Gov. Charlie Crist met with survivors of the Haiti earthquake who arrived in Florida, Wednesday, during a tour of the evacuee-assistance facility set up by the American Red Cross and the Florida Dept. of Children and Families at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford. Crist, who was joined by DCF Secretary George Sheldon and other officials, also visited the Emergency Operations Center at the airport and toured the inside of one of the massive C-17 transport aircraft used in the ongoing Haiti airlifts.

Click here for more photos from Wednesday’s visit.

ABOVE:  Gov. Charlie Crist listens to Haiti earthquake survivor Marie Rose-Laure Eustache, at the temporary processing facility set up for evacuees arriving at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Fla., Wednesday. Looking on is George Sheldon, DCF Secretary and interpreter Valery Dambreville.  (PHOTOS by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Gov. Charlie Crist and DCF Secretary George Sheldon (left) listen to Haitian-American Valery Dambreville as he describes finding his aunt earlier in the week --who he feared was missing in the Haiti earthquake-- on an incoming flight to Sanford, Fla. at the temporary processing facility set up for evacuees arriving at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, Wednesday.

Governor Charlie Crist talks to a family of Haiti earthquake survivors, at the temporary processing facility set up for evacuees arriving at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Fla., Wednesday.

Haiti earthquake survivors are processed in as Florida governor Charlie Crist (background, top) talks with evacuees at the temporary processing facility set up at at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Fla., Wednesday.

A Florida Dept. of Children & Families volunteer holds a baby, one of the Haiti earthquake survivors, as Florida governor Charlie Crist talks to evacuees at the temporary processing facility set up at at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Fla., Wednesday.

Gov. Charlie Crist (left) and Florida National Guard Maj. Gen. Douglas Burnett walk on the tarmac behind a C-17 transport aircraft during a visit to the temporary processing facility set up for Haiti earthquake survivors. at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Fla., Wednesday.

TALLAHASSEE – Facing an ominous milestone for job losses, Florida policymakers said Wednesday they were ruling out raising taxes to close the state’s budget hole and could attempt to delay a long-expected unemployment tax hike on employers.

Lawmakers will christen an election-year legislative session in six weeks facing a budget shortfall ranging anywhere from $1.1 billion to $3.2 billion.

Last year, Republican legislators managed to stitch together a $66.5-billion spending plan in part by raising taxes on cigarettes and a host of fees on motorists, court-filers, and even shoreline fishers. That raised $2.2 billion to spare deeper cuts in services and layoffs.

But this time, Gov. Charlie Crist and GOP leaders are balking at any notion of raising taxes or fees – and are even pledging to try to enact deep tax cuts and soften the blow from a scheduled April hike in the unemployment compensation tax paid by employers.

“The people of Florida do not have one more dime to send us,” Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, told most of the 40-member Senate who attended a Ways and Means Committee economic briefing on Wednesday.

“We will not extract one more dollar from the small-business owners of this state or any other Floridian’s wallet to accomplish the task.”

Atwater said budget-cutting measures would almost certainly include layoffs of an unspecified number of state workers. Meanwhile, state economists told lawmakers that Florida’s unemployment rate for December could officially climb to 12 percent when the figure is released on Friday – which would amount to an all-time high for the state.

Story here.

By John Kennedy, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — Saying Floridians are sick of corruption in Tallahassee, Sen. Paula Dockery, a Lakeland Republican running for governor, joined Democratic Rep. Adam Fetterman on Wednesday in detailing a proposed tough new voting standard for state lawmakers.

The measure, dubbed the “Ethical Practices Act of 2010,” would bar House and Senate members from voting on or helping shape legislation that would yield a private financial gain or help their families or relatives.

The House currently has a rule that lawmakers refrain from casting such votes, but the Senate does not.

Although Dockery has sponsored similar legislation the past two sessions and never earned a committee hearing, both legislators said they believed the public is demanding stricter ethics out of the Legislature.

“I think the political climate right now, especially in an election year….the people are demanding that there be activity that is not politics as usual,” Dockery said. “People want to be able to trust and have integrity in their government.”

Fetterman, D-Port St. Lucie, said the prohibition on self-interest is needed to correct a legislative process he declared, “broken.”

