The Fine Print

Whose budget pork is it anyway?

This got some quick attention earlier this week but it merits a bit of discussion.

Florida legislative leaders announced that for the third year in a row that they won't allow fellow legislators to put in community budget requests -- or the Tallahassee version of earmarks.

The rationale from House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos was that the state's ongoing fiscal crisis means that allowing members to file in such requests would "create unrealistic funding expectations for the coming year."

There's no doubt that the coming year will be tough again. Lawmakers will head into the spring session with a projected budget shortfall that could range anywhere from $2.5 billion to as small as $828 million depending on what legislators decide to fund.A key factor is that chunks of the federal stimulus will drop out of the budget.

State law allows for community budget issue requests. This is a process where cities, counties as well as private and non-profit organizations can request funding for items like, oh, astroturf for a South Florida flag football league.

But local projects can still get funded without these community budget requests, even in tough budget years. There were several local projects that were placed in the state budget by powerful legislators during the 2010 session.

The only difference is that without the community budget requests it's much harder to figure out where they came from and who wanted them.

CBIR's as they are also known usually require a lawmaker to list the background of a project and even the names and phone numbers of those who are asking for the money. The item is also supposed to include whether it was requested by a state agency or has local matching money.

The one caveat, however, is that top leaders, including House speakers and Senate presidents rarely attach their name to CBIR's even though they wind up being instrumental in getting millions set aside to their own pet projects.

During the 2010 campaign season Democrat Loranne Ausley, a candidate for Chief Financial Officer, said that the Legislature should reinstate the system of requiring the community budget requests so that "politicians must own their pork spending." She ripped then Senate President Jeff Atwater for jettisoning community budget issue requests.

When asked about it this fall, Atwater was fairly dismissive of Ausley's ideas.

He noted that back in 2007 - the year that former Rep. Ray Sansom put in money for a $6 million hangar and the year that lawmakers put together a controversial bond deal for the First DCA Courthouse - that the Legislature did use the community budget requests but that things got in the budget anyway.

The hangar, of course, led eventually to Sansom's indictment while the courthouse continues to generate headlines.

Atwater contends the changes that lawmakers used during the last two sessions are superior. This included unveiling budget conforming bills in public meetings and forcing university officials to appear at a public hearing to make requests for construction dollars.

The question is whether or not Cannon or Haridopolos will retain these practices. The new Senate and House rules passed last week were silent on how lawmakers will handle the budget conferences during the 2011 session.

House and Senate staff have suggested that they will likely handle it as they did this past spring, but there's been no official word yet.

 

 

Rubio: I am not under investigation nor will I ever be

The furor over the still unreleased Republican Party of Florida audit this past weekend prompted the campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist to take several shots at rival Marco Rubio. After a closed door session on Saturday, the party said it may sue to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars that Crist and former chairman Jim Greer spent on non-party related travel expenses.

Danny Kanner, a spokesman for Crist, said the party should worry about whether or not Rubio is under investigation for the way he used his Republican Party of Florida issued credit card instead of inferring that Crist may need to pay back thousands of money to the party. The Crist campaign says the move by the party is a political payback aimed at Crist, who bolted the party to run as an independent.

Rubio, however, flatly insisted on Friday that he is not under investigation by either the FBI and IRS - and he boldly predicted that he never will be.

"It's just not true,'' said Rubio following his well-received speech at the 2010 Victory Dinner at Walt Disney World. "I have never been contacted by anyone. I'm not going to because it's not true."

Rubio continued to insist that he used his RPOF credit card for “political purposes” and that the “few instances” that it wasn’t that it was “paid back at the time.”

It's clear, however, that there is some type of investigation into party finances that has been underway for some time now. And Al Hoffman, a former U.S. ambassador and top fundraiser for the party, said at the Saturday RPOF meeting that he has been questioned by both the FBI and IRS about party spending matters.

It's just another reminder that despite RPOF chairman John Thrasher's bold statement before donors and party faithful on Friday night that the "dark period" of the party is over there is still plenty of fallout that could come from Jim Greer-credit cards-Ray Sansom series of scandals.

Now it's unclear how much of this will unfold before Election Day. The trial of Sansom - the former House speaker charged with using his power as budget chairman to steer money to a political donor and developer - has now been scheduled for early next year.

