Governor to keep $5 million Transparency 2.0 on the shelf and seek bids

A budget tracking web site paid for by Florida taxpayers but never made public will remain on the shelf as Gov. Rick Scott announced Friday that he will seek bids to create a public budget watchdog site and the vendors of the existing system can get in line with everyone else.

“We have decided to begin a competitive procurement process to contract with a company that best demonstrates their ability to publish web-based, user-friendly budget data at the lowest cost to taxpayers,’’ said Melissa Sellers, communications director for the governor.

The Florida Senate paid $5 million to Spider Data Services to develop Transparency 2.0 for use by the Senate and its staff to monitor the budget, state contracts and personnel services. Although the system was ready to launch in November 2011, it was never unveiled.

A Herald/Times review of Transparency 2.0 shows that, unlike other transparency web sites maintained by the legislature, the governor’s office or the chief financial officer, Transparency 2.0 allows for comprehensive and easy data searching for every line item in the budget. The system supplies planning and budget documents, and audit reports as well as contract information and links to personnel expenses.

It also shows which contracts were inserted into the budget by legislative leadership, offers a comprehensive look at billions of dollars in outside contracts and allows for the public to track budget data that today is controlled by agency and legislative staff.

The governor’s office has not ruled out the possibility that Transparency 2.0 may be the platform for the governor’s web site because Spider Data Services will be allowed to compete with other bidders, Sellers said. The bid process will be open to the public “while also ensuring we save as much taxpayer money as possible” and will begin in the new year, she said. There is no date for its scheduled completion. Story here.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/14/3142680/gov-scott-calls-for-bids-to-build.html#storylink=cpy

Why Gaetz chose Latvala to handle ethics and elections

It wasn't his first, second, or even 10th choice for a Senate committee post.

But Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, will play a pivotal role as chairman of the Ethics & Elections Committee as it focuses on two of Senate President Don Gaetz's top priorities: raising ethical standards for legislators and retooling election laws.

Gaetz and Latvala were on opposite sides during the fall campaign in key Senate races that will help decide the future leadership of the 40-member body. But Gaetz said Latvala was the best choice to tackle ethics and elections issues because of his own experience, dating to his years as a young GOP operative in the 1980s. He also said Latvala's integrity has not been questioned and that he knows how to assemble bipartisan coalitions, a necessary ingredient for passage of tough legislation.

"Jack's not a virgin," Gaetz said. "He's had all this experience, but kept his record extraordinarily clean." 

"Nobody in the Senate has had more experience in Florida elections than Jack Latvala," Gaetz went on. "He's been an operative, a consultant, a candidate, and a campaign manager for more elections than anyone. So he has a depth of understanding of the nuances of the elections process ... I also think it's important to have someone who doesn't have a problem, a skeleton, an anchor dragging behind them on ethics issues." 

As he gaveled the committee's first session to order two weeks ago, Latvala said: "We each have our reasons for probably being on this committee. Some of us asked for it and some of us probably didn't."  

All senators listed their committee preferences. Latvala's top three choices were the Appropriations Subcommittee for Transportation and Economic Development, Community Affairs, and Regulated Industries. He got the first two; Gaetz placed him on a newly-created Gaming Committee, which may eclipse Regulated Industries in seeing gambling-related action next session.

-- Steve Bousquet

Senate: transparency contract is under review but public access is not an option

Senate President Don Gaetz asked his legal counsel, George Levesque, to review the Senate's contract with the company that developed the software program that is the foundation for the Senate's budget transparency program, Transparency 2.0.

As the Herald/Times reported last month, the Senate tested the program and it was available for senators to use during the 2012 budget cycle but was kept on hold. A new report by the watchdog groups Integrity Florida and the First Amendment Foundation has concluded that the web site, developed by Spider Data systems and paid $4.5 million by the Senate, "would save millions of dollars" if legislators, and the public, were given access to it.

The contract with the company expires this month, however, and the Senate has no plan to take the program public nor to make it available for Senate staff to use.

Gaetz spokeswoman Katie Betta said in a statement late Wednesday that the Senate president is "planning to meet with the vendor to review the product and their proposal for a contract extension" and will determine whether the Senate will make the program available to senators and staff then. 

Here's Betta's full statement:

Gaetz announces committee assignments, pushes bipartisanship

The committee assignments are out for the Florida Senate, and Sen. President Don Gaetz said he worked across the aisle to ensure fairness and effectiveness during a time when the Senate has a large new freshman class.

