CRIST BACKTRACKS ON STRONG STIMULUS SUPPORT

By KEITH LAING
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

www.newsserviceflorida.com

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Nov. 5, 2009……….As Gov. Charlie Crist’s opponent for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination tries to sear the picture of him hugging President Barack Obama into the minds of conservative voters, the governor tried late Wednesday to put some distance between himself and the president by saying he never supported the president’s stimulus package.

Crist, who famously – or infamously to conservatives – hugged the president after campaigning for the stimulus with him in February in Fort Myers, was asked Tuesday by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if Crist regretted supporting the stimulus since it appears to be fueling the rise in the race of former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“Well, I didn’t endorse it,” Crist said. “I – you know – I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing. But I understood that it was going to pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians.”

But before the stimulus passed, when lawmakers were facing a shortfall that was projected to be as high as $6 billion, Crist did not appear to be so reluctant about the federal money.

“We’ve had to cut about $7 billion the past two years and we haven’t raised taxes and we’re still in balance. But to be candid, it’s getting harder every day,” Crist said as he introduced Obama in Fort Myers in February. “It’s getting harder every day and we know that it’s important that we pass this stimulus package. It is important that we do so to help education, to help our infrastructure, and to help health care for those who need it the most – the most vulnerable among us.”

Crist became one of the most prominent Republicans to publicly call for passage of the stimulus at a time when congressional Republicans uniformly opposed the plan, a role he appeared to relish before it was signed into law.

“And let me finish by saying, Mr. President, we need to do it in a bipartisan way,” Crist said in his Fort Myers speech. “This issue of helping our country is about helping our country. This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America and re-igniting our economy.”

After being introduced by Crist in Fort Myers, Obama seemed excited about the governor being a stimulus supporter. Obama heaped praise on Crist for bucking his party.

“When the town is burning, you don’t check party labels,” Obama said. “Everybody needs to grab a hose and that’s what Charlie Crist is doing right here today.”

Obama said then that Crist may have supported the stimulus more than his Republican colleagues in Congress because he was a governor.

“The thing about governors is they understand our economic crisis in a way that maybe sometimes folks a little more removed don’t understand,” Obama said in his speech. “They’re on the front line dealing with the economy every single day. They’re having to make choices every single day. They know what it means to have to balance a budget when revenues are short and more and more people are asking for help.”

That seemed to be true when, even after the stimulus was passed, Crist continued to be effusive about the plan. Unveiling a budget proposal that used $4.7 billion in stimulus money, Crist said the stimulus was “an enormous shot in the arm, and a shot in the arm again and a shot in the arm again.”

“I think it’s fantastic, are you kidding me?” Crist said when he was questioned by reporters about why he supported the stimulus over the strong objection of most of his party. “We don’t have to raise taxes, we might be able to cut property taxes some more, we have more money for education funding so we can increase the per-student funding, we can spend more money on our roads and infrastructure. It’s remarkable.”

Florida Democrats slammed Crist Wednesday for the apparent contradiction in his recent words from his public statements about the stimulus in the spring.

“After trying to run from the mess he created as governor, it isn’t shocking that Charlie Crist would continue running from his record, as Crist attempts to appease the extreme right wing of the Republican Party,” Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff said. “Unfortunately for Crist, the people of Florida know the truth about Charlie Crist always putting his political ambition above doing his job.

And Crist’s primary opponent Rubio continues to try to use the stimulus against Crist, launching a website this week called www.charlieandobama.com that features only a large picture of Crist and Obama and a solicitation for campaign donations.

“This site is a stark, moving and motivating reminder of what’s at stake in this election,” Rubio campaign spokesman Alex Burgos said in a statement this week. “It’s simple and demonstrates how a picture worth 787 billion words can deliver a powerful message.”

Officials in Crist’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment from the News Service Thursday.

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11/5/09

FORMER BLACK CAUCUS LEADER WANTS MORE PSC DIVERSITY

By KEITH LAING
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

www.newsserviceflorida.com

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Nov. 4, 2009……….A former leader of the legislative black caucus lamented the lack of diversity on the Florida Public Service Commission Wednesday, pointing out the panel will have no minorities when Chairman Matthew Carter is replaced early next year.

