"I've seen the mountaintop!" shouted a woman blowing a whistle and marching in combat-style boots down Okeechobee Boulevard in
West Palm Beach.
"We shall overcome
Rick Scott's tyranny!" added a man who followed closely behind, limping a little.
At least 50 members of the disgruntled masses gathered outside the
Palm Beach County
Convention Center on this brutally warm March morning, when Gov. Rick
Scott was about to give a speech. Scott had just introduced some of the
budget proposals that would earn him the wrath of citizens across the
state. Teachers, police officers, advocates for the disabled, retirees —
people from all walks of life would soon be unified in their hatred of
Florida's most powerful politician.
By May, a
Quinnipiac University poll put Scott's approval rating at a dismal 29 percent. This week, the
Broward Police
union is hosting a "Party to Leave the Party" protest against Scott in
which cops who are Republicans plan to switch their voter registration
and abandon the
GOP en masse.
In response to this widespread discontent, Scott has urged supporters
to send prewritten letters to the editors of local newspapers."Rick
Scott deserves our unwavering and enthusiastic support," the letters
say. He also uses recorded phone messages to tout his policy decisions,
irritating voters with robocalls about pill mills and government
spending cuts.
Born in Illinois, Scott , 58, was raised by a truck-driver dad and a
mom who worked odd jobs. For about three years beginning when he was a
toddler, his family lived in public housing — a humble beginning Scott
emphasized in his campaign. By the time Scott was 10, his family had
moved to a three-bedroom suburban house in Kansas City, Missouri, where
he attended high school and college.
He earned a law degree from
Southern Methodist University
in Dallas and worked for a big firm in town before starting a
health-care company called Columbia. He built his fortune at Columbia,
eventually merging with
Hospital Corporation of America
and growing the enterprise to one of the world's largest health-care
companies, with more than 340 hospitals and 550 health-care offices in
38 states. But the flush times ended abruptly.
In 1997, as
FBI agents
raided its offices and hospitals in several states, Columbia/HCA's
board of directors forced Scott to resign. The feds alleged the company
had paid kickbacks to doctors in exchange for patient referrals and had
overcharged
Medicare. The
U.S. Justice Department
called the resulting criminal case the largest health-care fraud in
American history. Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid
$1.7 billion in fines. Scott was never charged.
He did, however, testify in a separate deposition in an unrelated
civil case against Columbia/HCA in 2000. When asked basic questions,
including whether he was ever employed by Columbia/HCA, Scott refused to
answer, citing his
Fifth Amendment right
not to incriminate himself. In media interviews, Scott has said, "You
have to take responsibility for what happens under your watch." But he
also said he didn't know the company was doing anything wrong.
In 2003, Scott moved to Naples with his wife. Last year, the
billionaire ran for governor as a political novice, in a surprise
campaign funded primarily by $60 million of his own money. Elected in
the Tea Party wave that swept the country, he preached about fiscal
austerity and promptly took a knife to cherished social safety nets. In a
brief, 60-day legislative session, he implemented a wide-ranging
conservative agenda.
He slashed funding for public schools, disabled people, and the unemployed; gave health-care companies control of
Medicaid;
and privatized nearly all of the prisons in the southern part of the
state. Meanwhile, he enacted some of the most restrictive voting laws
Florida has seen since the 2000 election debacle.
In June, as the public outcry against his policies continued, one of
Scott's top staffers resigned and another was transferred to the state
Department of Veterans Affairs. The governor, watching his ship sink, hired a
Tallahassee
insider as his new chief of staff. He also backed off one of his most
controversial executive orders, which required state employees to
undergo drug tests.
Despite these changes, the influence of Scott's first, combustible legislative session has already been enormous. Here,
New Times takes stock of his dirtiest accomplishments.
Outsourced Prisons to His Political Donors
Last year, the private prison industry gave nearly $1 million to political campaigns in Florida, according to the nonpartisan
National Institute on Money in Politics. The majority of the cash went to Republicans, and the largest chunk, $822,000, came from the
GEO Group, a
Boca Raton-based
prison company formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections. (GEO also
contributed $25,000 to Scott's inauguration party.) The prison lobby's
influence on the Republican-dominated Legislature was immediately
evident.
