The governor’s veto pen swept across programs for the elderly, the poor and the disabled, and scrapped hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been used to protect environmentally sensitive land.

Among Scott’s cuts, a $700,000 reduction in funding to Miami’s Little Havana and Allapattah senior citizens centers. The centers feed lunch to mostly low income elderly residents, as well as providing other support services.

[worldnow id=5895763 width=385 height=288 type=video]

At the Little Havana center today, the dining room was crowded, despite the air conditioning being out.

“It’s most important to the people who don’t have the money to support themselves,” said 67 year-old Juan Ferrera, his brow sweat-soaked as he ate a lunch of ground beef and salad. “It’s very important to us.”

Miami City Commission Chairman Willy Gort said he found the Governor’s vetoes difficult to comprehend.

“It was a balanced budget,” Gort told CBS4′s Gary Nelson. He called the funding reduction to the senior citizens centers a cruel cut.

“A lot of these seniors, the only meal that they have in the day is what they have at the centers,” Gort said.

He said Scott, who campaigned on a theme of creating jobs, will cause jobs to be lost as a result of the vetoes. The cuts to the senior centers, Gort said, will have a ripple effect, costing jobs and impacting vendors.

“It’s disastrous,” Gort said. “They need supplies, food, all kinds of things, and businesses are going to be affected.”

Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado said he was blind-sided by the governor’s cuts that are “literally taking the food from the mouths of our senior citizens. Our least fortunate will suffer at a disproportionate rate.”

Regaldo vowed to fight Scott’s budget vetoes, but did not say how.

Ironically, as a candidate for Governor, Scott visited the Little Havana senior citizens center last year.

“Mi nombre es Rick Scott,” he said as he introduced himself around the cafeteria in July, shaking the hands and slapping the backs of the seniors whose food program he has now slashed.

All state funding to Farm Share, a Miami-Dade program that distributes surplus produce to the needy throughout the state, has been eliminated by Scott’s cuts. It has the promise of putting the program out of business.

Millions of dollars in funding for cancer and other research at the University of Miami medical centers was also whacked, as was $500,000 to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Goodwill Industries of South Florida lost $250,000 that would have provided an additional 250 jobs to partially disabled people, Goodwill’s workforce.

“This will have a profound impact on our ability to help more people.” said Goodwill’s CEO, Dennis Pastrana.

The squelched grant to Goodwill would have allowed the agency to buy equipment to manufacture uniforms for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and American flags that are used in military funerals.

Goodwill’s Pastrana said the plan was to also put more people to work making a children’s clothing line “to compete with China.”

“We are deeply disappointed,” Pastrana said.

Scott will sign the new budget in The Villages in central Florida, which has traditionally been very friendly to the Governor.

In Governor Scott’s announcement on the budget signing, he said he was “delivering on his promise to lower taxes, grow private-sector jobs and hold government accountable.”

The key point there was private-sector jobs. Scott and leading Republicans are more than willing to sacrifice public sector jobs to achieve their goals, even if it means higher unemployment overall in the state of Florida.

Poll results show that a majority of voters disapprove of the new state budget that will cut billions from education and other social service areas.

And more troubling for Scott and the GOP, 54 percent of those surveyed said the new state budget is unfair to people like them. This included 68 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans, and 52 percent of independents.

Forty-seven percent of Floridians said the state budget cuts go too far. This is especially true in South Florida where 52 percent said the budget cuts go too far.

In addition, 69 percent of voters said the new spending cuts touted by the GOP and the tea party will hurt or make no difference in the state’s economy.

Scott is appearing in The Villages, which has traditionally been very friendly to the Governor. But as a new Quinnipiac poll reported earlier, the areas where Scott is popular are few and far between.

In Governor Scott’s announcement on the budget signing, he said he was “delivering on his promise to lower taxes, grow private-sector jobs and hold government accountable.”

The key point there was private-sector jobs. Scott and leading Republicans are more than willing to sacrifice public sector jobs to achieve their goals, even if it means higher unemployment overall in the state of Florida.

Poll results show that a majority of voters disapprove of the new state budget that will cut billions from education and other social service areas. The budget had a plurality of support from Republicans, but that was the only group polled that signaled support for the budget.