“The Senate is blessed to have Senators whose talents reflect the experience and abilities of the Floridians each Senator represents,” said Gaetz, R-Niceville. “In determining the attached committee assignments, each Senator’s subject area expertise and interests were considered, as well as the work we need to accomplish over the next two years.” 

Gaetz said that all 40 Senators were assigned as either a chair or a vice chair of a committee.

He assigned Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, as budget chair and Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, as Rule Chair, rounding out his leadership team.

Negron will also lead the select committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the 11-member group works on Florida’s implementation of Obamacare.

There are five Democrats serving as chairs of committees, compared to two last year. Two of the committees chaired by Democrats this year are less critical joint committees.

Several committees are split between Republican chairs and Democratic vice chairs, or vice versa—giving Democrats more clout than they had last year when chairmanships and vice chairmanships were overwhelmingly Republican. Committee-leadership in the Senate is also more evenly split between parties than the Florida House.

The party breakdown in the Senate is 26 Republicans and 14 Democrats and, compared to a 28-12 split last year. There are more than a dozen freshman Senators after the once-a-decade redistricting process.

The budget committee is the most lopsided, with 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats.

Gaetz said he has asked each Senator to serve on two appropriations subcommittees.

“My goal is to ensure that ensure all Senators, new and returning, understand what is included in the base budget so that each Senator can be equipped with the information necessary to make decisions on what should be funded moving forward,” he said.

Other key assignments:

Ethics and Elections

Jack Latvala, Chair
Eleanor Sobel, Vice Chair (Sobel is running an independent task force to figure out what went wrong during this year’s elections). 

Education
John Legg, Chair
William Montford, Vice Chair 

Rules
John Thrasher, Chair
Chris Smith, Vice Chair

Health Policy
Aaron Bean, Chair
Eleanor Sobel, Vice Chair

Banking and Insurance
David Simmons, Chair
Jeff Clemens, Vice Chair

Judiciary
Tom Lee, Chair
Darren Soto, Vice Chair 

Select Committee on Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Joe Negron, Chair
Eleanor Sobel, Vice Chair

Gaming
Garrett Richter, Chair
Maria Sachs, Vice Chair

See other committee assignments here:  

The Full memo from Gaetz is below:

For 20 state senators, it's almost campaign time again

The 2012 election campaign may have just ended, but for half of the members of the Florida Senate, it will soon be time to reload and run again. That's because 20 senators who received two-year terms in the new reapportionment plan face re-election in 2014. The two-year anomaly occurs only in a once-a-decade redistricting year, to maintain the constitutional requirement for staggered Senate terms. 

Every senator in an even-numbered district received a two-year term in 2012. Those who were just elected for the first time will be eligible to serve for 10 years, through 2022, if they subsequently win re-election to two additional four-year terms in 2014 and 2018.

The district numbers were randomly assigned to Senate districts last March. The Senate secretary drew balls from a basket in a drawing similar to a  lottery.

Sixteen of the 20 senators who will face voters in 2014 are Republicans. They are Greg Evers, Aaron Bean, John Thrasher, Dorothy Hukill, David Simmons, Thad Altman, Wilton Simpson, Jack Latvala, Jeff Brandes, Tom Lee, Bill Galvano, Nancy Detert, Lizbeth Benacquisto, Joe Negron, Rene Garcia and Miguel Diaz de la Portilla. 

Of that group, only Brandes has opened a re-election campaign account for 2014.

Negron and Thrasher could have the most longevity of all senators in that even-numbered group because both were first elected to fill unexpired partial terms in special elections in 2009.

The four Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2014 are Geraldine Thompson, Darren Soto, Maria Sachs and Oscar Braynon.

And speaking of legislative longevity, the new "Dean" of the Legislature is Democratic Sen. Gwen Margolis of Coconut Grove, who served six years in the House and is starting her 21st year in the Senate, with one two-year break from 2008-2010.

-- Steve Bousquet

Predictable voting debacle? Lawmakers foresaw trouble in 2011, but their proposals were shot down

Many of the problems that surfaced during the 2012 election were predicted by Democratic legislators who tried to soften the impact of a controversial voting law with a slew of pro-voter amendments.

All the amendments to HB 1355 failed in the Republican-dominated House and Senate, though some of the same lawmakers who voted against the reforms now appear to be supporting election reform.

“It’s a little early to say what led to what led to those long lines,” said incoming House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, adding that a committee needs to look at why Florida’s election was plagued by 6-hour lines and a last-in-the-nation presidential result.

