The Fine Print

A party divided: GOP splintering in Florida

A year before one of the most wide-open elections in state history, Florida's Republican Party has splintered over everything from philosophy to questions over how the party is being run.

The divide goes beyond former House Speaker Marco Rubio's challenge to Gov. Charlie Crist in next year's primary for the U.S. Senate. There are also divisions over party leadership and party message that have resulted in the unusual sight of contested primaries in five statewide contests. Those factions include Crist loyalists, allies of Bush upset with Crist, as well as some who are loudly critical of Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer.

You can find the full story here.

Here's a few items of interest in the story:

Greer says there is a small group of Republicans "ready to pounce at any time on any issue" in order to embarrass the party and Republican candidates.

Others quoted say that Crist or someone need to sweep out the party leadership in advance of the 2010 elections.

Sarasota County GOP chairman Joe Gruters says Republicans should follow the so-called 11th commandment offered by Ronald Reagan and not speak ill of any fellow Republican. "They should refrain from getting ahead by trashing their opponents. Because at the end of the day, that's what will hurt us."

So what counts as a Rothstein contribution?

It didn't take long for both parties and politicians of all stripes to start returning money that they had collected from Broward County attorney Scott Rothstein, who stands accused of defrauding investors.

But a key question remains: How much money should be returned?

Gov. Charlie Crist, who attended a reception at Rothstein's wedding, has agreed to turn over $9,600, while Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink has said she will give back $2,000.

But a search of Sink's campaign finance records, however, shows that she received $4,500 from 9 different limited liability companies with the same address as Rothstein's law firm. State corporate records show that Rothstein is listed as a manager for six of the companies, which go by names such as WAWW II, WAWW 12 and WAWW 14.

Corporate records for three of the limited liability companies do not show Rothstein's name.

Sink's campaign office said earlier this week that if it became "clear" that other contributions were involved that those contributions would also be returned. A campaign spokeswoman said Thursday that the campaign is in the process of going through its donation records.

Crist's nearly $10,000 came from Rothstein and his wife. But Crist also received as much as $90,000 from employees of the Rothstein law firm and some of their family members. Crist, however, made it clear to reports on Wednesday that he does not plan to return those donations because the "allegations" are against Rothstein and not others at the firm.

"Are there allegations against those other people?," asked Crist. "Not that I'm aware of. Fair enough."

House Republicans ask Florida senators to vote no on health care reform

Republicans in the Florida House, citing concerns that Medicaid costs are “unsustainable,” will ask the state’s two U.S senators to vote against health reform legislation pending in Congress.
 
House Majority Leader Adam Hasner asked Republicans to sign letters to Sens. George LeMieux and Bill Nelson during a late Tuesday afternoon briefing, where Republicans were warned about the ongoing surge in Medicaid enrollment and costs. Medicaid is the state and federal health care program that covers low-income families, the elderly and the disabled. 

House budget staff showed projections that Medicaid could increase from a 26 percent share of the state’s overall budget to as much as 36 percent in the next decade if trends from the past 12 years continue.

“What we are seeing here is unsustainable for the state,’’ said Rep. Denise Grimsley, R-Lake Placid, a registered nurse who is in charge of the House budget committee on health care spending. 

The 10-percent increase over a decade assumes that underlying medical costs, a driver in the Medicaid program, aren’t addressed. More here.

So who is responsible for Rothstein $200,000 check? Alex Sink or the Democrats?

The fallout from the Scott Rothstein case is moving fast and furiously.

Rothstein's ties to Gov. Charlie Crist are well-known. But Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink is apparently getting caught up in the unfolding drama because it turns out that the $200,000 that the Florida Democratic Party received from the Rothstein law firm in September was given at a fundraiser that Rothstein held for Sink.

It was at this same fundraiser that Sink's campaign netted about $45,000 in hard money contributions to her campaign for governor.

Noting the "serious allegations" against Rothstein, the Sink campaign has agreed to return, or donate to charity, $2,000 that it received from Rothstein, his wife, his law firm and another company affiliated with Rothstein.

It didn't take long for the campaign of Attorney General Bill McCollum to pounce on Sink and suggest she should do "the right thing" and return the rest of the money.

While not saying it directly, McCollum's campaign appears to be trying to raise the specter of earmarking, which is illegal.

Florida law - chapter 106.08 (6) (a), states: "A political party may not accept any contribution that has been specifically designated for the partial or exclusive use of a particular candidate. Any contribution so designated must be returned to the contributor and may not be used or expended by or on behalf of the candidate."

