Legislative Connection
April 6th – April 10th
2009 Legislative Session
In Morse Code, SOS is a series of dots and dashes used to signal distress. Over time, popular usage expanded SOS to be associated with terms like “Survivors on Shore” or “Save our Souls”. This week and the three to follow advocates must rally so that SOS becomes known as “SAVE OUR SESSION”.
This far into the process, there can be no doubt that Florida’s legislature is laboring in distress. The Capitol has become a death knoll for any bill purported to have fiscal impact, even if future tax savings are virtually guaranteed. Other good legislation is bottled up as if on a busy freeway at rush hour with lane closures. 
The budget rests precariously on the back of federal government and its decision whether to grant Florida a waiver so that $2.2 billion in stimulus dollars will flow into the state. Even so, the Senate version of the budget depends on a gaming contract yet to be approved and a cigarette tax yet to be passed. The House has a different approach. Their differences set the stage for a budget face-off, possibly at a level not seen in recent years. Expect fiery rhetoric and fighting words from leaders in both chambers.
Not included in either version are repeals of any of the more than 240 state sales tax exemptions. According to an article in the Lakeland Ledger, Sen. Thad Altman (R-Melbourne) chairman of the Senate Finance and Tax Committee, said lifting the exemptions for Super Bowl tickets, charter fishing trips, stadium skyboxes and bottled water, among other protected items and services, would be too controversial even though those and others if repealed would generate more than $560-million. Florida has long since passed the point where our leaders should be covering up our need for more revenue.
It will take more than dots and dashes to Save Our Session. Every citizen of Florida who values children needs to speak up. Here is where you can get started:
LURKING: The House budget contains a $7.6 million dollar cut to Guardian ad Litem (GAL) services. GAL serves as the voice for the best interest of children in dependency court. This cut represents 23% of their budget, and would result in more than 5,700 children being dropped.
Has Florida not learned anything from past child welfare tragedies? Bad things happen when a caring, third party is unavailable to look out for the best interest of the child. For the amount of money that could have been gained by merely closing the sales tax exemption on condominium recreational leases, Florida House leaders are willing to assume this risk?
Florida Statutes mandate that all abused, abandoned, and neglected children have a guardian ad litem. It is a mandate yet to be fulfilled due to lack of funding. Currently if resources are unavailable, the local GAL program files a motion seeking discharge from the case informing the court that they are unable to represent the child. In 2008, 5,100 children went without an advocate, which would bring the total, if these cuts pass, to more than 10,800 children. We’re sending an SOS. Call your House member wherever you live. Tell them to fund GAL.
MOVING ALONG AND NEEDS SUPPORT: SB 2128, sponsored by Victor Crist. This good bill adopts several of the Juvenile Justice Blueprint Commission recommendations without fiscal impact. Children nine years or younger would be diverted away from detention and the detention screening tool would be validated. Fewer children entering detention would improve the overall operation of the juvenile justice system and would literally save lives. The House companion, HB 1211, by Luis Garcia, covers most of the same territory but with a catch. It has a provision that would allow inexperienced and disgruntled judges too much say in the placement of a child. It would take a good bill and make it a bad bill. Alert: House version became worse on Monday, more information to follow. We’re sending an SOS. Call your Senators. Tell them to support the Crist bill and not to cave to the House language if both bills pass their respective chambers. This could be one of the few good bills involving children that could pass this session.
STEERING INTO A MAJOR CRISIS? : Community Based Care, the outsourcing of the state’s child welfare services, lost $9.8 million last year. This year the Senate is proposing an additional $9 million cut, which would result in an $18.8 million dollar hit in two years, during an economic downslide, where is it proven that child abuse numbers rise. The House proposal reinstates $5 million of the lost state investment, but does not provide any additional funds. There is a threshold when the cuts would jeopardize Florida’s Title IV-E Waiver. If lost, Florida would lose flexibility in funding prevention at less cost than out-of-home care; loss of federal funds estimated at $15-20 million due to reverting to the old formula for Title IV-E with fewer kids is care; and all the good work and progress made in Florida creating permanency for children and families. We’re sending an SOS. Call your Senate and House members and tell them that cuts will jeopardize Florida’s Title IV-E Waiver. This waiver is as important to child welfare as the educational waiver Florida seeks is to public education.
EROSION: Over the past several years, the funds appropriated for juvenile justice have decreased from nearly 800-million to a bit over 600-million with the passage of this year’s budget. Every dollar of those cuts and more have gone instead to the adult Department of Corrections. The result is a major reduction in services and the quality of programs. National statistics validate that the majority of adult prisoners passed through the juvenile justice system. Why is our state trading troubled children for adult criminals? We’re sending an SOS. Call your Senate and House member. Tell them to quit swapping juvenile justice dollars for adult corrections dollars.
