Interim Committee Week — November 10, 2009

Often during these pre-session committee weeks it appears that absolutely nothing has happened. This year we expect things to be even slower, thanks in large part to the huge budget deficit — and the realization that a frightening funding cliff will become a reality just as soon as the federal stimulus dollars are gone.

Otherwise, most of the meetings last week were of little consequence or impact. Yet, interim committee weeks are much about posturing for the coming legislative session and the 2010 elections.

Here’s what we know right now: No special session yet. There has been no talk of a budget cutting special session. We have been watching and listening to the debate on the ratification of the gaming compact and the potential agreement on opening Florida’s Gulf waters to oil and gas exploration and drilling. In both cases, no agreements are to be found on these issues; in fact those on each side of the issues remain miles apart. We’re watching this drama unfold since proponents of these issues like to sweeten the pot by linking increased education funding to the deals.

The newest item to surface that may push a December special session is rail funding.  Mike Williams, the newly elected president of the Florida AFL-CIO, mentioned that the organization might be able to support the SunRail project if the state is able to get federal stimulus money to fund the projects. Williams’ statement started a buzz across the state that gave new hope of a special session, which proponents of the high speed rail project have been promoting. Backing by the AFL-CIO is seen as key to passage of the project through the Legislature.

The Florida AFL-CIO has opposed the SunRail projects in the past because of employee contract concerns. Federal money comes with requirements that protect railroad workers’ collective bargaining rights, pension funds and require contractors to pay the prevailing wage and benefits for the work on the project.

SunRail projects would create a high speed rail route that links Tampa, Orlando and Miami.

House PreK-12 Appropriations Committee: Each year all agencies go through an exercise to show where they would make cuts if they were required to reduce spending by 10 percent.  The Department of Education presented its emergency budget based largely on across-the-board reductions, rather than strategic cuts. This drew questions and criticism from the committee that the exercise was not taken seriously and that certain functions in education should be elevated over others.

The committee also received an update from Chancellor Frances Haithcock on the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading (FAIR) program.  While Haithcock spent much time detailing the advantages and strengths of the reading assessments, legislators clearly had been briefed on the problems with the program and reserved a majority of their questions for the reasons and fixes for the problems. Underlying all this questioning was a side drama where the respective testing companies for FAIR and for the assessment FAIR intends to replace, DIBELS, were collaring legislators for support and funding of their tests.

On a more positive note, UTD President Karen Aronowitz testified briefly before the committee citing the real world impacts that all the progress monitoring, assessments and mandates hoist on teachers. Karen did a good job of reminding the members of the committee that ultimately good teaching and learning occurs when teachers have time on task to really teach.

Senate Ways and Means:  The committee heard a presentation and update on the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by Don Winstead, special adviser to Gov. Charlie Crist. His presentation detailed the accounting and reporting requirements for the act and methods for tracking the money spent via websites.

Although the process for estimating the number of jobs created or saved to the infusion of the federal stimulus money is rather complex, Winstead said the stimulus package could be credited for creating jobs or helping employ 47,069 directly, indirectly or by inducement. That doesn’t actually mean that 47,000 new full-time workers now have employment. That number represents the impacted jobs. Winstead reported that the bulk of the jobs created or saved have been in the education arena and were likely not new jobs but were “teachers, janitors, etc., who kept their work due to the stimulus cash.”

Winstead also pointed out that it is very early to judge whether the stimulus will ultimately be judged a success by these numbers since this is the first data acquired and because job numbers are typically a lagging indicator.