In other words, if the money belongs to the party Sink has no control over it.

A Democratic Party spokesman said on Monday that while the money was given at a Sink fundraiser the donation is for party purposes.

"CFO Sink, like many of our Democratic elected leaders across Florida has helped raise money for the Florida Democratic Party. The contribution from Rothstein, Rosenfeldt, & Adler to the Florida Democratic Party was intended for our efforts to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot in 2010 and was received at an event with CFO Sink."

On the Rothstein donations overall the party also said as a policy the party returns "tainted donations." But then the party also noted that "our lawyer has reached out to the attorneys involved in the case to sort out the facts and the law."

Another scandal involving major Florida political fundraiser

The story is still evolving, but for the second time this year another major Florida political fundraiser is apparently the target of a federal investigation.

And Broward County attorney Scott Rothstein - along with his law firm - has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last few years, some of it just last month.

Among those who have been the beneficiaries of Rothstein:

Gov. Charlie Crist: The Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm donated $20,000 to the Coalition for Bipartisan Progress, a group that urged Democrats to vote for Crist during the 2006 election. The group was headed by lobbyist James Harris and its members included people who worked on Rod Smith's unsuccessful campaign for governor.

Rothstein personally donated $25,000 to the Amendment 1-Save Our Homes campaign to persuade voters to double the state's homestead exemption. Crist himself led the campaign for the amendment.

The Republican Party of Florida: State records show that Rothstein's law firm donated $317,000 to the RPOF and that Rothstein himself donated at least $232,000.

RPOF chairman Jim Greer: A group he set up to help with his re-election bid as party chairman took $10,000 from Rothstein.

Florida Democratic Party: It received a $200,000 donation from Rothstein's firm back in September.

Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff: A 527 organization called Creating Possibilities and run by Bogdanoff accepted a $5,000 check from the Rothstein law firm back in June.

Former Sen. Steve Geller: A 527 organization run by Geller accepted $50,000 from Rothstein just last month.

This doesn't count all the state legislators - most of them from South Florida - who have also gotten contributions from Rothstein or his law firm. Senate President Jeff Atwater - who is running for chief financial officer - also got a check from Rothstein.

The list includes Bogdanoff, Rep. Adam Hasner, Rep. Evan Jenne, Sen. Joe Negron, Rep. Juan Zapata, Sen. Ted Deutch, Sen. Dan Gelber, and Sen. Jeremy Ring.

How many jobs created by stimulus in Florida? Depends on who's counting.

Depending on who's doing the counting, the massive infusion of federal stimulus into the state has saved or created from nearly 30,000 jobs to more than 64,000 since it was passed by Congress last February.

While a fierce political debate has been raging over the price and effectiveness of the stimulus, Florida officials on Friday credited federal assistance for keeping teachers on the job and for starting construction projects across the state.

But the total number of jobs associated with the stimulus pales in comparison to the more than 1 million Floridians who are out of work. Florida's 11 percent unemployment rate is the highest in more than 30 years.

In addition, a large number of jobs appear to be those of teachers who were spared cuts that school districts would have been forced to make had the stimulus not propped up Florida funding for education. The impact appears less dramatic so far on creating new, high-paying construction jobs rebuilding the state's roads, bridges and other infrastructure, which was one of President Obama's priority for the stimulus. More here.

Don Winstead, Florida's stimulus czar, explained to reporters on a conference call on Friday evening that there's several different ways to count the jobs number. The federal government is relying on a formula that actually counts FTE's or full-time equivalents while state government did what Winstead called a "bellybutton" count of actual people. Then there's yet another number drawn up by the budget office of Gov. Charlie Crist that tries to count both the direct and indirect impact.

So there's a lot of numbers to try to absorb but here's some to keep in mind:

* 29,321 - That's how many now show up on the federal government website. These jobs come from a handful of sources, including numbers fed into them by state government, jobs numbers from federal contracts like repair work going on at Florida military bases, and numbers from local governments that were given direct grants as part of the $787 billion stimulus package.

* 47,069 - That's the number of people who are actually in these jobs. Winstead's argument is that the fed numbers are "very conservative" because they rely on the number of hours worked in an actual quarter. So if someone started in mid-September, that gets counted as a fraction of a job, not a whole job.

* 64,300 - This is the calculation that Crist's budget office has reached about the stimulus impact in Florida so far.

