It's the second day of the Legislative session and already the stream of people through my door stretches from breakfast to dinner.
The gun gets shot off on the first day. The first day is full of excitement and trepidation because of the challenges we face. It's largely ceremonial, and yet very, very humbling. There are lights. There's media. There are people in the gallery. Flowers on every desk. You feel a sense of the wonderful faith that people in your district place in you and that sent you here.
Then, after the State of the State address by the governor, everyone turns to the real business of the day. For me, that means balancing the budget.
I spent our first full day locked up in my office in meeting after meeting. I've been talking to a lot of education advocates, some of whom are asking us to hold harmless certain programs. That's going to be a very hard thing to do, given we are facing a $3 billion shortfall.
I know the people who are dropping by. For instance, I had a constituent come by my office named Chip Wichmaniwsky, the executive director of an education foundation in Pasco County. They're trying to see if we can hold harmless their budget -- we give them $1.6 million for a consortium of education foundations. The meeting was about protecting their foundations.
What I told them was that we're going to do the very best we can, but we can never promise them anything. We have to stay away from making promises. The reality is we have a shortfall, and the reality is everyone is going to have to share in the cuts.
The Legislature must also find ways to prioritize, to find what's regarded as our core programs and see which ones are successful and which are not. If your program is not currently included in our core programs, you should be very worried.
A man with Space Florida named Mark Bontrager came by today, too. He was advocating for trying to protect space program jobs. Another person, with the governor's office, David Foy, came by to advocate for funding for the AP program in schools. The AP program is where you get college credit. We met in regards to the governor's AP legislation.
Then you have the media coming around always asking for updates, and I always tell them the truth, though sometimes that's not much.
So, you have a wide array of issues you have to be aware of and there's never a dull moment in session. There's never a moment that people aren't approaching you with a problem and there's never a moment that you don't find interesting. And then tomorrow ... you pick up where you left off.
This is my fourth year in the Legislature, so I have a routine. I'm usually up by 5:30 a.m. and end my day by 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. The day is filled with meetings, so I tend to wait until night to catch up on e-mails and family. It's the time I call my wife Courtney and daughter Ella Kate, who turned two on Saturday.
Rep. Will W. Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, chairs the Education Policy Council and serves on Full Appropriations Council, Education & Economic Development, Full Appropriations Council on General Government & Health Care, PreK-12 Appropriations Committee, Rules & Calendar Council, Select Policy Council on Strategic & Economic Planning.
