Members of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus met with Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday to make requests for legislation and support. But the lawmakers made little headway, receiving either refusals or maybes from the governor.
Sen. Arthenia Joyner (D-Tampa) said, members of the caucus want more evidence the governor is listening to their concerns. She said, the communication over the past year has been lacking.
“I called for a meeting three times and nobody ever got back with me," she told Scott. "But I’m going to say what we said last year: You and I will have to deal with that. Because I respect you."
“And I respect you,” Scott said.
“OK. So we need to be able to talk," Joyner said.
Caucus members asked Scott to do away with the five-year period ex-felons must wait before being allowed to apply to be able to vote. But Scott said they can already apply for restoration of rights from the clemency board, and he sees no problem with the current wait time.
The lawmakers also want the governor to appoint more black judges when he's making judicial appointments. But Scott said his decision is based on whether he perceives the judge to be a judicial activist, which is something he'd disagree with regardless of skin color. He also said, the Judicial Nominating Committee handed him potential appointees, and he can't help if there's little diversity among them. Caucus members then requested that he appoint more black people to the Judicial Nominating Committee.
Caucus members also encouraged him to implement President Obama’s health care reforms as soon as possible and to stop "foot dragging." He responded that he couldn't implement things like health care exchanges as long as there was still disagreement about exactly what it would cost the state.
Other requests the Black Caucus brought before the governor included:
- To create an economic-development study that measures whether state contracts are going to minority-owned businesses when possible
- To develop African-American historical sites as tourist destinations
- To commit to not vetoing any expansion of early voting that the Legislature might pass
- To allow an extra day of early voting if it is requested by local elections supervisors. Scott did not grant this request during the 2012 election.
- To consider evaluating historically black colleges on a different performance metric from other state universities, to account for disparities in socio-economic status and parents' education levels among entering students
- To put more funding toward early learning programs
- To put more funding into mental health and education programs for incarcerated juveniles
- To approve a 3- to 5 percent pay increase for all state employees
- To create a bipartisan task force to examine how the state can lower its incarceration rates for nonviolent criminals
While Scott gave reasons for why he didn't agree with many of the proposals, he said, "Everything I do, I think about a person or a family."