Education bills shattered the usual alliances

Scott flipped on two measures

When Gov. Rick Scott signed a controversial K-12 education bill Thursday less than 24 hours after vetoing a higher education bill, it cemented one of the most unlikely turnarounds in recent Florida government history.

Scott went from pitched battle against the state House and relative alliance with the Florida Senate to signing the K-12 education bill created by House leadership and killing the higher education bill that had been a top priority for Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart.

Negron, Scott and House Speaker Richard

Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, have one more session together before all three are term-limited out of office. The lame-duck status of all three doesn’t bode well for the January 2018 session, and some legislators’ sense of betrayal sets the bar especially low.

“What I’ve learned is it’s really about what’s best for them. It doesn’t have anything to do with policy; it doesn’t have anything to do with what benefits the people of Florida,” said Senate Minority Leader Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens. “It’s all about what benefits them personally at that moment. If it benefits Richard to be friends with Joe, if it benefits the governor to be friends with Richard, then that’s what they’ll do.”

In 2018, Scott is widely expected to run for U.S. Senate against Democrat Bill Nelson. Corcoran may run for governor. Negron’s future plans are unknown.

Scott’s veto of the higher education bill, SB 374, is especially galling to senators in light of the passage of the K-12education bill, HB7069, which was opposed by teachers unions, school superintendents and many school boardmembers.

“We had to support this K-12 education policy and cram it through because, supposedly, we had to do that to help the Senate President with his priorities,” said state Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale. “Didn’t turn out thatway.”

After a regular legislative session ending May 8 that saw Corcoran and Scott go to war over the governor’s top priorities of tourism marketing and economic development, which the Senate largely supported, Scott began making vague threats of vetoing the K-12 bill (HB 7069), as public education groups were demanding.

The bill fundamentally changes the status of charter schools, public schools that are operated by private companies.

The Palm Beach County School District estimates $230 million will go to charter schools under this provision in the next decade. In Broward County, it’s $300 million over 10 years, according to the school district.

The bill, crafted behind closed doors with no public input, easily passed the House, but cleared the Senate by only one vote.

“I know three [senators] who said it verbatim and others who implied it pretty strongly they didn’t feel as badly voting for HB 7069 because it wasn’t going to be signed,” Farmer said. “I think theywere played from the beginning.”

With the House having hit his priorities, and with the House’s education bill now the target of a broad campaign calling for a veto, Scott began to signal he would do just that.

“This session, a lot of things happened in secret. Therewas not a lot of input,” Scott said after signing a tax cut bill on May 25. “I can veto the bill, I can veto the budget, I can veto part of the budget. So, I’m reviewing my options.”

Then came the three-day special session, June 7-9, when everything changed.

High-level staff for Scott and Corcoran had been working out an agreement that would see Scott get his tourism marketing and economic development money. Negron had been left out of the talks.

“I didn’t find it unusual that the governor, his representatives, and and their representatives in the House would be talking about potentially resolving their conflict. We were already on the side of the governor,” Negron said. “The Senate was not involved either formally or informally in those discussions, nor is that surprising because we’re not the ones that had the conflict.”

Negron saw nothing until June 1, when the governor’s office sent him a draft of a bill that would add tourism marketing and economic development funds back to the budget in a special session.

He also saw a draft list of line-item vetoes that day.

“I indicated to the governor that if when the vetoes came out the priorities of the Senate were eviscerated,” Negron said, “the Senate wouldn’t be in a position to be able to even consider supporting an agreement where Party A resolves dispute with Party B and pays for it with Party C’s money.”

At about midnight June 2, Negron received a call from Scott, asking him to be at a newsconference that morning in Miami to announce the special session. Negron went.

In texts and calls the day of the news conference, both Braynon, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, couched the special session as a quid pro quo deal. The governor would get money for tourism marketing and economic development. The House would get its education bill. The Senate would get its higher education bill.

But Scott didn’t quite see it that way. While he didn’t say he would sign the K-12 bill, his rhetoric had changed.

Scott stopped talking about HB 7069. Whenasked on multiple occasions, he would simply say he was “reviewing it.”

In the end, several of the Senate’s higher education projects got put back in the budget after they threatened veto overrides during the special session, but at lower funding levels.

And then Scott vetoed SB 374 and signed HB7069.

“And that’s how we got played,” Farmer said. “Logic and reason would tell you that the Senate, having been led along through a deal that wasn’t a deal, I would think there would be a pretty significant lack of trust with the House and the governor going forward. It’d be hard to tell how there could be trust at this point. But I suppose time will tell.”

Scott and Corcoran appeared together Tuesday in WestPalm Beach as part of a victory lap on the success of the special session.

Negron was not there; he was at a fundraiser in California.

When asked whether he should have anticipated that cutting Senate projects to fund the governor’s priorities would raise hackles among senators, Corcoran flashed a tight-lipped, impish smile.

“Honestly, I think we all worked it out,” he said.