After Gov. Rick Scott, House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron colluded in private to strike an $83-billion budget deal–trading cash for policy change–non-GOPster observers were appalled. More telling, so were some Republican legislators.
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, was speaking for more than himself when he said: “This wasn’t shopped at all with the rank and file. There has to be a better way.” His Republican colleague Sen. David Simmons, chairman of the Senate budget committee on K-12 education, said the last-minute, secretive process was “wholly defective.” In effect, it gave opaque a bad name.
But one constant in Tallahassee remains manifestly transparent: It’s still a self-serving, duplicitous mess.