And more troubling for Scott and the GOP, 54 percent of those surveyed said the new state budget is unfair to people like them. This included 68 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans, and 52 percent of independents.

Forty-seven percent of Floridians said the state budget cuts go too far. This is especially true in South Florida where 52 percent said the budget cuts go too far.

In addition, 69 percent of voters said the new spending cuts touted by the GOP and the tea party will hurt or make no difference in the state’s economy.

So while Scott is touting his new budget as a victory for himself, voters aren’t buying it and are having serious buyer’s remorse about having Rick Scott as their governor.

Lawmakers had to resolve the issues dividing the Florida House and Senate by Tuesday night or risk extending the legislative session past Friday due to a 72-hour waiting period before a vote can be taken after a compromise is reached.

Key differences between House and Senate budget leaders were over health and human service spending but the log jam was broken in part by a deal on a change to the exemption for corporate income taxes and the resolution of several health care issues.

Gov. Rick Scott asked for $1.7 billion including a $458 million cut in corporate income tax. The legislative deal calls for only a $30 million corporate tax cut. Most of the relief would be in property tax.

The breakthrough Tuesday also includes $308 million in tax cuts and no cuts to the state’s Medically Needy program or substance abuse efforts.

They planned to meet later in the day to resolve a few remaining details, setting the stage for an on-time finish to the annual legislative session on Friday.

The final budget is expected to top $67 billion with nearly $4 billion in spending cuts.

(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon settled on a general revenue total of $22.7 billion. The total cuts nearly $4 billion in spending.

But, that’s only one cog of the massive budget. The rest will be from trust funds dedicated to needs and federal funds for items like Medicaid and highway improvements.

“For months, I’ve heard over and over again that we would never be able to get this done,” Haridopolos said. “Working as a team, the House and Senate reached these budget allocations on behalf of all Floridians.”

Still, there was a stench of backroom politics to getting the budget deal to the table. The state Senate quickly approved a court stacking bill championed by Speaker Cannon, and then the deal moved forward quickly.

The court stacking plan would split the state Supreme Court in half and possibly allow an ideologically biased court to take shape. Cannon is still angry after some of his state constitutional amendments were removed last year by the Court.

The current legislative session is set to end on May 6.

Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released Tuesday showed a deceleration in the annual growth rates in 13 of the 20 major markets the index analyzes. The indices found that only San Diego and Washington, DC showed annual growth.

Home prices in Miami dropped another 1.3 percent from their lows in December 2010. In a year-over-year analysis, Miami home prices dropped 4.7 percent.

The numbers from Miami continued the trend of cities posting record lows in December 2010. Overall, the composite indices for the top 10 and 20 cities analyzed were down 0.9 percent and 1 percent respectively.

[worldnow id=5703784 width=385 height=288 type=video]Seventeen of the major markets in the top 20 posted more than three consecutive months of negative returns.

The news on home prices comes as Florida’s consumer confidence dropped four points in March. Three of the index components decreased as disasters and political turmoil overseas erased January’s seven point spike.

Overall, Floridians expressed confidence in their personal financial situations, but survey results from the University of Florida found consumers are weary of national economic conditions.

But, Floridians expressing confidence in their personal finances may be short-lived. According to UF’s Survey Research Center director Chris McCarty, the median price for a single-family home in Florida dropped to $121,900. That’s the lowest median price for a Florida home in a decade.

Sales tax revenues are coming in below estimates this year as well, McCarty said. This will in turn force the legislature to perform deeper cuts to the state budget.

As home prices continue to decline in 2011, it will also take a toll on state coffers, which rely on property taxes to fund the state. If property values drop further, it will drop property taxes and force the state and communities with a decision over just how much to cut.

Plus, with Governor Scott’s pledge to do away corporate income taxes and enact a billion dollar property tax cut, there’s a risk of further depressing the state’s budget. That doesn’t include how much money communities will lose if the state continues further budget cuts.

Factoring in rising gas prices and double-digit unemployment and McCarty said there should be a further decline in consumer confidence.