Amid rising distrust and anger among voters, Fetterman said that, “Some might argue that Tallahassee is where good ideas go to die.”

Both lawmakers cited Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts as proof that the voting public was volatile, unpredictable, and ready to overturn what they saw as business as usual.

Dockery acknowledged that the still ongoing House probe of former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, should add fuel to the drive for tighter ethics controls.

But she also conceded that the legislation (SB 438, HB 587) would not have prevented Sansom from tucking millions of dollars into the state budget in 2007 to help a community college in his district – but not getting a six-figure job at the school until a year later.

“With Speaker Sansom, when it was said ‘this is what happens every day in this process,’ it is,” Dockery said. “But that doesn’t make it right….we need to put procedures into place to prevent this from happening.”

Added Fetterman, “We need to make it crystal clear we will no longer tolerate backroom deals in the legislative process.”  

Dockery is vying for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, running a maverick campaign against Attorney General Bill McCollum, who has drawn support from many party leaders.

Dockery’s candidacy was launched by her opposition to the Sunrail commuter train in the Orlando area. And the Sunrail issue made its way into Wednesday’s news conference unveiling the ethics legislation.

Dockery has sparred with fellow Polk County Republican Sen. J.D. Alexander over Sunrail and Wednesday suggested he likely would have fallen under the proposed law’s restriction and been prohibited from voting on the rail project approve in December by the Legislature.

Alexander and his cousin, Rep. Baxter Troutman, R-Winter Haven, are part of a family business, Phoenix Industries, that some said could have realized a profit from the CSX deal. Troutman abstained from voting in the House because of the possible connection, although Alexander did not.

Asked about the relationship, Dockery said, “I think that if this were in place, that anybody who was going to benefit would excuse himself. In the House, Baxter Troutman excused himself.”

Alexander sought an opinion on the matter from the Senate’s general counsel, who opined that he didn’t have a conflict, and so Alexander said he voted on the issue because he was constitutionally bound to do so.

Dockery, who with husband C.C. ‘Doc’ Dockery, have been promoters of high-speed rail, said speculation has long swirled about whether the couple own property that could rise in value with the arrival of a new bullet train.

She denied such a connection.

“Sometimes its hard for people to understand that you just want to push ideas when you don’t personally benefit from them,” Dockery said. “But I welcome that scrutiny.”

The campaign of Sen. Paula Dockery, a Lakeland Republican running for government on a clean-up-government platform, was hit with a sophisticated computer hack this week that clogged her website.

Her campaign is fixing the problem. The FBI has been notified of the attack, but it’s unclear what it can do.

Here’s an excerpt of an email from her tech support guru on the attack sent yesterday, Tuesday Jan. 19.

As you all have noticed, the website has been up and down for the past two days. 

This is the result of an attack that first started at 6am yesterday morning.  It continued sporadically at various times yesterday.  Today, starting at 6am, the attack resumed at a much larger level (approximately 2.5 times).  To give you an idea of the magnitude, a graph showing this is attached.  We are not 100% certain that it was directed at the campaign yet, but it is very likely that is the case.

In essence, what is happening is someone is sending approximately 40,000 requests per second to the website/server, then immediately closing them… It is the equivalent of 2.4 million people a minute browsing to the site and closing it immediately.  In essence this saturates the number of connections available to legitimate people trying to get to the server, causing them to time-out when they visit the site.  In security terms it is called a Denial of Service Attack (DoS). 

To make matters worse, the attacker is sophisticated enough to spoof (in other words, forge) the source of the traffic…. It also means that the attack appears like legitimate traffic….

To give you an idea as to the relative size of this attack, the average attack of this type is around 500 requests per second. In other words, this one is very, very large (which also suggests a more sophisticated attacker). ….

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican running for governor, said he regrets a long-ago 1983 vote he made as a congressman against making Martin Luther King Day a paid federal holiday. But he said “shortly after the vote,” he realized the error of his ways and that “numerous times in town meetings and other places…that was a mistake, a bad vote on my part.”

Two problems:

1) There’s no record of anything remotely approaching a statement of contrition from McCollum out of the 219 items that the Nexis news-clip service displays when you search his name and that of the civil-rights icon. But perhaps the press missed the "numerous" explanations, especially in 2000 when it was brought up in articles in his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid against Bill Nelson.