“I think the (PSC nominating) commission does a wonderful job vetting candidates… I have real concerns right now,” Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, said during a meeting of the House Energy & Utilities Policy Council. “Based on the people who’ve been submitted, there will be no diversity on the Public Service Commission. I think that is not a good thing for the state because we’re a very diverse state, and we’re becoming more diverse everyday.”

Attention to the selection of PSC commissioners increased this fall when Gov. Charlie Crist picked two new members of the panel amid a swirl of allegations that regulators were too close to the companies they oversee. Carter and former PSC Commissioner Katrina McMurrian applied for second four-year terms on the panel, but both were effectively fired by the governor who declared it was time for a shake-up at the agency.

Crist got a fair amount of attention by arguing for more diversity in Florida courts earlier this year, but his shake-up of the PSC resulted in the panel’s lone African-American and one of its three women being replaced with two white men – David Klement, who has already joined the PSC, and Benjamin “Steve” Stevens, who will assume Carter’s seat in January.

At least two lawmakers, Sens. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey and Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, have announced plans to file legislation to change the way PSC members are picked, and Wednesday, the topic was on the agenda of a key House committee that oversees utility regulation.

After hearing a summary on the current selection process from PSC Nominating Council General Counsel Christiana Moore, Gibbons said that in the future he hoped the group would do more to make sure the five members of the PSC looked more like the Florida.

“I think any commission should reflect the state,” Gibbons said.

But Rep. Dave Murzin, R-Pensacola, who also chairs the Nominating Council, said the council always keeps diversity in mind when it sends names to Gov. Charlie Crist, even if it does not end up being reflected in the governor’s choices.

“The nominating council did put forth names to the governor which reflected diversity,” Murzin said. “At this point, it’s up to the governor to make the selections as he sees fit. We’ve discussed, in the past, geographic diversity, racial diversity, and all the rest, and there’s only so many ways to slice the pie.”

So far the talk of legislation to change the PSC nominating process has taken place mostly in the Senate, but Energy & Utilities chairman Rep. Stephen Precourt, R-Orlando, said Wednesday’s discussion was the first step in House action on the subject.

“It’s not clear at these early stages of our deliberations what the final direction, decree or mechanism is by which we’ll be moving forward, however this is a serious issue and one that calls for a well-thought out approach,” he said.

The Energy & Utilities Committee also heard Wednesday from PSC Executive Director Mary Bane, Florida Public Counsel J.R. Kelly, and Florida NAACP lawyer David Honig, who urged the panel to consider creating a new task force to implement a code of conduct for all state agencies, not just the PSC.

“The NAACP is highly interested in the ethical and governance issues surrounding the Florida PSC and other state agencies because, during this time of economic turbulence, all of our citizens rely on agencies like the PSC to follow their mandate and engage in good government,” Honig said in a statement prepared for the hearing. “Immediate action is needed to help restore the public trust and to get the Public Service Commission refocused on protecting the public interest.”

Honig told the lawmakers that the NAACP has no vested interest in particular cases before the PSC, but does have reasons to care that its proceedings are fair.

“In performing this critical watchdog role for Florida’s consumers, a top priority is to protect the poor – especially those living in older energy-inefficient homes in inner cities,” he said.

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11/4/09

ACADEMICS DIG INTO DRILLING DEBATE

By KEITH LAING
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

www.newsserviceflorida.com

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Nov. 2, 2009……….Opponents and supporters of the controversial offshore drilling proposal that is shaping up to be one of Legislature’s big fights next session have been talking about the plan at every turn lately – and influential lawmakers have been listening.

But Monday the academic community dug into the hot topic in the effort to provide an “honest broker” in the debate.

The Florida State University Institute for Energy Systems, Economics and Sustainability hosted a symposium on offshore energy, focusing on oil and gas. It’s expected to be the first part of two such gatherings, with a January meeting scheduled to focus on alternative energy.

