In West Palm, Scott touts budget deal

WEST PALM BEACH – Gov. Rick Scott dropped by the South Florida Water Management District in West Palm Beach on Tuesday for the second stop in a five-city victory tour that took him from Miami to Jacksonville Beach.

“We have a lot of things to brag about this session,” Scott said. “The House and Senate all supported the priorities that all of us that are worried about the future of our state care about.”

He then ran down the added funding that made its way into the state budget during last week’s special session:

$215 million more for K-12 education, which works out to $100 per student.

Fully funding the tourism marketing agency Visit Florida at $76 million.

A new $85 million job training and infrastructure fund.

$50 million to help repair the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee.

Those four items were the big wins for Scott in the state budget, and all of them were added last week.

House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, appeared with Scott in West Palm Beach to lavish praise on the governor.

“I give the governor a huge shout-out, well deserved,” Corcoran said. “He is now the No. 1 governor — maybe in the nation but certainly in the state of Florida — for vetoing porkbarrel spending. And all these things we just talked about — funding kids at the highest level, protecting our tourist market, protecting our job market, helping protect our environment and keeping our people safe — all of that was paid for in large part by vetoes of pork-barrel spending.”

It was a marked difference from the regular session, which took place in March and April and saw Corcoran and Scott go to war, with the speaker leading the charge against tourism marketing and economic development funding — two of Scott’s chief priorities.

Corcoran was prepared to cut Visit Florida to $25 million and do away with Enterprise Florida, the state’s economic development agency.

But after Scott threatened to veto a massive, charter-school-friendly education bill — a Corcoran priority — put together in the final days of the regular session, the governor’s priorities found new life in the three-day special session.

But Enterprise Florida — which focused in part on giving money to businesses to come to the state — was a nonstarter for Corcoran. Instead, the Legislature created a new Florida Job Growth Fund that cannot target individual businesses but instead will pay for job training and infrastructure meant to draw business to the state.

"I think you’re going to see it go viral in the other 49 states,” Corcoran said. “They’re going to start going down that same path of getting out of the business of picking winners and losers and doing massive projects that benefit the whole.”