Crist Urged to Call Special Session For Oil Spill

Florida senators Dan Gelber, Rick Kriseman and Keith Fitzgerald are urging Gov. Charlie Crist to call a special session for the oil spill edging closer to Florida's coast.

“I renew my call for Governor Crist to summon the legislature back into a summer special session to confront head on solutions to these complex challenges,” said Sen. Gelber. “The special session must include aggressive measures that protect Floridians by ensuring that the state has the proper laws in place to hold BP and others accountable coupled with a constitutional amendment to ban near-shore drilling.”

“Inaction by the legislature is not an option Floridians can tolerate,” said Rep. Fitzgerald. “We must accept the fact that families and businesses throughout Florida are having their livelihoods and their primary source of income washed away from this horrific incident. And it’s time that the pro-oil supporters put their interests aside and allow the legislature to get to work on solutions that can mitigate the pain.”

“These are proposals that must be addressed immediately,” said Rep. Kriseman. “Passage of this legislation will provide short-term relief and long-term protections. I applaud Governor Crist for being open-minded and seriously considering our requests, and trust he will continue to put the interests of Florida and its citizens first despite the efforts of some out-of-touch politicians in the Florida Legislature.”

The senators want to special to grant the Attorney General environmental crime powers. I don't see Bill McCollum suddenly becoming a consumer advocate and going after BP. The senators also want to discuss victim claims and business compensation. The Florida government is broke. Crist and the legislature will probably lean on the Obama administration and BP for compensation. What the legislature needs to do is think of longterm environmental disaster management and make sure state and federal agencies respond quickly and communicate.

Update: Crist has Economic Impact Assessment work group crunching numbers on potential economic damages from the spill. Crist sent a letter to BP asking for the corporation to work with the Office of Policy and Budget and the Florida Department of Revenue. The Florida government will need data from BP to calculate the economic liability.

The Tax Shift: Yachts and Planes

The Florida House Finance and Tax Committee was suppose to eliminate $29 million in sales tax loopholes. The end result was tax cuts for yachts and private airplanes. The Committee added tax loophole that places $25 million against the budget. Republicans say the yacht tax breaks for to promote job growth.

Jim Waldman, D-Coconut Creek, proposed a 6 cent sales tax on bottled water. That was quickly killed.

"Water is an incredibly valuable resource in Florida; we have shortfalls all the time," said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, who tried to attach the amendment to a wide-ranging committee bill to make changes to the tax code.

Blue Crystal Bottled Water and Silver Springs Bottled Water are major companies in Florida. Candidates from either parties do not want to get out the bad side of these financial powerhouses.

The Florida House doesn't have the stomach or the maturity to deal with the budget crisis. Republicans say people are buying yachts outside the state. Purchases out of Florida is beyond the state's control. The yacht industry is not a huge growth market for jobs. To sell this as job creation is disingenuous.

Democrats want to make the sales tax holiday permanent. Republicans ignored their pleas.

''If we can afford a bill that helps out struggling families in tough economic times then we probably can afford this going into the future,'' said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, a Sarasota Democrat who sponsored the amendment.

"I don't think it's a good idea to make this permanent, said Chairwoman Ellyn Bogdanoff. "This is premature, especially in these economic times. I would encourage everyone to vote against it."


Republicans deem yachts are more imporatant than school clothes and hurricane supplies. Fuck the middle class.

House Democratic Caucus Letter to Chrlie Crist

The House Democratic Caucus sent a letter to Charlie Crist expressing their concerns about the FCAT. 204,000 tests are being regraded because of errors in the FCAT system.

Below is the letter.

The Honorable Charlie Crist
PL-05 The Captial
400 South Monroe St.

Dear Governor Crist:

Last week's troubling news about the scoring of third grade reading portion of the 2006 Florida Comprehensive Assestment Test has shaken the confidence of parents, school officials and state political leaders as to the test's reliability.

While we commend the Department of Education for disclosing the mistake and taking action to help avoid similar problems on future FCATs, the House Democratic Caucus believes more needs to be done to restore confidence in public school accountability. It concerns us, however, that it took the DOE a year to discover the scoring discrepancies after questions were initially raised.

House Democrats believe that nothing short of a major overhaul of the current FCAT-based accountability system needs to take place by next year. In the interim, here are some things that we believe are needed to begin getting a clear assessment of where things stand today.

* A complete audit of all FCAT results since the test was implemented in 2000, not just rescoring of the 2006 test. The audit should be performed by an independent organization that Republican and Democratic leadersin the Legislature can support.

* An analysis of other ways mistakes could be made, not just using inadequate anchor questions, which could lead to skewed test scores resulting in children being inappropriately promoted or retained.

* An analysis of the impact of the 2006 third grade reading test's errors on: students who should have been retained under the state's mandatory retention law but were not; the distribution of school recognition money; compliance with the Adequate Yearly Progress provision in the No Child Left Behind Act; compliance and distribution of federal dollars to Title I schools; teacher merit pay; and supplemental academic instruction funds.

* A comprehensive look at the longitudinal and latitudinal impacts of the scoring error on all grade levels

* An assessment of whether any laws were broken by promoting children to the fourth grade who otherwise would have been retained in the third grade because of the mandotory retention law.

* An analysis of how children performed in the fourth grade this year who otherwise would have been retained in the third grade under the mandatory retention law had the 2006 FCAT been scored correctly.

Again, we believe these are matters that need addressing to begin a comprehensive assessment of accountability reform. We must start that process now, with your help and that of Republican leaders in the House and Senate, if we hope to restore confidence in public school accountability.

It should be the highest priority for Florida political leaders to make certain that our children receive the highest quality and most reliable public school education available. Time is of the essence.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Rep. Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, District 109

Rep. Shelley Vana, District 85

Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, District 69