In early February, Scott proposed a plan to transfer 1,500 inmates
from state-run lockups to private ones. The next month, lawmakers in the
state Senate slipped language into their massive budget bill that
privatized nearly all of the state prisons in 18 counties, including
Broward and
Palm Beach. The budget passed in May, opening the door for the GEO Group and other companies to begin bidding for contracts.
Proponents said the prison contracts will go only to bidders who
reduce costs by 7 percent, saving the state about $27 million a year.
But a legislative analyst who testified before the state Senate in
February admitted it was tough to figure out the cost savings, because
private and public prisons often operate differently. "They're never
apples to apples," analyst
Byron Brown said.
And a 2010 study of prisons in Arizona, which also has a cost-savings
requirement for its private lockups, questioned whether outsourcing is
the cheapest option. The Arizona state auditor found that
medium-security private prisons cost $1,200 more per inmate a year than
state-run facilities. Reviewing prison studies in other states, the
auditor also noted "cost savings from contracting with private
prisons... are not guaranteed."
Enacted Jim Crow-Style Voting Laws
After squeaking into office with just 61,550 more votes than his
opponent, Scott wasted no time in disenfranchising people who might oust
him in the next election cycle. In March, the Florida Clemency Board —
composed of Scott,
Attorney General Pam Bondi,
and other members of his cabinet — passed a ban on felon voting rights,
forcing nonviolent offenders to wait five years after completing their
sentences to apply to have their rights restored.
The new rule turned back the clock on Florida's voting laws. During
the 2000 election, thousands of voters were wrongfully purged from the
rolls because they were misidentified as felons. That mishap brought to
light the painful fact that Florida had the largest number of
disenfranchised felons in the nation — a disproportionate swath of whom
were African-American.
Govs.
Jeb Bush and
Charlie Crist
heeded the outcry over this injustice and made it easier for ex-felons
to get their voting rights restored. But Scott undid all of their
reforms, dismissing the racist implications of his decision.
The felon voting ban dates back to the years just following the Civil
War. It was zealously employed — just like poll taxes — to keep
African-Americans from voting, says Lance deHaven-Smith, a professor of
public administration at Florida State University. "It was used to
target and weaken voting rights for blacks, and that is what they're
doing with it today," he says.
Scott wasn't done. In May, the Legislature passed new election
requirements that can be used to prevent less-wealthy people — those who
work long hours and move frequently — from voting. The law makes it
tougher for get-out-the-vote groups to register new voters, requires
voters to use a provisional ballot if they have moved from one county to
another and not registered the address change before
Election Day, and reduces the number of early voting days from 14 to eight.
The
American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in Miami seeking to block implementation of the new law.
Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida branch of the ACLU, called the law "a trifecta of voter suppression."
Mandated Drug Testing for State Workers and Welfare Recipients
You know something has gone terribly wrong when a concerned group of
Key West citizens feels the need to send a communal vat of urine to Florida's governor.
The group, called the
Committee for the Positive Insistence on a
Sane Society
(PISS), collected the urine samples to protest an executive order that
Scott issued in March, requiring all state employees to submit to drug
tests. "Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose
salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free
workplace," he said at the time.
In June, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit calling the pee test
unconstitutional. Scott suspended the order, pending the lawsuit,
although state Department of Corrections employees will still be tested.
He campaigned on, and delivered, a separate law signed in May that requires prospective recipients of
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
— cash welfare for families with children — to pass a drug test. This
rule struck close to home for Scott. He has a brother in Texas who has
struggled with bipolar disorder, has a criminal history that includes
drug possession, and now receives social security insurance.
With this law, Florida might be repeating an old mistake. Thirteen
years ago, the state launched a pilot program to drug-test recipients of
cash welfare, and it was an utter failure. Only 3.8 percent of the
8,800 people who took the test failed it. This little government
experiment cost the state $2.7 million, and the program was ultimately
scrapped, according to
PolitiFact.com.
