While most of the focus today in the Legislature is on the budget to which House and Senate leaders agreed last night, the lawmakers are tackling other issues during the session's final week. One case in point is the debate in the Senate over debit card fees.
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Leaders in the House and Senate agreed to a $69 billion, no-new-taxes budget following an 11 p.m. conferencing meeting Monday. After the mandatory 72-hour waiting period, it will head to a vote Friday.
Leaders in the House and Senate agreed to a $69 billion following an 11pm conferencing meeting held on Monday night.
While the final budget was closer to the Senates initial proposal than the Houses first draft of $66 billion and relied on additional Medicaid funding that the House initially resisted, House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, was pleased with the final result.
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Lawmakers have proposed to take $69 million from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority and add it to the state budget.
Early Monday morning, budget negotiators agreed that the authority should turn over the money it was banking on for an anticipated road project. Now the project might be dead, and the head of the authority is most unhappy.
The state taking our money for a statewide purpose isnt consistent with our mission, said executive director Joe Waggoner.
Although for a fifth straight year lawmakers have declined to provide state worker pay-raises, union officials Monday said they were satisfied with lawmakers decision to back away from a proposed pay cut.
The House accepted a Senate proposal that will require some 27,000 mid-level managers, lawmakers and other workers pay a modest amount for health coverage for the first time. Public employees across the state who are part of the states pension plan would also have to contribute a small portion of their paycheck to stave-off a looming multi-billion dollar deficit.
Many years ago, I was surprised to receive a letter from an old friend, saying that she had been told that I refused to see campus visitors from Africa.
At the time, I was so bogged down with work that I had agreed to see only one visitor to the Stanford campus-- and it so happens that he was from Africa. He just happened to come along when I had a little breathing room from the work I was doing in my office.
Attorney General Bill McCollum and law enforcement could soon have a bigger stick to crack down on Medicaid fraud.
On Monday afternoon, the Florida Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 8, which will coordinate efforts and focus resources on detecting and deterring Medicaid fraud. It also adds resources for tackling public assistance fraud.
"None of our state's limited resources should ever wind up enriching those who would prey on our friends and neighbors receiving Medicaid," said Sen. Joe Negron, R-Port St. Lucie, the bill's sponsor.
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With more than 70 bills on the calendar when it convened, the House kicked off the last week of the legislative session by meeting all day Monday and focused on redistricting measures that Floridians will vote on in November.
The House voted to add a new constitutional amendment measure on redistricting, joining two other measures already on the ballot. Introduced by Rep. Dorothy Hukill, R-Port Orange, the amendment would have the state follow existing federal guidelines when creating new congressional and legislative districts. The measure passed on a 74-42 vote.
How do we love thee, Dave Aronberg? Let us count the ways: You're an accomplished state senator, quite good-looking and Harvard-educated. Is it really any surprise that people are falling all over themselves to endorse you for attorney general?
Nah. The surprise is in how they're doing it.
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