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Article
Courtesy of The Miami Herald
By Steve
Bousquet and Jeremy Wallace
Published
July 1, 2015
Gov. Rick Scott’s sudden and sweeping vetoes of
lawmakers’ projects has stirred up more bad blood with the Senate that’s
likely to linger.
It won’t take long for the governor to find out the price he’ll pay the
next time he needs support for his own priorities. The next session
begins in just six months.
Acting with a swiftness not seen before in Florida, Scott blind-sided
legislators from the cozy privacy of his Capitol office last Tuesday and
wiped out $461 million for virtually every type of program, from free
medical clinics to college construction to programs to help ex-offenders
rejoin society.
“The governor kept his word,” said
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, whose Panhandle district voted
overwhelmingly for Scott last fall. “He said he would punish
the constituents of legislators who disagreed with him, and
he kept that promise.”
During the regular session, senators were summoned one by
one to Scott’s office and said they were threatened with
reprisals if they blocked his agenda.
Scott’s assault on spending is viewed as a tactic to appeal
to fiscally conservative voters as he seeks a possible
campaign for U.S. Senate in 2018. He has not stated his
future intentions but senators say it’s obvious.
“It’s unfortunate that the messaging
strategy needed to achieve the governor’s political agenda
comes at the expense of the most vulnerable people in our
state,” said Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando,
after Scott vetoed his projects to help disabled children
and the University of Central Florida. |
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Gov. Rick Scott rejected dozens of projects,
including those he has supported in previous years, often saying
they circumvented proper channels or were duplicative programs.
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Senators now say they are drawing up lists of jobs that were sacrificed
to Scott’s veto pen in an effort to show that he undermined his own
signature priority.
“He talks about jobs and then he turns around and vetoes them,” said
Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, after Scott erased $1 million for a Pensacola
industrial park, the FOIL Corridor.
Scott denied having ulterior motives. He said he vetoed projects that
bypassed state agency review or would not benefit the state as a whole.
“I go through the budget and try to find out what’s best for Florida
citizens. This is their money. It’s not government money,” Scott said.
“I’m going to do my best to make sure that money is spent wisely.”
But fellow Republicans accuse Scott of inconsistency.
As a candidate for re-election last year, he approved state money for a
Holocaust memorial on Miami Beach, but this year he vetoed it. His veto
message said the project was not subject to a competitive review “based
on measurable outcomes.”
Last year he approved state money to Quest Kids for children with
developmental disabilities, but this year he vetoed it.
Last year he approved state money to IMG Academy, an elite private
school for athletes in Bradenton. This year, he vetoed it.
This year, Scott approved pay raises for state troopers in six counties,
including Pinellas and Hillsborough and for driver license examiners.
But he vetoed a $2,000 raise for forestry firefighters, which incensed
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a Republican.
What’s more, Scott repeatedly vetoed legislative decisions to carry
money over from this year to next to complete projects that he supported
a year ago, but are behind schedule. They include completion of a
Patriots’ Trail in Fort Walton Beach honoring military veterans, named
in honor of the late George “Bud” Day, one of America’s most decorated
heroes who was John McCain’s P.O.W. cellmate in Vietnam.
Scott said that project “circumvents the established grant review
process,” but a powerful Republican senator challenged his logic and
noted that Scott approved it a year ago.
“It just seems to be an end run around the appropriations process to
give the governor a second bite of the apple,” said Senate
Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon.
Lee and other legislators went on a late-night spending binge in the
final days of a three-week special session, spreading $300 million in
“supplemental” projects across the state and drawing criticism for a
lack of transparency.
Scott vetoed many of them but approved others.
Going forward, Scott’s problems are compounded by the calendar.
Legislative committee meetings will start anew in September in
preparation for a session that begins on Jan. 5, 2016. The time for
tempers to cool is much shorter than usual.
Senators demonstrated their willingness to push Scott around this
spring, and things could get worse. The Senate has the sole power to
confirm or reject agency heads who work for Scott and refused to confirm
a dozen of them, and they will lose their jobs if they are not confirmed
next session.
To override any of Scott’s vetoes would require a two-thirds vote by
both chambers, but that’s highly unlikely. For all the ill will in the
Senate, Scott remains very popular among House Republicans.
The House majority leader, Rep. Dana Young, R-Tampa, had projects
vetoed, too, such as $15.8 million for the USF Heart Institute, but
defended Scott’s use of line-item veto power.
“There is a lot of grumbling about the budget vetoes, but I take a more
practical view,” she said. “It would be unfortunate for members to take
it personally.”
Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Hialeah, said Scott’s vetoes were in line with the
House’s conservative views. He said senators have a “loose
interpretation” of fiscal conservatism and that the House is closer to
Scott’s line of thinking ideologically.
“We fought shoulder to shoulder on that (health care) expansion façade,”
said Oliva, who’s in line to be House speaker in 2018. “I think it is
impressive what he is doing.”
Oliva lost millions of dollars in water projects for his Miami-Dade
district, and the county had the largest dollar amount in vetoes,
according to an analysis by the Florida Center for Investigative
Reporting.
Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, was upset that Scott axed his projects, one
of which would have benefited USF’s Sarasota-Manatee campus, but he said
blasting the governor is wrong.
“There’s no benefit to taking shots,” Boyd said.
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