How's that for fiscal austerity?
Fought the Prescription Drug Database
At first, Scott seemed determined to allow Florida's deadly pill-mill
addiction to flourish. In February, he proposed repealing the law that
created a prescription drug database designed to track the sale of
narcotics. He argued that the database, intended to help spot patients
who are "doctor-shopping," was an invasion of privacy. His backers in
the Legislature also argued that the database didn't solve the problem
because doctors weren't required to check it before dispensing drugs.
Still, in a state where seven deaths a day are blamed on prescription
drug abuse, Scott's opposition to the database seemed bizarre.
Lawmakers and police officials around the country — particularly in
states such as Kentucky, whose
OxyContin
drug trade is fueled by Florida's pill mills — bellowed in protest.
Even Scott's fellow Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi fought to keep
the database. Finally, Scott reversed course and agreed. In June, he
signed a law that strengthens criminal penalties for overprescribing
drugs, requires pain clinics to register with the state, and prohibits
most doctors from dispensing narcotics.
Privatized Medicaid
In Broward County, doctors and patients have been participating in an
experiment with privatizing Medicaid since 2006, when then-Governor
Bush enacted reforms he said would control skyrocketing costs and
improve care through competition. The pilot program hit many pitfalls,
but that didn't stop Scott from signing a law to expand it statewide.
Now 3 million of Florida's poorest citizens, including children,
pregnant women, and elderly residents of nursing homes, will learn the
joys of dealing with HMOs.
Currently, Medicaid patients either enroll in a state-contracted HMO
or visit doctors who accept Medicaid's fee for the services they
perform. Under the new plan — proposed by Scott's transition team and
sponsored by
Sen. Joe Negron (R-Stuart) — patients
must enroll in private HMO plans. The HMOs will have more power to change the "scope, duration, and level of benefits," says
Laura Goodhue,
executive director of the community health advocacy group Florida
CHAIN. She fears the HMOs will limit services and deny claims.
In the pilot program that has been operating in Broward and four
other counties since 2006, the results have been troubling. According to
a 2008
Georgetown University
review of the program, a majority of doctors complained that their
patients were having a more difficult time getting care because of the
maze of paperwork and limited benefits.
"The complexity of the program has grown, causing confusion and
increased administrative burdens for consumers and providers," the
report says. "Access to needed services appears to be worsening,
according to both physicians and beneficiaries."
"The only way to save money is to delay and deny care," Goodhue says. "People are getting the runaround."
A state-funded study by University of Florida researchers shows that
Medicaid expenditures decreased in Broward and Duval counties during the
first two years of the pilot program but cautioned, "It is not known
whether these savings are sustainable over time."
The saving grace might be that before it can be implemented
statewide, the reform plan must be approved by federal officials,
because more than half of Medicaid's funding comes from the federal
government, Goodhue says.
Acted Sketchy About Solantic
Let's say you're a billionaire who amassed his wealth running a
health-care company and then decided to run for governor. Immediately
after taking office, you begin proposing and supporting legislation
regarding health-care issues: privatizing Medicaid, requiring drug tests
for state workers and welfare recipients, opposing a database that
would track the sale of addictive prescription drugs. Unfortunately, the
citizens of Florida are not total morons, and they realize that you, as
governor, might actually profit from some of these proposals.
Turns out you still own a chain of urgent-care clinics that happen to
offer $35 drug tests! Technically the $62 million investment in
Solantic is in your wife's name. You moved it to the Frances Annette
Scott Revocable Trust a few days before taking office. But it's tough to
believe you're not still raking in the dough.
So do you apologize? Do you stage a public mea culpa and admit your
conflict of interest? Not if you're Rick Scott. Instead, you wait for
the media and the public to get so angry that someone files an ethics
complaint against you. Then you rush to sell off your shares in the
company. That's not suspicious at all.
Axed Funding for People With Disabilities
Need to trim your budget? There's no swifter solution than taking
money from people who are physically incapable of fighting back.