Language from the Democrats’ amendments would have expanded the number of early voting sites, limited the length of constitutional amendments and given local election supervisors the option to extend early voting hours on their own if they felt it necessary.

Sec. of State Ken Detzner, Florida’s chief elections official, has said that the length of the ballot and the lack of sufficient early voting sites is what caused the chaos on Election Day.

Amendments and legislation that would have dealt specifically with those issues were rejected by Republican lawmakers, including some in South Florida districts that had lines of up to 9 hours.

One failed amendment would have mandated that local elections supervisors do everything in their power to ensure that no voter waited more than 25 minutes in line.

One after the other, the amendments failed. Now, lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott, who signed HB 1355, are trying to figure out what went so terribly wrong during Florida’s nationally-televised voting debacle.

Here are a few Democrat-backed amendments to HB 1355 that now seem prescient, 18 months after they were offered, and killed, on the floor of the House and Senate.

Newbie Jose Javier Rodriguez poised to defeat Alex Diaz de la Portilla

Political newcomer Jose Javier Rodriguez made a strong showing Tuesday against one of Miami-Dade’s most well-known political figures for a seat in the Florida Legislature.

With some polls open late into the night, Rodriguez had a comfortable lead over veteran Republican lawmaker Alex Diaz de la Portilla in the hard-fought battle for state House District 112.

“We were talking to voters everyday,” Rodriguez said. “We really ran a really grassroots campaign. It was never about my opponent. It was never about the partisan battle lines in Tallahassee either.”

In other races, South Floridians opted to send familiar faces back to Tallahassee.

Voters favored incumbent Gwen Margolis over newcomer John Couriel in the closely watched race for Senate District 35.

More on South Florida's other state House and Senate races here.

'Soft-money,' big checks fuel lawmakers' personal committees

Florida legislators have padded their personal political committees with more than $20 million in special interest donations this election cycle, using the funds to buy attack ads, help colleagues win races and, occasionally, pay for travel, meals and perks.

More and more, special interest groups are sending five- and six-figure campaign checks to lawmakers through committees as a way to avoid the usual $500 cap on individual donations, a Times/Herald analysis shows.

The Florida Medical Association, for example, contributed $100,000 this cycle to a political committee controlled by incoming Senate President Don Gaetz and others. Disney donated $190,000 to another GOP-controlled group, Protect our Liberty.

And then there's GOP super-donor and Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, who pumped $250,000 into House Speaker-designate Will Weatherford's Committee for a Conservative House.

Decried by critics as slush funds, these "committees of continuous existence," or CCEs, allow powerful lawmakers to amass huge campaign treasure chests and spend the money with broad latitude. Each day, thousands of dollars course through the political system, flowing between CCEs, interest groups, consultants and lawmakers. By the time the money reaches voters in the form of a campaign ad, it can be difficult to know the true source of the funding.

More here

Couriel's latest mailer criticizes Margolis, but it's not what it appears

The latest campaign mailer sent out by supporters of Republican John Couriel’s state Senate campaign has a bit of a Through the Looking Glass feel to it because things really aren’t as they appear. 

For starters, the ad by a political committee backing Couriel attacks his opponent, Democrat Sen. Gwen Margolis of Miami, of being so close to lobbyists that “she travels on a lurxurious private jet to the State Legislature in Tallahassee…paid for by an H.M.O. special interest lobbyist and the taxpayers.” 

Then, it repeats the misleading claims that as a state senator Margolis had something to do with the Affordable Care Act and the $716 billion by claiming it’s a cut to Medicare, which it isn’t. 

Margolis supporters confirmed she does travel on a private plane, usually the one owned by Scott L. Hopes, who also happens to be a candidate for state Senate. Hopes, a Republican, is running against Rep. Dwight Bullard in the Democrat-dominated Miami district.

Write-in candidates: Sham or sincere?

TALLAHASSEE — They are the candidates you don't see. They don't collect signatures or pay fees to run. They almost never raise or spend money. They don't attend campaign forums or knock on doors. Their names never appear on the ballot. And they always lose.

Yet, write-in candidates matter in Florida.

When they run, voters lose.

This year alone, more than 900,000 Floridians were stopped from casting a ballot in 15 competitive state House and Senate races because a write-in candidate signed up to run.

It's a loophole in Florida's quirky election system that can be exploited to prevent Democrats and independents from choosing a representative from among only Republicans, and vice versa.

"It's a sham," said Carl Domino, a Jupiter Republican.