Tag: governor rick scott
The Fight Over Enterprise Florida Is A Power Play With Millions At Stake

The Fight Over Enterprise Florida Is A Power Play With Millions At Stake

You don’t often see two conservative Republicans in a sloppy cage fight, but Gov. Rick Scott and House Speaker Richard Corcoran are swinging at each other even before the Legislature convenes in Tallahassee.

The big issue is Enterprise Florida, the agency tasked with luring new companies to the state. Traditionally, this is accomplished by wildly throwing buckets of money, most which comes from public funds.

Corcoran calls it “corporate welfare.” Scott says it’s a swell program that is essential to bringing new jobs, and he is asking lawmakers for $85 million.

The governor wanted the same thing last year and got roasted. His new strategy is staging doomsday press conferences in the home districts of GOP legislators who oppose Enterprise Florida.

Corcoran is fighting back with a slick video highlighting — actually, lowlighting — some of the infamous corporate backfires that have cost taxpayers dearly.

The video opens with the inglorious story of Sanford Burnham Prebys. In 2006, the California-based medical institute received about $360 million in state and local incentives to open a research facility in Lake Nona, near Orlando.

In exchange, the firm promised to provide 330 high-paying jobs within a decade. It came up 64 jobs short.

Last year Sanford Burnham tried unsuccessfully to have the University of Florida take over its Lake Nona operation. Now Scott’s administration is trying to retrieve almost $78 million in incentive funds.

Good luck with that.

Then there’s the case of Digital Domain, a painful digital experience for both employees and taxpayers. The cinematic special-effects company opened a studio in Port St. Lucie in early 2012, a deal sealed with massive local and state giveaways.

Nine short months later, Digital shut its doors and then went into bankruptcy. About 300 local jobs were lost.

A court settlement awarded the state a pitiful $3 million of its $20 million investment, while the town of Port St. Lucie got back only $3.2 million of almost $52 million in incentives.

The ex-CEO of Digital fared much better. The court gave him $8.5 million to pay down a mortgage on a big house in Colorado that he’d put up as collateral for a loan to the company.

The Digital deal was hatched under Gov. Charlie Crist, and Scott says his version of Enterprise Florida is more careful about dispensing our money. Most incentive agreements now require companies to meet performance levels before receiving any public funds.

Corcoran and other Republicans seeking to gut Enterprise Florida have found support from Americans For Prosperity, the Tea Party group funded by the ultraconservative Koch brothers.

It’s not only the concept of corporate handouts that offends opponents of Enterprise Florida. It’s the idea of giving select large companies a competitive advantage over others.

Another factor is Enterprise Florida’s overhead. Until last spring, it had 90 employees, offices abroad and a payroll of $9 million. It was forced to shrink dramatically after the House rejected Scott’s request for $250 million in “recruitment” funds.

Many states offer money and tax breaks to woo out-of-state companies. Proving those expenditures really pay off is difficult.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity tracked eight research companies that got $444 million in state incentives between 2006 and 2008.

Only one of those firms has met or surpassed its promised number of new jobs. That’s a lousy (and very expensive) batting average.

Corcoran and other critics of Enterprise Florida say the money being spent on corporate giveaways would be better invested in schools, roads, and other public projects. Scott has intimated that Corcoran is posturing because he plans to run for governor.

It’s an amusing complaint, because Scott himself is running for the U.S. Senate in 2018. His campaign identity has been styled entirely around job creation, and he’ll claim credit for every new WaWa and Taco Bell that has opened in Florida during the nationwide economic recovery.

Which is what politicians do.

What they don’t do, usually, is tangle openly with powerful members of their own party.

Scott says the resistance to Enterprise Florida is an attack on business, while Corcoran says it’s an attack on government waste. At stake is at least $85 million of state money, which most Floridians would rather not gamble on another Digital Domain.

That’s what makes the fight between the governor and the House speaker worth watching. It’s a political power play about something that actually matters.

IMAGE: Florida Gov. Rick Scott addresses an economic summit in Orlando, Florida, June 2, 2015.  REUTERS/Steve Nesius

Big Sugar’s Slime Flows North To The Capitol

Big Sugar’s Slime Flows North To The Capitol

The paid soldiers in Gov. Rick Scott’s war on the environment are aligning to block state efforts to purchase any farm lands south of Lake Okeechobee, which means Floridians can look forward to more summers of slime.