The state Agency for Persons With Disabilities was running a $170
million deficit this spring when Scott decided to start slicing. Tasked
with supporting 30,000 people with developmental disabilities, the
agency had never been good at living within its means. Since 2005, it
has shifted 5,000 clients from its waiting list to its roster but has
never sufficiently increased its budget, says
Kimberley Thompson,
director of community relations for Sunrise Community, a Miami-based
nonprofit agency that serves the disabled. Scott insisted he was
rescuing the agency by forcing it to tighten its belt.
He issued an emergency order cutting payments to caregivers — the
behavioral therapists, nurses, and others who care for people with
cerebral palsy, autism, and other disabilities — by 15 percent. The
government sets their fees based on the service they provide — anything
from driving clients to the grocery store to speech therapy — so the
impact of the payment cut varied widely. But some smaller, nonprofit
providers said the cuts would put them out of business, Thompson says.
After a storm of protests from concerned parents and advocates, the
state Legislature found a way to temporarily fill the budget gap, and
Scott rescinded his emergency order. The agency's funding was restored
for 2011, but it now must make 4 percent cuts for the fiscal year that
starts in July.
Thompson is glad Scott changed his mind but says the governor and
legislators need to learn more about how the agency for the disabled is
run and where the money goes.
"I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he didn't
intentionally harm thousands of people around the state," she says.
"Once he was educated, he did make a better decision."
Gave Tax Breaks to Businesses; Cut Jobless Benefits
The day after winning the election, Scott announced Florida was "open for business." He wasn't kidding.
In the budget proposal he made public in February, he suggested
lowering the state's corporate income tax rate by 2.5 percent, or $459
million. But an ounce of sanity prevailed in the Legislature, and in
May, Scott was forced to settle for a measly $30 million cut. This
translated to an average savings of about $1,100 a year for small
businesses, although it also gives tax breaks to larger corporations.
Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature were far less generous
to the state's legions of laid-off workers. Florida already has some of
the most meager unemployment benefits in the nation — $229 a week — and
now those sparse checks will end sooner, after 23 weeks instead of 26.
Even more frightening, in the future, benefits will be tied to the
unemployment rate, decreasing as the jobless rate goes down.
Yes, you read that correctly. If more people have jobs and are paying
taxes, unemployment benefits will go down. For example, when the state
unemployment rate is at or below 5 percent, the unfortunate few without
jobs can collect unemployment for only 12 weeks. If the Florida
unemployment rate reaches or exceeds 10.5 percent (as of May, it was at
10.6 percent), laid-off workers can collect their full 23 weeks of
benefits.
This slap in the face to jobless workers was accompanied by a 10
percent cut in the unemployment tax paid by businesses. Thoughtful, no?
Shuns Emails, Reporters, and the Sunshine Law
Rick Scott doesn't hide his disdain for Florida's open government
laws. In February, he invited three powerful state Senate leaders to his
mansion for a private dinner. They discussed, among other topics, his
budget proposal.
This was strange, because when three senators gather to discuss
legislative business, Senate rules require the meeting to be open to the
public. But the citizens of Florida didn't get a dinner invitation.
In March, Scott scheduled a coffee date with ten legislators. When a
Miami Herald
reporter inquired about who would be attending and what the politicians
would discuss, Scott's spokesman snapped at him, saying the event was
"purely social." Then he canceled the coffee date.
Scott, meanwhile, told workers at the Department of Elderly Affairs
that he doesn't use email — which is a convenient way to avoid creating a
public record of his conversations.
"I don't have email," he said in March. "It's easier if I never get
emailed. I get embarrassed by it that way. It's not as easy to
communicate."
Before publishing this article,
New Times called Scott's press
office three times to request an interview. On the third phone call —
11 days after the original request — Scott's press secretary gave a
nonanswer.
"We have received your multiple requests, and if we can accommodate that, someone will let you know," Lane Wright said.
But clearly, no one had let us know. Instead, a government spokesman —
whose entire job is to answer questions from the public — was employing
the silent treatment. "We are not gonna be commenting for this story,"
Wright finally conceded.
Shocking.
