Florida Cabinet meetings are looking light for 2018

TALLAHASSEE — The awkward power-sharing relationship between Florida’s governor and the statewide elected Cabinet members is unique among the 50 states, and in 2018 it will be on public display less than ever.

Gov. Rick Scott has scheduled just eight Cabinet meetings for the year ahead, with no meetings in April, July, October or November, those latter two months being close to a busy general election cycle when statewide candidates are usually far from Tallahassee.

As recently as the 1990s, the Cabinet met every other week. But since Scott became governor, Cabinet sessions have been more ceremonial and less substantive — and less frequent, too. More time is devoted to award ceremonies, and a regular feature is Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promotion of offering dogs for adoption.

But Cabinet meetings also are among those rare instances when Scott holds question-and-answer sessions with Capitol reporters. Those will be fewer and farther between in 2018. The Cabinet, which includes Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, met 11 times in 2017 and 2016 and 15 times in 2014.

Kent Perez, a former longtime Cabinet aide who now works for the state Board of Administration, wrote an article in 2008 that provides perspective on its history.

In 1998, Floridians voted to shrink the Cabinet from six to three members. Some governors, notably Democrat Reubin Askew and Republican Claude Kirk, bristled at having to share power with other elected officials. Kirk famously referred to the 1960’s-era Cabinet as the “seven dwarfs.”

Former governors Jeb Bush and Lawton Chiles used to take the Cabinet on the road to connect with average Floridians, but those road trips have disappeared as well.

Earlier this year, when Lincoln High School in Tallahassee won a state baseball title, the coach asked if the players could take a team picture with Scott. A staff member responded: “Can we recognize them at Cabinet?”