Panelists drawn from the oil and gas industry, state and federal regulatory agencies, and from public and private research programs discussed energy resources and development, the economics of the issue, environmental issues, and the technology of oil and gas drilling.

In a sharp contrast from the black and white certitude on both hardening sides of the drilling debate – supporters say drilling will immediately improve gas prices, opponents say it will hardly make a dent – the scholars gathered in Tallahassee sat comfortably in the murky gray area.

“There may be oil and gas, but it may be uneconomical in the present circumstances to produce it,” FSU oceanography professor Ian MacDonald told reporters after speaking on a panel titled “Technical and Environmental Challenges.” “There are always more unknowns than knows.”

But in news likely to be cheered by supporters of the proposal, which emerged late in the 2009 session and appears to be gathering steam in advance of 2010, several of researchers that joined MacDonald on the panel said there are reasons to believe drilling would be fruitful.

“All I know is that off the Panhandle, you have production on shore and you have discoveries seaward of state waters,” oceanographer Kenneth Schaudt told reporters. “I would assume… if you have it shoreward of the state waters and you have discovers seaward of state waters, they might be connected in between. That’s a normal assumption.”

Texas A&M University Ocean Sciences of the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group director Norman Guinasso Jr. agreed, saying “you could look at the maps that show the federal lease areas and you could see that all the dots stop at the eastern zone.”

“The eastern zone is what’s offshore of Florida,” Guinasso said. “They all stop at that line and that’s your state line way out there 200 miles offshore. You could think that those little green dots are pretty dense in the central region and there’s no reason for them to stop at that line.”

However, MacDonald warned that production in the rest of the Gulf of Mexico may be an imperfect predictor.

“The discoveries if they do occur in Florida waters will be different from what was found in Louisiana, Texas and Mexico,” he said. “This is a different region, a carbonate platform without the major sedimentation that we see on the central Gulf of Mexico and without the history of wildcat discoveries that categorized…the famous discoveries of Texas.”

The researchers also discussed the safety risk presented by possible oil spills, which have long been raised by environmentalists as reason enough to leave the Florida coastline unexplored for oil.

“The number of accidents (in drilling internationally) has gone down dramatically,” said University of Bergen in Norway geobiology adjunct professor Martin Hovland, who is also a consultant with Norwegian oil company Statoil. “Our last blowout was in 1985. We decided then to do a big study to prevent new accidents from happening and we’ve succeeded. We haven’t had blowouts since then.”

Guinasso agreed, saying “you see a gradual increase in the engineering level that goes into the design of these platforms and pipelines. They’re designed to react well in hurricanes. They’re design to not spill oil.”

But MacDonald added that it would take more than just better technology to ensure that drilling did not cause damage to the environment.

“It’s also enforcement,” he said. “The standards have to be maintained at a high level and they have to be raised.”

However, Schaudt said the unexpected could still happen in a hurricane-prone state like Florida.

“Hurricane Katrina immediately coming after Ivan was inconceivable,” he said. “We measured 70 odd foot tall waves during Camille, and no one in my side of the business, which is predicting the design waves, thought we could have 90 plus foot waves in a hurricane.”

Schaudt quickly added that the drilling industry has historically learned quickly from its mistakes.

“The early platform, people though the waves couldn’t get much over 60 feet at the shelf break,” he said. “That was common practice — it was state of the art 40 years ago. Conditions evolve, knowledge evolves.”

Other panels at the FSU drilling symposium included “Economic Challenges” and “Law and Policy Changes.” Panelists included Michael Celata, chief of resource studies for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico region, and Mark Kaiser, a Louisiana State University professor and director of the research and development division for the school’s Center for Energy Studies.

At the beginning of the symposium, FSU president T.K. Wetherell said the drilling issue was too important for the university to ignore.

“We believe it’s one of the most important issues the state will have to deal with over the next year, not just from an economic standpoint, but simply from a policy standpoint of what the state needs to do,” Wetherell said. “It’s part of our obligation as a flagship graduate public research university to bring these issues to the fore.”

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11/2/09