ENOUGH GAS? SB 126 (Dockery R-Lakeland) and HB 1439 (Fehr R- Tarpon Springs), bills that would allow foster children access to their personal records, have made it through substantive committees (two for SB 126) but have a minimum of two stops left. These need a positive push.
BOTTLED UP: Improvements to KidCare, the program providing health insurance to low income children, do not appear to be going anywhere. SB 918 sponsored by Nan Rich had one hearing and is scheduled for another but the House companion bill (HB 1329) has not been scheduled. HB 807, sponsored by Gwyndolen Clarke-Reed is in its final committee, but the companion bill (SB 338) has just been scheduled in its first.
Degreed teachers for pre-kindergarten by Senators Fasano and Rich and Representatives Weatherford and Long were way laid by an incorrect fiscal impact statement by the Agency for Workforce Innovation. Passage would have propelled Florida out of the national basement in terms of pre-k quality and saved hundreds of millions more than its cost by preventing elementary school failure. This bill, brought forward by the Children’s Campaign, will be the focus of intense activity between sessions.
SB 2218, or the Juvenile Justice Reform Bill, sponsored by Wise, stalled in the Senate process after two committee votes due to fiscal impact. Advocates are encouraged to thank Wise and his staff for filing the bill and raising awareness about the best reforms to be made to Florida’s juvenile justice system. Expect this bill which was pushed along with an extra effort by the Children’s Campaign to come back next year.
MORE SOS: Juvenile Assessment Centers (JACs) which act as the triage in the juvenile justice system are facing cuts in both the House (3 million) and Senate (2 million). Experts agree that JACs are pivotal services in the juvenile justice system. Not having full service JACs in every judicial circuit is one of the key reasons why Florida’s juvenile justice system continues to struggle. Cutting JACs is fundamentally wrong. In addition, JACs allow officers to spend an average processing time of only 23 minutes vs 5.7 hours without JACs, this saves 540,075 law enforcement hours per year which results in a savings of $16.1 million in law enforcement costs. The cuts impact the low volume JACs (but still critical to their circuits) which represent 10 of the 16 in the state. We’re sending an SOS. Call your Senators and House members. Support JACs.
CINS/FINS and PACE which make up a large portion of prevention services are proposed to be funded partially through a 50-cent increase in license tax fees. The business community is being very vocal in opposition to proposed fee increases, and although they have not targeted the license tax fee, the concern is it may get grouped along with the others in the debate. If the tax does not become a reality the programs will lose a significant portion of their funding which would result in the state operating without important front end services. We’re sending out an SOS Alert. Be on the lookout that the license tax fee moves forward. Be ready to act.
If you have SOS needs, please send them to the Children’s Campaign for review. We will post another round in our next edition of Legislative Connection.
EDITORS NOTE:
FACCM stands for the Florida Association of Child Care Management. Last year, they initiated legal action against the Early Learning Coalition of Duval County over their Quality Rating System known as Guiding Stars of Duval. FACCM lost but the grudge match continues.
Children's Campaign, Inc. in its last edition of Legislative Connection had attributed the advisory relationship of FACCM as mentioned in SB 2570 to the Agency for Workforce Innovation rather than the Department of Children & Families. This hardly reaches the level of a "false claim" as reflected on the FACCM website and we draw attention to their baseless hyperbole.
Further, FACCM supports provisions giving businesses that could be associated with FACCM more direct voting rights on the Early Learning Coalitions. We believe this would be inappropriate and present distinct conflict of interest problems in the regulatory and oversight process.
FACCM says on its website (when explaining the legislation): "Currently we (FACCM) have no real voice in the decisions made by the coalitions, when the decisions directly impact us and our business."
Really; and we thought the work was about the quality of care of the children.
For other bills, continue reading:
Promise 1 (child health, including; maternal health, KidCare, mental health, etc.)
Promise 2 (child protection, including; foster care, adoption, independent living, etc.)
Promise 3 (early learning and care, including; pre-k, child care, etc.)
Promise 4 (after school, including before and after school programs, summer school, etc.)
Promise 5 (juvenile justice, including juvenile justice reform, girls issues, minority overrepresentation, etc.)
Legislative Connection was brought to you by:
Amanda Ostrander, Webmaster
Roy Miller, President
Children’s Campaign, Inc.