“As prices of gas and food increase, consumers already struggling to balance their budgets will grow increasingly pessimistic,” McCarty said. “It is likely that the negatives will keep consumer confidence in the upper 60’s to lower 70s for the next few months.

Badili Jones, one of the organizers of the “Awake the State” campaign told CBS4’s David Sutta they had to make noise because legislatures are moving quickly.

[worldnow id=5640427 width=385 height=288 type=video]“We are just talking about fairness and equity in the state of Florida,” Jones said. “The wealthy should not get away with what regular people have to do.”

The debate over fairness stems from newly elected Governor Rick Scott’s budget. It calls for billions in cuts, much on the backs of the state’s 600,000 employees, education, and the unemployed.

Scott proposes eliminating 85 hundred jobs. A bill moving through the House would slash unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks.

But the biggest cut would be to state employees who would now be required to pay 5% of their salary toward pensions.

“Teachers in this state are simply demoralized.” Dr. David Kirsner, a teacher at Coral Gables High School explained.

Kirsner said some teachers are in tears over the proposal; here’s why.

The average teacher makes $46,000. The 5% hit would cut out $2300 dollars from their paycheck. In return, Miami-Dade homeowners would get on average, $70 off their property tax bill. The more your house cost the more you would save.

Some teachers, in their fourth year of cuts, are now debating leaving the profession.

Kirsner said, “I had a teacher, maybe a week ago come to my door literally in tears. She said to me, ‘Dr. K what am I going to do? I cannot afford any more cuts. If they take 5% of my salary, I’m not going to be able to pay my bills.”

And teachers are not alone. Social worker Manual Fernandez Jacobs has 29 years on the job in Miami-Dade County.

“At the end of the game they are changing the rules. I have two young daughters that are counting on my retirement and my pension and my salary.” Fernandez said.

[worldnow id=5641443 width=385 height=288 type=video]At a rally in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday evening, hundreds of protesters showed up to voice their frustrations.

Jerry Hall, a Vietnam veteran, is concerned about Scott’s plan to cut millions from the Florida Department of Veteran’s Affairs. He said it’s not fair to cut services for veterans while offering tax breaks to businesses.

“We’ve been giving tax cuts to corporations and rich people for 10 years,” Hall said. “They said they were going to create jobs. Well, they did — in China, India, Vietnam.”

Dozens of Scott supporters — many of them Tea Party members — rallied across the street. They say in tough economic times, everyone has to sacrifice.

“The government class needs to share the burden, the responsibility when our economy is suffering,” said Charles Robertson.

Scott’s supporters believe teachers and other public employees should be asked to contribute to their pensions, just like private sector employees do with 401k’s.

“People in the private sector have actually been taking pay cuts, being forced to pay more into their health insurance, if not pay it all,” said Annie Young. “Those conditions were either do it or lose your job.”

With 59 days to decide the budget, state employees are vowing not to let up. Many of Tuesday’s protestors were planning on boarding busses and taking overnight trips to Tallahassee. Another round of protests are planned for Wednesday.

- President Barack Obama

I sure wish someone would’ve let Rick Scott in on this little secret. Florida’s newly minted governor presented a hatchet swinging budget last Monday to the delirious delight of a loyal Tea Party crowd in Eustis (where?). As promised, the governor’s proposal delivers significant reductions to the state’s workforce, gratuitous corporate tax cuts (as we fumble through an anemic economic recovery), and deep spending cuts. Most notable among the latter is the proposed $3 billion plus whack to education funding.

Florida hasn’t exactly been leading the pack in regards to funding the education of its children to begin with. In fact, it is among the worst in the nation and has been for some time. In a recent report published by Education Week, a well-regarded online education news site, the Sunshine State ranked 41^st in per pupil spending. Paradoxically, the same report highlighted significant gains made by the state in education quality. This would seem to indicate, at least to me, the great commitment of the teachers in our schools despite the meager resources they are provided.

There’s no doubt that Florida faces a difficult economic landscape: a $3.6 billion budget deficit, 12% unemployment, and a housing market in the doldrums. Taking a broad sword to the budget and handicapping educators, however, is hardly the answer. I do give credit to the governor for efforts such as his review of large vendor contracts, implemented ostensibly to ensure the state is getting the most bang for its buck. Although laborious, such endeavors represent a more targeted and seemingly more sensible method of squeezing the budget. Where I take issue is that while Mr. Scott callously slashes at education, he simultaneously proposes a sizable cut to the state’s corporate income tax rate.