Greer's trial on charges that he steered party money to a shell company that he set up with former executive director Delmar Johnson was initially scheduled for October. But Damon Chase, an attorney for Greer, said the case will not move forward until the defense team has had a chance to put under oath Thrasher, incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon. They all signed a proposed severance package back in January that says that what Greer did as chairman was "proper, lawful and appropriate."

"I can't wait for the depositions where you sit them down and ask them questions," Chase said this past week. "We're going to walk into court, and go, boom, boom, boom, with the testimony."

Haridopolos, Cannon and Thrasher said they aren't bothered by the prospect of giving a deposition.

"I look forward to justice being done in that case and look forward to cooperating anyway I can,'' Cannon said.

Priceless: $80,000 for Greer Force One and $35k for party purge

 

So here's the gift that keeps on giving. When Jim Greer was still chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Greer and then executive director Delmar Johnson decided that a good way to be "eco-friendly" and save some serious cash was to send out an electronic Christmas card instead of real ones on paper.

But one of the early drafts drawn up the party decided to poke fun at the whole credit card mess and even the contributions of Ponzi fund schemer Scott Rothstein. There's funny little statements about Greer's airplane travels and security detail to "orchestrate the party purge" as well as references to former House Speaker Ray Sansom's American Express expenses as well as Greer's time at the Breakers.

Greer of course was forced to step down from the party earlier this year and is now the subject of a criminal investigation into whether he steered party money to a company he controlled. Greer has insisted he has done nothing wrong and that the party is just trying to get out of paying what the party promised to pay him if he stepped down.

"It was just purely an idea,'' explained Katie Gordon Betta, a spokeswoman for the party about the proposed Christmas card. "We kind of liked the idea of doing a spoof on the credit cards."

Here's the card that the party wound up sending out instead.

Crist, Sansom and that $6 million mystery

As the ongoing legal drama over the fate of former House Speaker Ray Sansom moves forward, there remains one key unanswered question.

Why did Gov. Charlie Crist decide against vetoing the $6 million budget item that is now at the center of the charges against Sansom?

Sansom, R-Destin, was charged this past week with grand theft and conspiracy to commit grand theft. The two new charges stem from the same allegation that Sansom tucked money into the 2007 state budget by claiming it was a building to help out Northwest Florida State College when in fact it was money for an airport hangar wanted by a Panhandle developer and contributor.

In 2007, Crist vetoed more than $450 million in items included in that year's state budget. Internal budget documents from the governor's office show that Crist used his veto pen to eliminate spending items being sought by some of the Legislature's top leaders at the time including both then-House Speaker Marco Rubio and Senate President Ken Pruitt. Read more about the veto mystery here at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Here's the internal budget documents that show that the governor's staff clearly identified the $6 million budget item for the college as questionable. The document also show that the governor's office had linked Sansom's name to $75 million worth of budget items for that year.

Download Ray Sansom Member Issues 2007

Crist wound up slashing $35.2 million worth of projects that Sansom's name was linked to, although two of the projects were for Valencia Community College and one was for Florida A&M University. Interestingly enough, all three of these projects were also being sought by then-Sen. Dan Webster, the Orlando Republican who endorsed Tom Gallagher over Crist in the 2006 Republican primary for governor.

Governor's office budget documents from 2007 also show the following:

Sen. Jeff Atwater, the North Palm Beach Republican already in line to become Senate President, was linked to $33.1 million worth of budget requests reviewed by Crist's office. Crist vetoed 17 separate items totaling $11.06 million including money for an emergency operations center that Crist's budget staff said circumvented the existing budget process. The $6 million appropriation that Sansom wanted for the Destin Airport was flagged by the governor's budget office for not being on any list and that the "college did not request the project."

Download Jeff Atwater Member Issues 2007

Then Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, was linked to $120.69 million worth of projects back in 2007 with the largest bulk of the money going to Florida Atlantic University. Crist vetoed $31.5 million worth of items linked to Pruitt including $14 million that Senate staff told the governor's office that Sen. Carey Baker also wanted for a performing arts center at Lake-Sumter Community College.

Download Ken Pruitt Member Issues 2007

As previously reported the governor's budget office also had a long list of budget items linked to Rubio.

Rubio's name was associated with $98.8 million worth of budget projects, including $80 million for a genetics research institute being established at the University of Miami. Crist wound up slashing $3.02 million sought by the Miami Republican including $2.5 million for a cancer center at UM and $300,000 that would have been used to buy television time to highlight Florida golf courses on the Golf Channel.

Download Marco Rubio Member Issues 2007.