2) But there is this St. Petersburg Times clip, on May 10, 1989 headlined “An Embarrassment to Florida” in which McCollum is taken to task for voting against the holiday.

So that means there were at least two votes: The one in 1983 to establish the holiday and one in 1989 to finance the holiday. And McCollum’s explanation yesterday that he had a come-to-Jesus moment soon after just doesn’t wash with the record. 

Also, McCollum’s stated reason for voting against the holiday – that he was concerned about the cost to taxpayers and “debt” – doesn’t necessarily jibe with his later voting record in Congress in 1995 and 1996, when he voted to increase the national debt limits.

True, those votes and the MLK votes were years apart and each vote had its own particular context that made it unique. Consider: McCollum approved funding for the holiday in another 1989 vote. After all, this is Congress, where long-serving members wind up on every side of the issue because part of the Washington game is designed to make you take bad votes over and over.

Here’s the transcript of McCollum’s statements Tuesday to the press about his past vote:

I voted against it back in 1983, a long time ago, and I did it on the basis of my concern over creating a federal holiday in which we had federal employees who were going to be given a day of work with pay, which is adding to the cost of the budget. At that time, I was very concerned – and probably a little naïve because I think Martin Luther King was a great leader, and I’ve said numerous times in town meetings and other places, as I was a congressman, that was a mistake, a bad vote on my part. I should have had more thought into it and thought about the fact that he is so important a figure to such a large segment of our community and represents so many of the values that we share that I should have let that supersede the fiscal concerns I had. But I voted on it, as I said, I voted on it on the basis of the budget that I faced as a young congressman and the tremendous debt that we used to have in those days, which we again now have in Congress. They’ve gone farther, much farther, than what I saw when I was first there in terms of debt.

Q: When did you realize you were wrong?

In the 80s, shortly after the vote, I couldn’t tell you the exact year. This was, what, 25 years ago.
It was very apparent to me, upon reflection soon after that, that it was not a good vote. I shouldn’t have made the vote that way. Even though it does cost a lot of money. I would have preferred to have it not a paid holiday for all the federal employees. It’s a big cost to the taxpayers.

But, honoring, Martin Luther King – always thought it was a good idea. Even when I cast the vote.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer arrived in Washington, D.C., this morning for the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a three-day trip that includes a meeting with President Barack Obama.

There will be a literal bus-load of mayors heading to the Thursday meeting at the White House, where they’ll talk with Obama’s economic advisors about job growth. The president is scheduled to attend for an hour.

Dyer also planned to attend another conference session this afternoon at which Michelle Obama will speak. (His flight was arriving too late to catch this morning’s opening remarks by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.)

Most of his conference time will be spent at sessions that focus on transportation, according to a schedule we reviewed. Dyer also scheduled meetings with members of Orlando’s congressional delegation, including senators Bill Nelson and George LeMieux, and Rep. Alan Grayson. You can expect him to ask for a big push for high-speed rail.

Also on the agenda: A one-on-one with Obama’s “homeless czar,” Barbara Poppe, the new director of Interagency Council on Homelessness. Orlando’s rep as a less-than-welcoming place for the homeless should make for interesting conversation.

He’ll also drop in on Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. He’s looking for that labor union’s lobbying machine to help Orlando secure a federal stimulus grant that would pay the salaries of 46 firefighters who face layoff.

Attending the conference with Dyer is his legislative affairs director, Carson Chandler, and chief of staff, Brie Turek. City Hall put the cost of the trip at $4,345. Oh, and we checked Dyer’s seat assignment: He’s flying coach.

Shelly Solomon Heller withdrew from the race for Stephanie Kraft's seat on the Broward School Board on Wednesday, after filling to run for the job on Jan. 12.

Heller, a lawyer and parent volunteer with four kids in Broward public schools, said running for office was keeping her away from her kids too much, even in the early stages of the contest.

"As much as I want to do this and I'm so passionate about doing this for our schools, the bottom line is I'm a mom first," she said. "Trying to find a balance between that and doing this is going to be difficult."