At 5.5 % Florida already has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the country. Add to that a tax code riddled with loopholes and outdated subsidies and doing business in the Sunshine State becomes pretty appealing; despite the governor’s protests otherwise. Scott’s recommendation to reduce the rate to 3% would represent about $500 million in lost revenue according to the Orlando Sentinel. What the state’s chief executive should do instead is push the legislature to fix the tax code. This would hold corporations accountable for their relatively small share of responsibility for funding the services we all rely on. This could provide a means by which to at least hold education harmless, if not fully fund it altogether.

Next, the governor should work with lawmakers (that means Republicans and Democrats), the teachers unions, and parents to craft meaningful education reform legislation as opposed to a diluted version of SB 6. A new system should evaluate teachers based on the variables they deal with everyday: student attendance, student aptitude as it relates to their placement, parent involvement, resources available at their facility, and yes; some level of testing. This can’t be accomplished, however, with Mr. Scott shaking down school districts.

There’s a reason the President highlighted education in his State of the Union speech last month. He, like many, understands that addressing this downturn with a short-sighted, “slash and burn” approach will only weaken us in an increasingly competitive and globalized economy. Investments in reforming our schools, strengthening the rigor of our universities, and modernizing our adult education programs will provide Florida with a nimble, and dare I say, elite workforce that will attract employers.

There will, undoubtedly, continue to be pressure on Mr. Scott to capitulate to the Tea Party’s every whim. He would do well to remember, however, that he is now governor to all Floridians and not everyone’s drinking from the same pot.

Scott’s refusal to shut down state parks comes after plans were released to temporarily close 53 of the state’s 160 state parks to meet spending cuts Scott asked for in his budget.

“We’ve got great parks, and we’ve got to make sure we preserve them and take care of them,” Scott said Friday after visiting the department’s headquarters.

But while Scott was making some nature lovers happy; he was angering water management districts with his 25 percent tax cut for the water districts.

Environmentalists fear the plan could reduce spending on Everglades restoration and water clean-up efforts in the St. John’s River.

Under Scott’s new budget, the South Florida Water Management District would lose more than $95 million in revenue collected from property taxes.

Scott said the districts would just have to operate with less money like taxpayers have to do because of Florida’s depressed economy.

His plan, like many of his budget cuts, is receiving a cool reception in the Florida legislature. State Representative Trudi Williams said she didn’t have a problem with the state not buying more land, but said the water management districts have to be able to do their jobs.

(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press and News Service Of Florida contributed to this report.)

“My wife died and she was the main one who brought in the money,” Patrick Collins told CBS4′s Michael Williams. “So we are left without much and this really helps out a lot.”

Now, though, Farm Share bosses worry the lifeline will fray. They do not know where their funding stands in Governor Scott’s lean budget proposal unveiled earlier this week. They say there simply are not enough details; it’s a complaint heard often this week.

[worldnow id=5559565 width=385 height=288 type=video]The $1.4 million budget for Farm Share operations statewide once relied on a $600,000 contribution from state funds. State funding has been reduced to $200,000 over the past three years, and the social agency says that is simply not enough help.

Farm Share executives argue that the demand from needy families has risen nearly 70 percent in the past few years as the economy sputtered. They told CBS4 they serve 469,000 families in South Florida alone.

Farm Share spokeswoman Mia DeVane said, “It is difficult to serve as many families that need our services and our fresh fruits and vegetables. We have had to cut staff over the past few years and we have to turn families away.”

All eyes now turn to Tallahassee and state lawmakers. An anxious legislative session is ahead for agencies like Farm Share. They wait to see how a budget starved for money impact efforts to stave off hunger in communities across Florida.

With the Labor Day holiday behind us, campaigns across the state have shifted into high gear for the final seven-week sprint to election day on General Election Day, Tuesday November 2^nd.

