Gov. Rick Scott's biggest failure: Chief of Staff Steve MacNamara

Rick Scott’s biggest failure as governor has a name: Steve MacNamara.

An at-times ethically challenged Tallahassee insider, MacNamara was hired by the neophyte governor to avoid the very type of major embarrassment Scott suffered last week.

Last Tuesday at a Miami Freedom Tower event, Scott ceremonially signed a law cracking down on firms that do business in Cuba and Syria. But he then issued a letter that called the very law he signed unenforceable and unconstitutional because it infringes on foreign trade.

The about-face transformed Scott from Cuban exiles’ toast of the town into a suspected foe politically undermining their bill to help big business.

The Cuban-American Republican lawmakers at Scott’s side were blindsided by his letter. They wondered if his office was double dealing. Even the team supporting Attorney General Pam Bondi — Scott’s most-powerful and helpful elected ally in the state — is suspicious.

So the governor lost face with big political allies. His poll numbers remain dangerously low. But MacNamara gets to keep his $189,000 annual salary to keep Scott’s administration running smoothly.

“Clearly,” said U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, “the governor’s staff has not served him well and has really hurt him.”

The Rick Scott of 2010 could have predicted as much when he campaigned against Tallahassee insiders. But after a few rookie missteps, Scott last year hired MacNamara from the office of the Senate President, who incidentally had one of the most politically embarrassing years under MacNamara’s watch.

In the Senate, the AP reported Friday, MacNamara "helped steer a no-bid consulting contract worth $360,000 to a friend who now leads a task force rooting out state government waste."

Questions about MacNamara’s integrity go back a decade. In between his stints as staff chief to the Florida House Speaker in 1999 and 2000, MacNamara secretly worked out a lobbying gig to help persuade the state to reverse course and permit a cement plant on the scenic Ichetucknee River. More than two years later, the Commission on Ethics cleared him after another lobbyist and MacNamara ally changed his story.

Once on Scott’s team, MacNamara the insider got to work.

MacNamara walled off the governor from others, played agency heads against each other, hired loyalists at six-figure salaries (paying them more than women in the same jobs), forced out his rivals and helped out his buddies, according to a Herald/Times story Sunday. Tea partiers have expressed concern, noting the governor has vetoed less government spending — a favorite Tallahassee endeavor — when compared to Scott’s first year without MacNamara.

More here

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/06/2786591/gov-rick-scotts-biggest-failure.html#storylink=cpy

 

Photographer for nine governors had a VIP angle

With his camera, Eric Tournay documented the days of Florida's last nine governors — cataloging Wayne Mixson's three days in office to Jeb Bush's eight years.

Tournay, 62, was there when Bob Graham sent 1,000 National Guard troops to curb the Miami race riots in 1980. He felt the tension in 2000, when Bush and his brother awaited the results of Florida's famous presidential recount.

He was there, too, when Charlie Crist spoke his wedding vows — complete with protesters chanting outside the ceremony.

Last year he welcomed a new man to the Governor's Mansion: Rick Scott.

Gov. Rick Scott creates 'blue ribbon task force' to study university system

After rejecting university leaders' requests for more funding and vetoing a proposal to allow some universities to impose unlimited tuition increases, Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Friday announced a task force to evaluate the state's university system and suggest ideas for reform.

"The state has a vested interest in ensuring its higher education system produces world-class talent," Scott said in a press release. "It's time to assess the progress of prior reform efforts and identify strategies to improve efficiencies and enhance the system's effectiveness as an economic catalyst."

Everglades settlement in the works between feds and state

Peace may finally be at hand in the decades-long Everglades dirty-water war.

Eight months after Gov. Rick Scott flew to Washington to extend a political olive branch and personally pitch Florida’s latest plan for stopping the flow of polluted farm, ranch and yard runoff into the Everglades, state and federal negotiators are on the verge of an accord expected to be hailed by both sides as a major milestone.

A settlement crafted with the goal of resolving two protracted and paralyzing federal lawsuits — one goes back almost a quarter century, the other eight years — could be soon finalized, possibly within the month, according to officials on both sides of the confidential negotiations.

The agreement would commit Florida to a significantly expanded slate of Everglades restoration projects pegged at an estimated $890 million. Still, that’s a considerably smaller price tag than a $1.5 billion plan drawn up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that a Miami federal judge has threatened to impose.

Most key technical issues — such as the size of additional artificial marshes used to scrub dirty, nutrient-laced storm runoff that has poisoned vast swaths of the Everglades — have been largely sorted out. But both sides cautioned the deal could still be delayed as negotiators work through the nuts and bolts of rolling out, implementing and enforcing a complex and likely controversial agreement.

Story by Curtis Morgan here.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/05/v-fullstory/2785647/settlement-close-in-glades-cleanup.html#storylink=cpy

As MacNamara exerts control, critics say he's become state's 'shadow governor'

Steve MacNamara has officially become Tallahassee’s Wizard of Oz.

The lawyer-lobbyist turned university professor is the brass knuckles gatekeeper and omnipotent advisor to Gov. Rick Scott.

Since becoming the governor’s chief of staff last July, MacNamara has controlled access to the governor and his schedule, assumed authority over appointments and dictated press releases and policy memos. He has directed the governor’s message and reached into the bowels of agencies to remove people he doesn’t like and install favorites.

“No one gets in to see the Wizard. Not no one, no how,” reads the sign on the way into MacNamara’s office, an excerpt from the famous movie.

Now, nine months later, the governor’s relations with lawmakers have improved. Florida’s unemployment rate is down. Scott had a successful legislative session with a modest agenda and, while his approval ratings remain low, they are on the rise.

“I think he’s doing a great job,’’ Scott said.

“I don’t think there’s any question he’s made a difference for this governor,’’ said Thrasher, now a St. Augustine state senator.

Scott’s closest supporters and some Tea Party followers, however, say that the union between the newcomer governor and the wily insider is for them a Faustian bargain. Though they refuse to be quoted by name, several advisors to the governor — both inside and out of government — fear Scott is squandering his conservative credentials and his outsider brand by engaging in deal-making with special interests who have connections to MacNamara.

His critics call him Florida’s "shadow governor," noting that agency contracts have been redirected, gambling allowed to expand, and a policy to privatize state prisons, which Scott didn’t focus on during his campaign, has become an administration priority.

“I voted for the outsider and he has hired the consummate insider and he is acting like an insider now,’’ said Henry Kelley of the Fort Walton Beach Tea Party. “It’s very disappointing.” Story here.