* 16,831 - This is the number of education FTE's that Florida told the federal government were "saved" due to stimulus funding. So if you do the math, you can see the majority of the 29,321 jobs reported to the federal government were not created but were retained.

* 25,771 - This is the number of education jobs that Florida calculates were "saved" due to stimulus funding. That's more than half of the 47,069 noted in the previous entry.

* $402 million - This is how much the federal government says that Florida has so far received out of $6.7 billion it is line to eventually get. But it's important to note that the federal government numbers do not include food stamps, unemployment compensation assistance, tax cuts, or increased funding for Medicaid.

* $5.5 billion - The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature used this much money to plug a gap in this year's budget - which runs from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. The biggest chunk of this comes from increased Medicaid funding.

* $15.3 billion - This is how much that Winstead's office calculates Florida will get from the stimulus once all the money flows through, not including money that Floridians would receive in the form of tax cuts.

Could it get even harder to enforce Florida election laws?

While there has been a lot of talk lately about the need to beef up Florida's election laws, here's a story I did for The News Service of Florida that highlights a case that could wind up making enforcement of existing laws even harder:

A little-noticed rule challenge could have big consequences for the appointed panel responsible for enforcing the state's election laws.

Attorneys for a former Hillsborough County commissioner have asked a state administrative judge to throw out a rule currently being used by the Florida Elections Commission. The rule attempts to define the circumstances in which someone can be found to have violated election laws.

Unlike criminal laws, the election laws overseen by the commission require proof that someone must have willfully broken them. The commission rule states that in order for a violation to be "willful" someone must have known they were breaking the law, or showed "reckless disregard" to the law, which can include being "plainly indifferent" to legal requirements.

But attorneys for Brian Blair, a former professional wrestler who was defeated in his re-election bid last year, contend that the Elections Commission has overstepped its legal authority in relying on the rule, especially since it mirrors a provision that was removed from state law in 2007.

The current rule was adopted just days before the repeal was set to take effect.

Blair is fighting charges that in 2008 he accepted two campaign contributions beyond the legal limit, saying the mistake was due to a glitch with campaign software.

One veteran election law attorney predicts that if the rule is thrown out it could impact the ability of the commission to move forward on election law cases.

"It's a big deal,'' said Tallahassee attorney Ron Meyer. "That rule contains the only definition of willfulness that is there. If the rule were to be determined invalid, it certainly would pose problems with the commission.''

Bucky Mitchell, the former staff director for the House Ethics and Elections Committee and who is now working for Blair in the case, refused to comment on the pending rule challenge.

Over the last several years state lawmakers have changed how the elections commission can pursue election law cases, including a controversial change in 2007 that required that election law complaints be based on "personal knowledge."

But Jorge Cruz-Bustillo, a Miami attorney and current chairman, said he wasn't sure if the rule challenge would impact the work of the panel in the future.

He said the commission could still attempt to define what a "willful'' violation of the law is even if the rule is thrown out. Cruz-Bustillo said that the commission could rely on other civil rulings as it moves forward, even though he concedes that could lead to another legal challenge.

"I think we are doing a great job at trying to do our best,'' he said.

Could it get even harder to enforce Florida election laws?

While there has been a lot of talk lately about the need to beef up Florida's election laws, here's a story I did for The News Service of Florida that highlights a case that could wind up making enforcement of existing laws even harder:

A little-noticed rule challenge could have big consequences for the appointed panel responsible for enforcing the state's election laws.

Attorneys for a former Hillsborough County commissioner have asked a state administrative judge to throw out a rule currently being used by the Florida Elections Commission. The rule attempts to define the circumstances in which someone can be found to have violated election laws.

Unlike criminal laws, the election laws overseen by the commission require proof that someone must have willfully broken them. The commission rule states that in order for a violation to be "willful" someone must have known they were breaking the law, or showed "reckless disregard" to the law, which can include being "plainly indifferent" to legal requirements.

But attorneys for Brian Blair, a former professional wrestler who was defeated in his re-election bid last year, contend that the Elections Commission has overstepped its legal authority in relying on the rule, especially since it mirrors a provision that was removed from state law in 2007.

The current rule was adopted just days before the repeal was set to take effect.

Blair is fighting charges that in 2008 he accepted two campaign contributions beyond the legal limit, saying the mistake was due to a glitch with campaign software.

One veteran election law attorney predicts that if the rule is thrown out it could impact the ability of the commission to move forward on election law cases.

"It's a big deal,'' said Tallahassee attorney Ron Meyer. "That rule contains the only definition of willfulness that is there. If the rule were to be determined invalid, it certainly would pose problems with the commission.''