Here’s a look at this week’s political and government happenings:

Sinks Bests Scott in Latest Poll – The latest CNN/Time poll released late last week shows Democrat Alex Sink leading Republican Rick Scott by 7 points — 49 to 42 percent — in the contest for Governor.  Sink posts strong leads over Scott in a number of key subgroups including independents, urban voters, moderates, those earning less than $50K, and voters in South Florida.

Who Gave It, Who Got It – This Friday at midnight marks the deadline for state candidates and committees to file their latest periodic campaign finance report.  Under Florida’s public campaign finance law, candidates must publicly disclose the source of all contributions and expenses.  Candidates for governor and those seeking cabinet posts file reports covering Sept. 4-10, while all others disclose for the Aug. 20 to Sept. 10^th timeframe.

Budget Gap Narrows – Preliminary guesstimates that Florida government’s budget shortfall for the next fiscal year could be as much as $6-billon, appear to soon be scaled down.  The Legislative Budget Commission meets on Tuesday to vote on a new financial forecast that shows red ink of only about $2.4 billion instead.

Health Care Debate – The Obama administration will try to persuade a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out the lawsuit filed by Florida together with 20 other states which seeks to deem the recent health care reform package signed into law as unconstitutional.  Oral arguments are scheduled for Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Pensacola.

Universities Want More – The Florida Board of Governors two-day meeting in Jacksonville at UNF this week (Wed. & Thurs.) will include a discussion of their annual legislative budget request.  Chancellor Frank Brogan is asking the 17-member board which oversees the State University System to ask for a 6% increase for next year.

MIAMI HERALD: Proposed $69B Florida budget printed, `cooling off’ period begins

In junior high — and it was junior back then, not yet middle –a bunch of us held lit cigarettes mostly at our sides, on the theory that we would look cool. We were young and didn’t know any better. Actually, we did know better but pretended we didn’t.

Later on, members of the garage band in which I played guitar started sucking them down as soon as we began practice every Saturday, this time on the theory that hoarse voices made our ability to sing rock songs better. Anyone who has heard me try to sing knows that wheezing indeed is an improvement.

Then, when my buddies would mess around with our guitars in college, we would wedge smoldering cigarettes under the strings at the top of the necks because we had seen Eric Clapton do this in old videos. We were young and didn’t know any better. Actually, we knew more than before but still pretended we didn’t.

Then after I moved halfway across the country to Miami, the friend I hung out with most weekends smoked Marlboro Lights, always in a box. He was a bad influence. Somehow, at the height of the South Florida cocaine wars, a cigarette didn’t seem nearly as bad as what some others were doing.

Finally, I made a New Year’s resolution to never have one again. It was easy going until Jan. 11, 1987. That night, my roommate and I decided to go out to a club. Acquaintances — I don’t think, in retrospect, that I will call them friends — started waving cigarettes under my nose, saying, c’mon, you know you want one. I gave in, grabbed one and torched it up.

Just then, my roommate spotted what was going on. He grabbed me by the collar, shook me back and forth and threatened: If I ever see you smoke, I’ll never speak to you again.

I haven’t smoked since then, and now, more than 22 years later, that roommate is still my best friend.

But while I’ve been busy not smoking, the price of cigarettes has gone up. Way up. If they were gallons of gasoline, we’d be writing about them day after day on the front pages of our newspapers and home-page panels of our web sites.

So after a federal tobacco tax took effect this month, and as state legislatures consider and enact their own additional taxes, I wonder: Should we start? If nothing else, there are some good by-the-numbers possibilities to help put the issue in perspective.

A lot of us — and I speak from experience here — are looking at the cost of things in a new way these days. I know that two weeks of unemployment compensation will buy me another month of COBRA health care benefits. Or that a federal tax refund will cover all my housing costs and homeowner association dues for another two months. Or that shopping for necessities like laundry soap and dishwasher detergent with coupons at Target will allow me to splurge that week with an order of onion rings at the Steak-n-Shake drive-through. Hey, it’s better than smoking. I think.

1) With the latest federal and state taxes, and price increase from the tobacco companies, a pack of smokes in New York City can be more than $9. That’s more than $250 a month for a pack-a-day smoker. What else could you get for $250 a month? You could get a new Ninteno Wii controller — every month. Or a Dell Mini 9n laptop computer — every month. Or a Schwinn mountain bike — every month.