Lied About High-Speed Rail Money
A proposed high-speed bullet train between
Tampa
and Orlando wasn't a politically sexy idea. Some critics questioned how
many people in this gas-guzzling, highway-loving state would ride a
train to
Disney World.
But Florida's own transportation department predicted the train would
make money from the start, and the federal government was willing to
pony up $2.4 billion of the estimated $2.6 billion in construction
costs. As gas prices reached $4 a gallon, the train looked more and more
like sound public policy.
But Scott chose to believe a study by the
Reason Foundation,
a libertarian think tank partially funded by oil companies, that called
into question the number of people who would ride the train. He feared
taxpayers would be on the hook for future costs. His general counsel,
attorney
Charles Trippe, had told the Florida Supreme Court that $110 million in state funds had already been spent on the proposed rail project.
So Scott sent the money back to Washington.
Only later did the citizens of Florida learn that Scott was fudging
the numbers. Turns out the state had spent only $31 million. Trippe
apologized to the court, but the money was already gone by then.
About $400 million of Florida's train funds were rescinded by
Congress and used to solve the federal budget crisis. The other $2
billion was redistributed to rail projects in the Northeast, Midwest,
and California. So our friends in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are
benefiting now from Scott's creative accounting.
Meanwhile, Scott angered his Tea Party backers by approving the $1.3
billion SunRail, a slower, commuter rail line in the Orlando area. Scott
said he feared he'd lose a legal battle if he axed the project.
Gutted Environmental Protection Programs
While campaigning for governor, Scott called the Department of
Community Affairs, the state agency charged with overseeing local
development projects, a "jobs killer." He said he'd heard complaints
that development permits were issued too slowly. (That building boom? It
was a myth.)
Once he was elected, his transition team made the unabashedly
prodevelopment suggestion of merging community affairs with the
Department of Environmental Protection and the
Department of Transportation, forming a new entity called the
Department of Growth Leadership.
That plan never materialized, but the Legislature followed Scott's
lead and began gutting programs. In May, the state Senate quietly passed
a bill that killed the Department of Community Affairs, farming out its
various duties to other government agencies. The Legislature also
agreed with Scott's proposal to chop property tax funding for local
water management districts — including a 30 percent, $128 million budget
cut for the South Florida Water Management District, the agency charged
with restoring the Everglades. (And he appointed onetime incinerator
czar
Juan Portuondo to the SFWMD.)
Scott was also determined to end funding for the state's Florida
Forever program, which buys land to conserve for parks and forests.
State lawmakers proposed a way to rescue the program by selling off
surplus land in order to buy more. But in May, Scott used his line-item
veto power to ax that plan from the budget.
Slashed Public Education Funding
Public schools lost about $542 per student in this year's education
budget — an 8 percent funding cut that wouldn't seem so troubling if it
weren't accompanied by so many other changes to the education system.
Florida teachers, already some of the lowest-paid in the nation, will
now see their raises and job security tied to students' test scores.
They will be fired if their annual evaluations are "unsatisfactory" two
years in a row, and they will have to contribute 3 percent to their
pension funds, a change they consider a pay cut. The merit pay bill,
known as the Student Success Act, was a top priority for Scott and was
the first to get his signature in March.
Maribah Haughey,
a retired teacher who spent 21 years in Palm Beach County schools, was
livid about the pay cuts. "All of this is going to drive a lot of young
teachers out of Florida," she said. "The salaries suck anyway. What are
they making, $30,000 a year?"
Meanwhile, virtual charter schools — which are privately run and
publicly funded — were approved under a "Digital Learning" bill that
also requires all students to take one online course before graduating.
In addition, high-performing charter schools got a break on the fees
they must pay to school districts. After signing these school-choice
bills in June, Scott promoted them in private and charter schools across
the state, telling reporters he now wants to create savings accounts
that allow parents to pull their kids out of public schools and pay for
private school instead.
Yes, it seems Scott would rather invest taxpayer money in private and
charter schools — which are now, thanks to his policy reforms, subject
to less public oversight — instead of trying to help the struggling
public classrooms where most kids spend their days.
on
November 26, 2013 at 11:16 am
