scott suggested.
Whether or not Tallahassee’s Republican majority takes him up on it (and signs are that they won’t, at least not “as is…”) without any Democrats to speak of in the legislature, it falls to the GOP to explain to the public why Scott’s cuts, which hit services for the elderly and poor, as well as education particularly hard, while taking no skin off the backs of the rich or corporations, are not a very, very bad idea:
So here is the decision facing the legislative Republicans this spring:
Should they cut only as much as it takes to make up an already-grim shortfall?
Or should they cut even deeper, as the governor is asking, so we also can pass tax cuts, mostly for business?
No matter how conservative they are, the Legislature’s Republicans know they’re on the hook.
They’re the ones who have to give the news to the parents of Florida schoolchildren, to the unemployed, to rape victims and abused children and the disabled losing their services, to fired prison guards.
Meanwhile, Tricky Ricky may also have a hard time getting his other “want” — an Arizona-style immigration law, again, thanks to his friends in the GOP:
Fortunately, lawmakers are vetting the idea in hearings, which allows all interested parties to share their views on the subject. The result is a belated backtracking that should serve Florida well.
In the past month, legislators have heard from law enforcement officials who oppose a mandate that could generate racial profiling complaints. Agricultural interests have weighed in, too, hoping to quash any bill that would prompt farm labor to avoid the state. Newly minted state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam believes that what passed in Arizona has no place in the Sunshine State.
As expected, tourist industry officials insist adoption of Arizona-style immigration reform would devastate their industry, which is far larger than Arizona’s and depends upon a thriving domestic and international market. Segments of the business community also spoke up, worrying that a controversial bill might make it harder for the state to attract international investments and trade, particularly from Latin America.
Apparently, the lawmakers got the message, as both Snyder and his Senate counterpart, state Sen. Michael Bennett, R-Bradenton, pledged to revise their bills. Some form of immigration reform will pass the Legislature and find its way to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk. However, it won’t be the hot button bill some had envisioned.
We can thank cooler heads — and the legislative process — for that.
Meanwhile, Republicans can pine for Jeb Bush all they want. He says he’s not running for president (in 2012, anyway…) and St. Petersblog has one possible reason why.
Also at St. Petersblog; a cozy relationship between Rick Scott and a law firm representing a big casino interest could mean Atlantic City, here we come, Miami Beach! (You’re welcome.)
Meanwhile, Jebbie might not be running (yet) but he is laying the groundwork for a dramatic increase in his personal leverage inside the Republican Party. How do I know? He got his protege Marco Rubio to run for the U.S. Senate (and make no mistake, Jeb helped him win…) Another of his acolytes, David Rivera, is now in Congress (at least until they cart him off to prison…) and now, Jeb’s money man and fixer, Al Cardenas, sits atop the American Conservative Union. At the same time, Jeb is flexing his influence in Florida’s public schools, where his long cherished dreams of crushing the state’s teacher’s unions under the boot of slow, creeping privatization, is being realized, mostly because Rick Scott is clueless, and is thus going to cede much of the educational ground to Jeb’s ideas. My guess: Jeb bides his time and then goes for the White House jump ball in 2016.
BTW, somebody get a restraining order out for Allen West. He’s embarrassing his quiet, toney Congressional district, even as he’s turning himself into a conservative/tea party superstar. Well, at least til word leaks out about his foreign-born motorcycle...
There are a few rumblings about who might take on West in 2012, but given how vulnerable he is, you’d think there’d be more than just rumbles.
Last but not least, there’s a special election taking place in two weeks to fill the state Senate seat vacated by newly minted Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. (It’s also a seat formerly held by such African-American political lights as Bill Turner – who Miami’s Turner Technical high school is named after – and Kendrick Meek, who rather controversially ran against Turner in 1998.) The Democrat in the race, Oscar Braynon Jr., has felt pretty much left hanging out to dry by the state Democratic Party, which logically must assume the race is in the bag. After all, Braynon is a Democrat, and the Senate district is 70 percent Democratic. Still, the Republican, Haitian-American former North Miami Mayor Joe Celestin, could very well attract strong Haitian-American turnout, which if coupled with weak African-American turnout, could make the race closer than it has to be. Braynon beat another Haitian-American candidate, Philip Brutues, by just 427 votes, in a race that saw pathetic, 5.1 percent turnout. And apparently, Brutus has yet to man up and endorse Braynon.
So will the party of Rod Smith decide to play in a race that’s not somewhere in Northern Florida, where they’ve clumsily inserted the party chairman into a primary and emptied more than $16 grand into a probably fruitless effort to win the Jacksonville mayor’s race? Will they at least have a presence in a race that’s important to the Black community? Or will they stay out of it and assume it’s in the bag for Braynon?
Tick tock…
BTW, FlaPolitics has a great roundup of Florida political news today. Check it out here.
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