2) In Florida, legislators are considering a $1-a-pack state tax. That’s in addition to the 34 cents the state now charges , and the 62-cent tax the feds enacted to help pay for a new health-care program. For the pack-a-day smoker, the state tax would be another $28 a month. That’s 21 downloads from iTunes — every month — even at the new, higher price. That’s a white chocolate mocha, grande, from Starbucks every week. Or — dare I suggest it? — a half-year subscription to a local newspaper.

3) The 62-cent federal tax that went into effect this month to help fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — which increased the federal tax from 39 cents to $1.101 a pack — is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cause 1 million smokers across the nation to quit.

In comparison to the rising cost of cigarettes, some government health departments are distributing nicotine patches to help people quit.

For free.

]]> http://gemomemo.wordpress.com/?p=238 Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:34:32 +0000 cagemo http://gemomemo.wordpress.com/?p=238

Gemo

It seems quaint now.

Furious at spiraling real estate prices, and feeling trapped by a property tax cap that turned out to have unintended consequences, angry Floridians changed the state’s constitution to double the tax exemption for living in your own home and to make the tax cap mobile with the owner, not fixed with the property.

But even as voters were approving the change by a two-thirds majority, the opposite was already happening: Real estate prices were spiraling in the other direction, and now people were trapped in their homes for a new reason.

The property taxes devoted to local school districts were excluded from this doubling exemption, but that proved to be little consolation for the systems. Property values fell sharply, and money earned from the state’s sales tax fell off significantly. Florida’s two main ways of funding public schools were evaporating.

In addition to these economic worries, Florida’s school systems are undergoing transformational change — which should sound familiar to anyone in the newspaper business. After years of not being able to hire teachers and build schools nearly fast enough, enrollment is declining in many places, teachers and administrators are being laid off and schools are closing. After experimenting with year-round school, districts are now talking about reducing to just four days a week. Virtual learning not dependent on a bricks-and-mortar school building is an idea gaining traction. Parents who have built their work schedules around what, until now, have been predictable school days are not particularly crazy about any of these trends — which should also sound familiar to anyone in the newspaper business.

Increasingly, ABC stands for anger, bitterness and confusion among members of the public, and not just the infamous attendance boundary committees that pitted school board members against each other. Worse, these important decisions are being made as schools are starting to wind down for the summer — the school fiscal year starts in July — and as the Legislature finishes its budget in the next three weeks in Tallahassee, far from the line of sight of most Florida parents, students and school administrators.

So are there things Florida news organizations can do — beyond what they’re now doing — to help increase understanding, facilitate meaningful debate, connect stakeholders and help bring the impending changes to light? Of course, the answer is yes.