Nightmare algae blooms, vile and job-killing, are destined to be one of Scott’s legacies. Next June, when the St. Lucie estuary again turns puke-green and the oyster beds die, the light-footed governor will be nowhere in the vicinity.

Neither will the tourists.

The blooms are caused by billions of gallons of fresh water that are pumped from Lake O during the rainy season. Loaded with phosphorus and other pollutants from surrounding areas, the lake discharges are mainlined toward both Florida coasts, bringing ruin to saltwater habitats.

Senate President Joe Negron, who lives in Stuart — basically Slime Central — wants the Lake O outflows diverted, cleaned in reservoirs and sent south to the Everglades.

The plan, supported by many scientists and conservation groups, would require purchasing 60,000 acres from agriculture. Only eight years ago, U.S. Sugar embraced such a concept, calling it a “monumental opportunity to save the Everglades” and struck a deal to unload 187,000 acres.

The company infamously reneged, and it owned enough lawmakers to kill the deal. It definitely owns the governor, who’ll need Big Sugar’s money when he runs for the U.S. Senate in 2018.

As Senate president, Negron is one of the most powerful figures in Tallahassee. He’ll need all the clout he can muster for this battle, to which he arrived late and as part of the problem.

Negron has displayed little resistance as his party’s leaders have subverted Amendment 1, which 75 percent of voters approved in 2014 for the purchase conservation lands. And he was all-in last year when the Legislature and governor neutered water-quality laws to allow agricultural corporations to monitor their own pollution on the honor system.

Negron now needs Amendment 1 funds to buy farm acreage for conversion to reservoirs. He’s under heavy hometown pressure from Treasure Coast residents, who are getting clobbered financially by the algae outbreaks.

Meanwhile Big Sugar has mounted a PR campaign framing Negron’s land-purchase plan as an attack on farming and the communities near Lake Okeechobee. This is industry-scripted melodrama; not all cane acreage is highly productive.

Opposition to Negron’s plan also comes from the South Florida Water Management District, which at one time relied on actual experts on water management. Real scientists, if you can imagine such a thing! Those were the days.

Since taking office, Scott has loaded the boards of all Florida’s water districts with lawyers, developers, Realtors, agricultural and industry advocates. Funding has been cut, and experienced staff members canned.

For instance, the previous executive director of the South Florida water district had worked in that field for two decades. He was replaced by lobbyist/lawyer Pete Antonacci, who’d formerly worked as Scott’s special counsel in Tallahassee.

It is Antonacci now leading the district’s fight against Negron’s cleanup plan. Last week he told a Senate committee that buying more land to hold Lake Okeechobee’s overflows would only slow down current restoration projects.

He also said state and federal authorities should focus cleanup efforts north of Lake Okeechobee, such as replacing residential septic tanks with sewers.

That is, almost word-for-word, Big Sugar’s position — yet it’s coming from the chief of a state agency that’s supposed to act in the interests of all Floridians.

Eight million people are affected by the decisions of the South Florida Water Management District, but Rick Scott has turned it into a naked political lobby for the sugar barons, who are already rich from government crop subsidies.

Big Sugar is one of the biggest donors to the governor’s PAC, so it’s no shock to see him sell out. He’s been doing it since Day One.

Ironically, Negron, too, has benefited from the calculated generosity of the sugar industry, which over the years has showered him and his political action committees with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unlike the governor, though, Negron owes his seat to constituents in one geographic district. Unlike the governor, Negron can’t hop on his jet and vanish when there’s a manmade environmental catastrophe in his back yard.

He’s got to come home and face the folks whose lives are upended by it.

And those folks don’t want a repeat of last year’s nightmare. They want all that lake water pumped south through the glades, not to the coasts.

Which leaves Negron uncustomarily at odds with Scott and Big Sugar. How hard he fights will show what he’s made of, and where his true loyalty lies.

The green that runs through Tallahassee is a different shade than algae, but it’s just as slimy to the touch.