Heller's announcement comes days after Lauren Book, the daughter of well-heeled mega-lobbyist Ron Book, said she was seriously considering running for Kraft's northwest Broward seat.Heller said her decision was not related to the possibility of running against Lauren Book.

Kraft, who is serving her third, four-year term on the board, said last week she would not seek reelection, adding that she waited to make her decision until she knew other people were interested in her seat. Heller has served as Kraft's appointee on several school district committees.

With Heller's departure, two candidates remain in the race: David "Dave" Thomas and Stewart "Stew" Jackson Webster. There is still time left to file for the post.

Florida Power & Light has reassigned staff attorney Natalie Smith who was given the BlackBerry messaging codes of Public Service Commissioner Lisa Edgar and who sought the BlackBerry PIN numbers of several other PSC staff members.

Smith, who had been a member of the company's legal team that handled the company's unsuccessful bid to get a $1.3 billion rate increase, will move from being Director of Regulatory Affairs to an attorney in the company's legal department, based in Tallahassee. She will report to John Butler, who is the company's managing regulatory attorney.

FPL had vigorously defended Smith when emails surfaced between the PSC and Smith, saying in a statement that she “has never communicated via PIN with Commissioner Edgar or any other commissioner...All of Ms. Smith's communications have been appropriate and any suggestion that Ms. Smith engaged in improper communication at any time is patently false.” FPL spokesman Mark Bubriski said the company does not discuss personnel matters. 

Gov. Charlie Crist, who has been assembling his annual budget recommendations with a team of budget advisors, will soon embark on a budget road show. He'll start to roll out his proposals Friday in Naples, when he'll talk about environmental suggestions not far from the Everglades.

Next Monday, the U.S. Senate candidate will travel to his home town of St. Petersburg to unveil his education budget, including money for public schools, community colleges and universities as well as class-size reduction. He may float some more ideas next Wednesday at the annual Associated Press planning seminar for Florida editors, and will do a comprehensive budget "roll-out" on Friday, Jan. 29, in Tallahassee.

"It seems to be you can communicate more effectively if you do it that way," Crist said. He recalled that in 2007, he advocated for money for a river cleanup plan on the banks of the St. Lucie River.

Asked if he plans to recommend spending cuts, Crist said: "It's not fully developed yet, but we may." By law, Crist must present a budget proposal to the Legislature before every session, which lawmakers will accept politely but then largely ignore as they assemble their own budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. 

-- Steve Bousquet

Scott Brown, the newly-elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts, is not only the toast of dispirited Republicans around the country, but he’s also apparently running for Orange County mayor.

Or, at least someone very much like him is.

Orange County Commissioner and mayoral hopeful Mildred Fernandez issued a press release this afternoon in which the fellow-Republican claims “I’m the Scott Brown of Orange County.”

Fernandez used the pitch to raise campaign funds. She subtly calls out — though not by name — fellow Orange County Commissioner Bill Segal as a pal of the special interests in the crowded fall race, noting the Winter Park Democrat had out-raised all the other opponents combined.

“Like Scott Brown, I’m the underdog in the race,” said Fernandez. “The special interests are firmly behind my opponent.”

“Like Scott Brown, I’m a candidate of the people,” the release went on to say.

The similarities don’t end there. Just like Scott Brown, Fernandez wants to grow the economy with smaller government and lower taxes solutions, she says.

After unveiling her ethics legislation today, Sen. Paula Dockery said she expects her campaign for governor will not be getting the large checks from special interests because of her anti-establishment, independent message.

She was asked whether she had decided how much of her own financial wealth she would contribute to her push to become the Republican nominee. "I'm confident that it may not add up to big dollars but enough people are going to put in enough small contributions and we're going to run a truly grassroots campaign. If I determine we're going to need dollars to get my message out, I'll assess that at the time -- but it's not my intention.

"I don’t want to be governor badly enough that I’m going to have to throw a lot of money in to get there,’’ she said. "I want to run for governor to give people the opportunity to have a fighter and a reformer and an independent-minded person as a choice."

TALLAHASSEE — What the heck happens Friday?  you ask. Well, that’s when the state will release its unemployment figures for the month of December.

And state economist Amy Baker just told a Senate committee she expects Florida’s 11.5 percent unemployment rate to reach roughly 12 percent for December.

