By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-967541.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – As Florida lawmakers prepare to close out the sixty-day legislative session, it seems much longer ago that Governor Scott kicked things off with his State-of-the-State address. In that speech, the governor outlined what he hoped the legislature would do over the next two months. Tom Flanigan takes a look at how much of what Governor Scott wanted actually came to pass.
It was early evening on Tuesday, March eighth. Rick Scott, the newly-elected forty-fifth governor of Florida, stood before members of the Florida Legislature to deliver his first-ever State of the State address.
"While this legislative session is a regular session, in many ways it's an emergency session. For the 1.1 million Floridians out of work, this is an emergency. They are running out of options."
Two months later, about a hundred thousand more Floridians were back in the workforce. The state's jobless rate, which was eleven and a half percent in February, had dropped by nearly half-a-percentage point. So far, there's been no way to tell how many of those jobs may have come about because of what the governor called his "jobs" budget. But in at least one case in which an out-of-state company announced plans to move its headquarters to Florida, Scott's plan to do away with Florida's corporate income tax got full credit.
"Bing Energy, a California-based company, was courted by offers from several states. But Bing decided to come to Florida in December, and Tallahassee, which is nice. The reason that Florida won? Bing said it was our plan to eliminate the corporate tax."
At a flat five-and-a-half percent, Florida's corporate income tax is already among the lowest in the nation. But Scott said it was still a big disincentive for companies to locate in Florida. Throughout the session, he kept up the pressure on lawmakers to make the cut. But, with session's end in sight, Senate President Mike Haridopolos suggested it might not happen.
"It's important to the governor and we're going to see what we can do with the governor as far as the corporate tax rate, but I think most of the members I've talked to have been more focused on the property tax idea, the back-to-school holiday and the research and development tax credit."
What the governor finally got was, not a reduction in the corporate income tax rate, but an upward adjustment in the point at which that tax kicks in. It had been, once a business crossed the five-thousand dollar income threshold, the corporate tax would kick in. But the legislature has raised that to twenty-five thousand dollars. That means thousands of small businesses will pay no income tax at all. Oh, and there were also water management district tax reductions for property owners. All in all, tax reductions of around two-hundred-thirty million dollars. Not exactly the two BILLION dollar reduction Scott had wanted, but this week he acknowledged it was a good start.
"It's clearly the way to get the state back to work when you put money back in the hands of citizens and businesses they'll put that money into the economy and create private sector jobs."
Back in 1996, the old Florida Department of Commerce was abolished. Six public-private organizations then took up the department's various roles, such as luring new business and industry and promoting tourism. In his state of the state speech, Governor Scott said he wanted to reverse that scenario.
"An important priority in our jobs budget is to consolidate government's economic development into a single, highly-focused agency. Working with our public-private partner, we will have the resources to be effective, and the flexibility to adapt to particularly promising opportunities. The agency will be headquartered two doors down from me and its work will never be far from my mind."
The State Senate was set to approve Scott's plan for what will be called the "Jobs Florida Partnership" during the last day of session. The governor's plan to also consolidate some existing agencies, such as the Florida Department of Health with the Agency for Healthcare Administration and a few other mergers will have to wait until next year. Then there was Governor Scott's vision for education.
"We also need to focus on our incredible opportunities to improve our K-12 education system. We now have real innovators offering a 21st Century approach to education. And many of those new approaches offer better outcomes without increasing cost."
In a matter of weeks, several bills increasing education options were working their way through the pipeline. Some allowed significant expansion of charter schools, as Patricia Levesque with the Foundation for Florida's Future explained.
"If proven they're doing things well, letting them grow grade level, letting them participate in VPK, letting them grow their enrollment, for a high-performing system, what's in the Senate bill is the ability for them to actually expand in other counties those are the concepts that are in both the House and Senate bills."
The legislature also expanded the state's "Opportunity Scholarship" program, which gives business-funded assistance for private school enrollment. Meanwhile, there's no more tenure for public school teachers, although they can technically see more pay based partly on improvements in student test scores. Another victory for the governor was in the realm of deregulation. In the closing days of the session, lawmakers passed sweeping changes to the state's 1985 Growth Management Law. Some of the provisions of the new legislation shift more responsibility to local governments on whether to continue to require developers to pay for infrastructure improvements. The bill also removes limitations on the number of times local governments may process plan amendments, and there is no longer a state-mandated review of all changes to comprehensive plans.
All in all, Governor Scott received much of what he said he wanted in the course of that session kickoff speech two months ago. Although he said patience was something he was still learning to cultivate.
"The thing that's interesting is you'd like everything to happen faster than it does. Whatever the issue you're dealing with, you'd like it to be resolved faster. It's a process. Probably a good process, but that's probably one thing you do learn."
The governor won't need to wait long for what happens next. Some of the total work product of the 2011 Legislative Session is already on his desk and the rest, consisting of a sixty-eight billion dollar budget and hundreds of individual bills, is close behind.