In Battleground Florida, Tough Stance On Felons May Sap Votes For Democrats

In Battleground Florida, Tough Stance On Felons May Sap Votes For Democrats

By Letitia Stein

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) – Leonard “Roscoe” Newton has been in and out of Florida’s prisons since before he could vote, starting with a youthful conviction for burglary.

He’s been a free man for six years now with an important exception: he still can’t vote.

Newton, who is African American, is among nearly 1.5 million former felons who have been stripped of their right to vote in a state with a history of deciding U.S. presidential elections, sometimes by razor-thin margins of just a few hundred votes.

Felons have been disenfranchised in Florida since 1868, although they can seek clemency to restore their voting rights.

Since 2011, however, when Republican state leaders toughened the restrictions on felon voting rights, just 2,339 ex-felons have had that right restored, the lowest annual numbers in nearly two decades, according to state data reviewed by Reuters.

That compares with more than 155,000 in the prior four years under reforms introduced by Governor Rick Scott’s predecessor, moderate Republican governor Charlie Crist, the data shows. Crist, who was governor from 2007 to 2011, made it much easier to restore ex-felons’ voting rights.

“When I tried to be an effective member of the community, I saw that I was voiceless,” said Newton, whose expectations of getting his rights restored were dashed when the rules changed under a new administration. “I’m 45, and I have never voted.”

The dramatic slowdown has stoked a racially charged debate over whether political bias taints the process of restoring felon voting rights in the largest battleground state in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Florida’s toughened ban means racial minorities are disproportionately excluded from voting because of higher incarceration rates, data shows. Black voters tend to favor Democrats.

“Republicans oppose the felon vote change because they are concerned about the political implications,” said Darryl Paulson, a conservative Republican voting rights expert who sees wide restoration of voting rights as “a huge political advantage for the Democratic Party.” Paulson says non-violent ex-felons should have the right to vote.

Almost all U.S. states deny incarcerated felons the right to vote but many restore those rights after they have completed their sentences.

Over the last two decades, more than 20 states have taken action to help people with criminal convictions regain their voting rights. Since July, Virginia’s governor has restored voting rights to 67,000 felons.

Florida is the largest of four remaining states that strip all former felons of voting rights, accounting for nearly half of those barred from voting nationally. Along with Virginia, the others are Kentucky and Iowa.

TOUGH NEW MEASURES

In March 2011, two months after he became governor, Scott reversed Crist’s reforms, which had allowed many non-violent felons to automatically get their voting rights reinstated after they had completed their sentences. Crist had also simplified the process for felons convicted of more serious crimes to regain their votes.

Scott, a millionaire former health care executive, put in place new restrictions, requiring ex-felons to wait for five to seven years before applying to regain the right to vote, serve on a jury or hold elected office. He said the new rules ensured ex-felons had proven they were unlikely to offend.

Florida has disenfranchised about one in five voting-age black voters, according to research collected by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group.

That compares with about 8.6 percent of the state’s non-black potential voters. Data on the Hispanic voting-age population who can’t vote because of the law was unavailable, although Hispanics make up 12.5 percent of Florida’s inmates.

The rates reflect racial disparities in criminal convictions. Florida’s current prison population is nearly 48 percent black, more than any other racial group, although blacks are only 17 percent of the state’s population.

Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, which includes the capital city of Tallahassee, accused the Republican administration of repealing the felon voting reforms “to reduce the number of African Americans who had their rights restored because those voters were perceived to be more Democratic voting and so therefore were targeted for elimination.”

Sancho is a former Democrat who is now unaffiliated with either party.

Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Republican officials who drove the 2011 policy changes, did not agree to be interviewed by Reuters or respond directly to questions on the accusations that the law is intended to influence elections. But Bondi has previously denied the policy amounts to racially motivated disenfranchisement.

“For those who may suggest that these rule changes have anything to do with race, these assertions are completely unfounded. Justice has nothing to do with race,” Bondi wrote in a 2011 newspaper editorial.

Scott’s office, in a statement to Reuters, said former felons need to “demonstrate that they can live a life free of crime, show a willingness to request to have their rights restored and show restitution to the victims of their crimes” in order to have their voting rights restored.

“FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG”

Democrats have seized on the issue as a civil rights concern, regardless of the political impact, said Nell Toensmann, who chairs the Democratic Party of St. Johns County, a north Florida region of about 225,000 people dominated by Republicans.

“Yes, it does disenfranchise a lot of African Americans, but it disenfranchises a lot of white people who would be voting as Republicans as well,” she said.

The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation polling project shows a tight race in Florida. It estimates that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a 48 percent chance of winning the state, compared to her Republican opponent Donald Trump’s 42 percent.

Political scientists say the voting ban can sap votes from both parties, but some research suggests that Democrats pay a steeper price.

An analysis of voting patterns by race and economic status found that if the ban had not existed during the 2000 presidential election, Democrats would have had enough votes to overturn Republican George W. Bush’s 537-vote victory in Florida that won him the White House.

“In very close elections won by Republican candidates, felon disenfranchisement could be decisive,” said Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota professor who led the study.

“IF I DENY, IT’S OVER”

Applying for voting rights can be difficult. Ex-felons must submit certified court documentation of each felony conviction — documents that can be difficult to secure for those unable to spend time and money tracking down records in courthouses.

Cases involving serious crimes are heard in person by a clemency board consisting of the governor and Florida’s cabinet officers, in quarterly meetings in Tallahassee.

During a Sept. 21 meeting in a windowless room in the Florida Capitol building, 48 petitions to restore voting rights were on the agenda presented to the governor and three state officers in an all-day session punctuated by tears and emotional pleas. Some petitioners were represented by attorneys, others showed up solo or accompanied by a friend or relative.

“Clemency is an act of mercy. There is no right or guarantee,” Scott told them, urging applicants to accept culpability.

State rules give him the deciding vote.

“If I deny, it’s over,” he said.

Learlean Rahming approached the podium in a black and white flowered dress, accompanied by her adult daughter. State records show dozens of criminal charges over two decades that include larceny, drug possession and shoplifting.

“I accept my responsibility for all of my stupid mistakes of the past,” said the 63-year-old woman, who had traveled from Miami, adding that she has been out of prison for more than 20 years.

Officials were impressed by her turnaround story, until Bondi noticed a discrepancy. Records showed Rahming had voted under a married name after her release. “Just to see if I could vote,” she told the panel, explaining that for many years she had not realized that her rights were taken away.

Scott moved to deny. Rahming left, wiping tears. The board ultimately cleared 23 residents to get back their civil rights. More than 10,500 applications are still pending.

Crist, the former governor who championed leniency, switched to the Democratic Party in 2012. In an interview, he questioned whether the policy changes on felons voting cost him a 2014 bid to reclaim the governor’s mansion.

He lost by about 64,000 votes – in the ballpark of the number of people in the state who complete felony sentences in a typical year, Florida Department of Corrections data shows.

“We will never know for sure,” Crist said.

Photo: Leonard “Roscoe” Newton, 45, who lost his right to vote in Florida before he was old enough to cast a ballot is pictured in Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. on September 20, 2016. Picture taken on September 20, 2016.  REUTERS/Letitia Stein

Hurricane Matthew Closing In On Florida As Haiti Death Toll Rises

Hurricane Matthew Closing In On Florida As Haiti Death Toll Rises

ORLANDO, Fla./MIAMI (Reuters) – Matthew, the first major hurricane threatening a direct hit on the United States in more than 10 years, closed in on Florida on Thursday night after killing at least 283 people in Haiti on its destructive march north through the Caribbean.

Carrying extremely dangerous winds of 140 mph (220 kph), the storm pounded the northwestern part of the Bahamas en route to Florida’s Atlantic coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Matthew’s top sustained winds had dropped to 130 mph by Thursday night. But it remained a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity as it neared Florida, where it could either plow inland or tear along the Atlantic coast through Friday night, the Miami-based center said.

Few storms with winds as powerful as Matthew’s have struck Florida, and the NHC warned of “potentially disastrous impacts.” The U.S. National Weather Service said the storm could be the most powerful to strike northeast Florida in 118 years.