Bucky Mitchell, the former staff director for the House Ethics and Elections Committee and who is now working for Blair in the case, refused to comment on the pending rule challenge.

Over the last several years state lawmakers have changed how the elections commission can pursue election law cases, including a controversial change in 2007 that required that election law complaints be based on "personal knowledge."

But Jorge Cruz-Bustillo, a Miami attorney and current chairman, said he wasn't sure if the rule challenge would impact the work of the panel in the future.

He said the commission could still attempt to define what a "willful'' violation of the law is even if the rule is thrown out. Cruz-Bustillo said that the commission could rely on other civil rulings as it moves forward, even though he concedes that could lead to another legal challenge.

"I think we are doing a great job at trying to do our best,'' he said.

Would Marco Rubio have said no to the stimulus money? Maybe or maybe not.

President Barack Obama's visit to Florida has given former House Speaker Marco Rubio and others an opportunity to bash Gov. Charlie Crist for his decision to embrace the federal stimulus package earlier this year.

Rubio has been highly critical of the $787 billion stimulus package for months, repeating that government spending can't create prosperity. In his latest pitch to donors, Rubio's campaign states that Crist's "enthusiastic support for a big government spending policy" has failed to halt the rise in unemployment while adding to the deficit.

But Crist wasn't the only Republican who said yes to the stimulus. The GOP-controlled Florida Legislature relied on $5.5 billion to prop up this year's state budget.

So does that mean that Rubio would have said no to the money that came to Florida? Is this about style or substance? Is he saying that Crist should not have given Obama a man-hug in Fort Myers last February, or he is saying that the stimulus is such bad policy that Florida should have refused the cash?

Here's what Alex Burgos, a spokesman for Rubio stated: "Governor Crist actively advocated for a fiscally irresponsible stimulus policy that almost every Republican opposed. Rubio believes this was the wrong approach. At a time when practically every prominent Republican of Governor Crist's stature was opposing Obama's stimulus and offering alternative ideas, he enthusiastically threw his support behind the Obama package.

There's a difference between what Charlie Crist did by accepting the Obama stimulus as the best Congress could do versus what other governors have done by reluctantly accepting federal funds the federal government is disbursing. To answer your question, Rubio's problem with Crist's approach,was, most importantly, about the substance of a policy that spends money the U.S. doesn't really have. And secondly, it's about the message it sent to other Republicans and moderate Democrats to have someone of Crist's stature embrace a misguided policy and encourage others to do so as well - on stage and behind the scenes."

And as to the question, about whether he would have taken the money?

"Because he was no longer in the Legislature this year, Rubio was not as intimately familiar with the budget as an active legislator would be,'' said Burgos. However, in each of Rubio's nine legislative sessions, the House produced a balanced budget without raising taxes. In good times and in tough times, legislators tightened their belts and cut spending without raising taxes as Charlie Crist did earlier this year. In addition, despite the $5 billion in stimulus, Crist still supported increases in state taxes this year, breaking a pledge he made to never to do so."

A point of clarification: Several of the budgets that Rubio did vote on while he was in the Florida House relied on increased property taxes to fund public schools. Instead of rolling back property taxes, Florida lawmakers used escalating property values to generate additional money. In a recent interview about this, Rubio said he couldn't really do anything about it until he became speaker.

Whistleblower lawsuit on Hooters, beer and Benson dropped

Here's a piece of good news for Holly Benson, who is expected to jump into the race for Attorney General.

A state employee has dropped a lawsuit that accused her and other state officials of retaliation after he complained about actions that Benson took while she was in charge of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. 

Steven Hougland filed the lawsuit against DBPR back in 2008 but his lawyer told Health News Florida that Hougland has a new job and is moving on his with his life.

Hougland alleged that he was stripped of his job duties after complaining about Benson and another top official at DBPR. Benson overruled Hougland after his division ordered a Pensacola beer distributor to remove Bud Light bottles from Hooters restaurants because the beer had a special label that advertised Hooters. Benson intervened in the enforcement case at the urging of a family friend and vice president of the Lewis Bear Company. Benson, a former state representative from Pensacola, had also received campaign contributions from top officials in the company.

But the Florida Commission on Ethics concluded that Benson - who maintained the liquor laws at question were unclear - did nothing wrong. And agency lawyers in court filings assert that Hougland was already looking for another job when he complained to DBPR inspector general and that top officials urged him to stay with the agency.