1. Aggregate content: It can be very difficult for someone other than a full-time schools reporter or lobbyist to follow developments. So help the audience. A good example of this is the School Zone from orlandosentinel.com. It could be improved by linking to community blogs on the topic — not just staff stories — and by including a much more extensive q-and-a.
2. Add democracy boxes: Every substantial story should be accompanied by a who-to-contact-and-how list. Most people don’t even know who is on a school board, much less the state legislators from the area or even Florida’s two U.S. senators. Include names, titles, physical and e-mail addresses, and — if available — their social networking accounts.
3. Stream raw video, and then offer re-runs, from important school board meetings: Even if they are very interested, most stakeholders will not attend a school board meeting when these budget and attendance issues are discussed. The meetings often are scheduled when parents are at work, and even then these discussions seldom get started at the appointed time. Meetings of Florida’s larger school districts are broadcast on community service channels already, but some cable systems have moved the channels so far up the dial that the viewers must have new TVs or special boxes to watch. Provide a link to watch the video on your site, and record it so it can later be watched on demand.
4. Tweet and blog developments: Sergeants-at-arms often prohibit mobile phones at public meetings, but frequently allow laptops with air cards. Use these to provide updates on Twitter, write blog entries and — importantly — regularly solicit questions from the audience and answer as many publicly as possible. Show people on your web site how to follow you on Twitter.
5. Provide cell-phone alerts: Florida news orgs already do this for traffic and weather. Expand the alerts to include breaking news and exclusive stories on school budget and attendance over these critical next few weeks. Show on your web site how to sign up for text alerts to your cell phone or e-mail — and of course, make sure editors and reporters know the drill and the need to provide them when news breaks.
6. Tell the little-picture stories: District-wide numbers on budget shortfalls show perspective, but sometimes are otherwise meaningless because they often don’t show what proportion they are to the overall budget or say very clearly what they are a shortfall from — a deficit from maintaining current services, or a shortfall from the wish lists departments submitted? Sometimes it helps increase understanding by showing a series of little pictures in addition to the big picture: In side-by-side comparisons and a tale of the tape, show how an elementary school, middle school and high school would be changed from one year to the next.
7. Show the story in an interactive visual: Show enrollment and per-pupil funding trends across the district. While enrollment may be declining overall in a district, it often is doing so unevenly — perhaps leading a district to build a new school in one neighborhood while closing others. In the interactive graphic, overlay the school’s capital building plan with enrollment trends to see if they are in sync — and if not, why not?
8. Create a talk show in print and online: A suggestion from a reader advisory panel while I served as managing editor in Duluth, Minn., has stuck with me: Panel members said they understood there were journalistic conventions that required a story to be written objectively and put forth in a certain structure, but this made it hard for them to read between the lines to uncover hidden agendas. They recommended we pair stories with columns telling them: Here’s what’s really going on. As horrifying as that kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge journalism can be, the panel was on to something: Sometimes our journalistic conventions, done a certain way because we’ve always done it that way out of routine, work against our audience’s capacity to understand an issue. So what if we had an “objective” report on an issue — such as the idea of distance learning for primary education — and paired it with a series of “opinion” pieces looking at the issue in first-person accounts from stakeholders? A student who would take the course over a computer. A teacher who may lose a classroom. A parent who is worried about the child being home alone during a weekday. A psychiatrist talking about the trade-offs in social development. And so on. These would be one-stop shopping for readers — not a news story on one page and opinion in a completely different section or vertical. They are all related, and would all be linked together in one place.
9. A living and growing q-and-a: Solicit questions from the audience and get them answered. Forward questions to policymakers to have them answer directly, and post the answers for all to see. Break out stories to add more depth to common questions — and don’t be surprised if the most common questions are about things reporters and editors take for granted and would never think to ask themselves. As the q-and-a grows, make it searchable.
10. Rake all these leaves into a special multimedia report. Add earlier reporting, databases on individual schools, searchable results from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, attendance maps and feeder school patterns, the school district’s budget. When it’s ready, tell the audience about it through the social nets, in print and on your web site.

“We could effectively turn 18 million Floridians into auditors to make sure we’re spending every dollar as frugally as possible,” said Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander.

“This is bringing Florida’s budget truly in the sunshine,” said Senate Republican leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla of Miami. He said the first stage of the Web site should be functional by July, but it could take up to two years to post all spending information — including the actual checks cut for individual contracts and cell phone bills.

Diaz de la Portilla said taxpayers would be able to see if individual agencies are hoarding money or spending it unwisely or at the last minute in order to keep their budgets fat.

Of course, Charlie is still silent – preferring platitudes like “tighten our belts” (read:means massive cuts in health care, education, and programs for the disabled). So, LiMieux’s mutterings are the closest thing to an indication about what Charlie will do.

Let’s rewind to the end of the 2006 campaign when Crist campaigned in the homestretch using this simple line:

If you want higher taxes, you vote for who? Jim Davis, If you want lower taxes, you vote for who? Charlie Crist.

Economic crises lead to a change of plans there is no question abaout it – but this was a signature issue for him. What is Charlie going to do?

There is no question something has to be done about the revenue situation, but raising sales taxes in a bad economy will just mean less consumer spending and less revenue. A tobacco tax is a decent idea – but it puts state programs dependent on a declining revenue stream. There are not a lot of good choices – so we really do need to get to work.

A guy who doesn’t work for Charlie anymore is updating Floridians on what is going to happen better than the Governor — it’s time to get to work and fix our budget.

So where is Charlie? He got to work at noon today and has nothing scheduled for the rest of the week.