Hurricane conditions were expected in parts of Florida late on Thursday or early on Friday and a dangerous storm surge was expected to reach up to 11 feet (3.35 meters) along the Florida coast, Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the Miami-based NHC, said on CNN.

“What we know is that most of the lives lost in hurricanes is due to storm surge,” he said.

Some 283 people were killed in Haiti, local officials said, and thousands were displaced after the storm flattened homes, uprooted trees and inundated neighborhoods earlier in the week. Four people were killed in the Dominican Republic, which neighbors Haiti.

Damage and potential casualties in the Bahamas were still unclear as the storm passed near the capital, Nassau, on Thursday and then out over the western end of Grand Bahama Island.

It was too soon to predict where Matthew might do the most of its damage in the United States, but the NHC’s hurricane warning extended up the Atlantic coast from southern Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina. More than 12 million people in the United States were under hurricane watches and warnings, according to the Weather Channel.

The last major hurricane, classified as a storm bearing sustained winds of more than 110 mph (177 kph), to make landfall on U.S. shores was Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

Jeff Masters, a veteran hurricane expert, said on his Weather Underground website (www.wunderground.com) that Matthew’s wind threat was especially serious at Cape Canaveral, which juts into the Atlantic off central Florida.

“If Matthew does make landfall along the Florida coast, this would be the most likely spot for it. Billions of dollars of facilities and equipment are at risk at Kennedy Space Center and nearby bases, which have never before experienced a major hurricane,” Masters wrote.

NASA and the U.S. Air Force, which operate the nation’s primary space launch site at Cape Canaveral, have already taken steps to safeguard personnel and equipment.

A team of 116 employees was bunkered down inside Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Control Center to ride out the hurricane.

“We’ve had some close calls, but as far as I know it’s the first time we’ve had the threat of a direct hit,” NASA spokesman George Diller said by email from the hurricane bunker.

Roads in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina were jammed, and gas stations and food stores ran out of supplies as the storm approached early on Thursday.

Florida Governor Rick Scott warned there could be “catastrophic” damage if Matthew slammed directly into the state and urged some 1.5 million people there to evacuate.

“If you’re reluctant to evacuate, just think about all the people … already killed,” Scott said at a news conference. “Time is running out. This is clearly either going to have a direct hit or come right along the coast.”

Scott, who activated several thousand National Guard troops to help deal with the storm, warned that millions of people were likely to be left without power.

Florida, Georgia and South Carolina opened shelters for evacuees. As of Thursday morning, more than 3,000 people were being housed in 60 shelters in Florida, Scott said.

Those three states as well as North Carolina declared states of emergency, empowering their governors to mobilize the National Guard.

President Barack Obama called the governors of the four states on Thursday to discuss preparations for the storm. He declared a state of emergency in Florida and South Carolina, a move that authorized federal agencies to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

“Hurricane Matthew is as serious as it gets. Listen to local officials, prepare, take care of each other,” Obama warned people in the path of the storm in a posting on Twitter.

Hundreds of passenger flights were canceled in south Florida, and cancellations were expected to spread north in coming days along the storm’s path, airlines including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines said.

At 8 p.m. EDT, Matthew was about 75 miles east of Florida’s West Palm Beach, the hurricane center said. It was heading northwest at about 13 mph and was expected to continue on this track through Thursday and early Friday.

In Florida, fuel stations on Thursday afternoon posted “out of gas” signs after cars waited in long lines to fill up. At a Subco gas station in Orlando, the pumps had run dry on Wednesday.

The shop was a stopping point for coastal residents seeking shelter inland. Among them was Jonas Sylvan, 44, of Melbourne, Florida, who planned to hole up in a hotel with his wife, two daughters and dog. “We’re just trying to get away from the coast,” he said. “It’s safer here.”

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Neil Hartnell in Nassau, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Nick Carey in Chicago, Harriet McLeod in Charleston, S.C., Doina Chiacu in Washington, Joseph Guyler Delva in Haiti, Irene Klotz and Laila Kearney; Writing by Frances Kerry and Tom Brown; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)

IMAGE: Drivers make their way on an empty highway prior to the arrival of Hurricane Matthew in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. October 6, 2016.  REUTERS/Javier Galeano