“That would be the highest unemployment we’ve experienced in Florida since we began keeping records,” Baker said. That reflects the fact that Florida’s economic path is different from the rest of the nation, which has already unofficially moved out of the recession — although the lagging indicator of job losses is worsening nationally, as well.

Overall, the news isn’t all bad. Baker said general revenue collections for December were right on target with what state economists expected, meaning lawmakers are more likely to have a firm handle on how much government they’ll have to cut. In recent years, the picture kept getting worse as the projections proved too rosy.

Florida is still projected to move into recovery mode where jobs start being added in 2011, she said.

Yikes. Amy Baker, the head of the Legislature's economic forecasting shop, said she expects Florida's unemployment rate could tick up from 11.5 percent to 12 percent or more when the labor department releases its figures this Friday.

"I'm not optimistic," she told the Senate's budget committee.

Baker's dose of downer-ness followed a presentation from David Denslow of the University of Florida who predicted that job loss next year will be worse than it was in 09 and 10.

Baker noted that the big freeze of last week, which damaged crops in 67 of 67 counties, will exert "downward pressure" on the state's gross domestic product. And Haitian refugees could bring more pressure on public schools where English as a second language courses could be strained.

Baker also busted out with spooky term: Black Swans, incidents of high impact with a low probability of happening. She gave three:

1) significant commercial real estate defaults

2) a hurricane season like 2004 or 2005, considering the Budget Stabilization Fund is a meagre $274m

3) If the stock market is over-valued and then "corrects itself"

Senate President Jeff Atwater pulled out the five dollar words in an address to the Senate Ways and Means Committee where he said that new taxes are off the table. They weren't last year, of course, when the Legislature raised $2.2 billion worth of them. Election year politics? Nah, Atwater has said.

Sure.

Anyway, Atwater made his comments before the Senate unveiled the first stage of its Transparency Florida initiative showing citizens how money flows through the state budget. Some fascinating stuff, like the nearly $83 million the state spent on electricity alone last year.

Some speech excerpts:

"As difficult and challenging as our decisions have been, we are not facing crippling deficits. We have managed our fiscal responsibilities well. And we should not allow the shrieking cacophony of special interests to drown out this simple fact: we have faced up to and made the difficult decisions. What we have not done and what we will not do is leave our sons and our daughters and future generations of Floridians with an intolerable burden of taxes and debt."

Regarding questions about the budget hole and how to fill it:

"The premise of the question is sadly missing the reality of our moment. Current expenditures of the people’s money is exceeding the tax revenue that the people are now providing their state government.

We must make those same difficult decisions. We must separate the requireds from the desireds. The people of fl do not have one more dime to send us. So let me be clear. When it comes to constructing a state budget to meet the critical needs of the people of this state, I am not starting in a hole. I am starting from scratch. And I will work at your side to construct such a budget. But we will not extract one more dollar from the small business owner of this state or from any Floridians wallet to accomplish the task."

Applause from fellow Republicans. Democrats smiled.

"This defines the context which we will be facing this session. It does not matter how we got here. It only matters that we are here. It matters that we demonstrate to our fellow Floridians that we are in this together -- that we will not succumb to the easy answers and that we will not burden them further."

State Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, and Rep. Adam Fetterman, D-Port St. Lucie, said Wednesday that state legislators need to be held to higher ethical standards. The two lawmakers called attention to their bills that would prohibit legislators from voting on or taking part in any legislation that would result in any special private gain for themselves or their relatives.

"This should be a no-brainer," said Dockery, a candidate for governor, noting that she has filed similar legislation the past two years but that it didn't get a single public hearing. She noted that her proposal is already on the books in 22 states, including two not known for the cleanliness of their politics, Louisiana and Rhode Island. Asked by a reporter what the penalty would be for violating her bill, Dockery said "That's a good question." (Her bill as filed, Senate Bill 438, contains no penalty provision). 

Florida legislators can vote on such matters now as long as they disclose such interest within 15 days of casting a vote. Fetterman called that standard "repugnant," and said in a news release: "It is no wonder that many Floridians have lost faith in their elected officials." 

-- Steve Bousquet

TALLAHASSEE — Space Florida President Frank DiBello brought his wish-list to the state Capitol Wednesday, and the highlights include getting legislative authority to place a controversial launch complex on the back-burner until a company steps up that’s willing to use it.

