Via @JeremySWallace
The day after the Florida Legislature starts its 2016 session, Gov. Rick Scott is getting out of town.
Scott is planning to hit the road on Jan. 13 to start a statewide bus tour to promote his jobs agenda at a time that he’s asking state’s lawmakers to give him six times more money for business recruitment efforts than they were willing to give him in 2015.
Scott is calling the 9 city bus tour “Million Miles for a Million Jobs” to highlight that more than 1 million private sector jobs have been created since he was elected. Scott this morning said in November the private sector added 35,600 jobs across Florida, resulting in 1,011,800 new private sector jobs created in the last five years.
“Since taking office, we have traveled a million miles across the world by plane and car to bring more jobs to Florida,” Scott said in a statement announcing his bus tour that will include stops in Jacksonville, Melbourne, Miami, Naples, Orlando, Sarasota, Tampa, the Villages and West Palm Beach. Other details, include dates and times of the stops will be announced at a later date.
The bus tour comes as Scott has been aggressively pushing the Legislature to give him $250 million for a job incentive program called the Enterprise Fund. Earlier this year, state legislators refused to give Scott $85 million for the same program, instead giving him about half of what he requested.
At a meeting in October in Orlando, Scott said "it's ridiculous" that the largest fund used to close deals with employers is "broken and nearly bankrupt.” He’s been calling on business and community leaders around the state to lobby lawmakers for more money and to "make it personal."
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