DiBello, 67, is attempting to re-launch the fledging space economic-development agency since taking over for its controversial past president, Steve Kohler. He has canceled consultants’ contracts, fired his Washington-based lobbying firm, slowed the agency’s ambitious plans to create a public-private spaceport and is cutting staff. He has also refocused the agency on projects — however small — that can create jobs and preserve at least some of the launch and high-tech rocket-processing skills that have been honed during the past three decades.

This year, DeBillo is asking lawmakers to embrace his plan to back away from a long-touted project in Tallahassee that state legislators have already ponied up money to fund:  a multiple-use $60 million launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station until he can find a customer committed to use it.

DiBello said there were companies interested in the launch pad, known as LC-36, but not enough right now to merit continuing to pour money into re-building the pad.

“I believe you invest when you have a solid business case to warrant it,” DiBello told the House Economic Development Policy Committee Wednesday.

The agency is also asking for legislation creating a commercial launch zone, research and development tax credits, and other tax goodies. The motherload that DiBello has been lobbying Gov. Charlie Crist to create — an $100 million space-technology investment fund — didn’t come up in the meeting.

That makes sense. Space Florida’s agenda largely fell flat in the cash-strapped Legislature last year. But DiBello didn’t mince words on his overarching point – that Florida would have to start front-loading its incentives to keep competitive with other states aiming to steal the state’s business edge.

“The space industry does require investment,” he said.

Rep. Steve Crisifulli, R-Merritt Island, said one aim for space boosters will be to include language in the state budget to let Space Florida spend the $13 million lawmakers have set aside for the LC-36 project on other launch pads or launch-related improvements. That way, the agency could still go after commercial launch-related jobs more quickly than if they tried to complete a total retrofit of the old pad, he said.

TALLAHASSEE — In an attempt to crack open the confusing and bureaucratic world of state government, the Florida Legislature is launching a new site called www.transparencyflorida.gov that gives Web surfers new access to layers of state spending.

How much do you want to excavate? Well, lawmakers are hoping a lot. Senate Budget Chief J.D. Alexander has been preaching for months that he wants the public to use the site to take a deeper look into state spending habits and has warned of the inevitable “gotcha” stories.

Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, went further, asking members of the public to become their own “auditors” of state spending data. “After today, every taxpayer dollar deployed daily will be available for public scrutiny,” Atwater said.

As of this posting, though, the site wasn’t ready for public use — the tech guy who presented it to the Senate Ways and Means Committee had to get back to his office to “turn it on,” Senate staff said.

It’s up now.

On Wednesday, the Hispanic Legislative Caucus announced a $5,000 donation to the Legislative Black Caucus for Haiti relief efforts.

“When a segment of my community, our community, hurts, we all hurt,” Rep. Esteban Bovo, R-Hialeah, said at a Capitol press conference.

Sen. Gary Siplin, whose wife is Haitian an lost both of her parents when she was a child, said the money will go toward an ongoing fundraising effort by black lawmakers.

“Right now we can help best …by donating money,” said Siplin, D-Orlando. He added: “It’s going to take years before we can get Haiti to be the viable country that it once was.”

Lawmakers also promoted the two-day Haiti Muzik Relief Concert this weekend at Bayfront Park in Miami. The concert will be held from 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 2 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. All of the proceeds will go toward the American Red Cross’ efforts in Haiti.

By Josh Hafenbrack, Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE — Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, just delivered an unambiguous message to a bipartisan collection of senators on the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee: no new taxes or fees.

“The people of Florida do not have one more dime to send us,” Atwater said. In closing a budget gap between $1 billion and $3 billion, depending on whom you ask, Atwater said, “We will not extract one more dollar from the small business owners of this state or any other Floridians’ wallet to accomplish the task.”

Atwater added, “I have been asked often, How deep is the budget hole, how big is the budget gap? Well, the number can be estimated, but the premise of the question is sadly missing the reality of our moment. Current expenditures of the people’s money is exceeeding the revenues that the people are now providing their state government. The people of Florida are making painful decisions every day, reducing their expenses to hang on for one more month…We must make the same difficult decisions.”