Attorney General Bondi today issued the following statement on Governor Rick Scott’s last State of the State:
“Under Governor Rick Scott’s leadership, the state of our state is stronger than it has ever been. On his last State of the State address, I want to congratulate the Governor and thank him for his leadership in creating jobs, supporting our law enforcement, battling the national opioid crisis and helping us make Florida a zero-tolerance state for human trafficking. Although I am out of the country today continuing our efforts to eradicate human trafficking, I look forward to working with the Governor and the Legislature this session to continue to make Florida the best state in our country.”
state of the state
State of the State Featured Floridians Fighting for Florida’s Future
Today, Governor Rick Scott highlighted the following Floridians in his annual State of the State address.
Orlando Police Department Officer Michael Napolitano, Orlando
Officer Michael Napolitano has served in the Orlando Police Department since 2012 and is a member of the SWAT team. Officer Napolitano was one of the responding officers to the terrorist attack at Pulse nightclub last June. During the final standoff, Officer Napolitano was injured when his Kevlar helmet blocked a bullet, saving his life.
David Alfandary, Owner of Hot Pandeyuca, Miami
David Alfandary is the owner of Hot Pandeyuca, a Miami small business that specializes in making traditional Colombian baked goods. The factory started with only three employees and has since grown to employ 30 Floridians. Today, Hot Pandeyuca serves more than 200 clients in Florida, including supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and small retailers as well as clients in other states such as Georgia, Texas and California.
Master Sergeant George Vera, Tampa
Master Sergeant Vera joined the Army in 1995. In 2015, his 20th year of service, Sergeant Vera’s base was attacked by suicide bombers using an improvised explosive device (IED). Master Sergeant Vera fought to pull his fellow wounded soldiers away from enemy fire and was shot during his efforts to secure the perimeter. Master Sergeant Vera has been awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and Purple Heart and multiple other heroic commendations. Master Sergeant Vera, his wife, Angela, and their daughter, Isabella, will soon be gifted a mortgage-free home in Tampa, Florida through Building Homes for Heroes, a non-profit organization that builds or modifies homes, and gifts them, mortgage-free, to veterans and their families.
Nick Cid, Senior Business Analyst, Hertz, Fort Myers
Nick Cid is a Florida native and graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University. Nick was hired at Hertz in 2014 after the company relocated its Corporate Headquarters from New Jersey to Fort Myers. He currently works as a Senior Business Analyst and is pursuing his master’s degree in business administration at FGCU.
Sage Offutt, Owner and Founder of Sage Paddle Company, Navarre Beach
Sage Offutt is the owner of Sage Paddle Company, a paddleboarding rental business headquartered in Navarre. Sage founded the company after moving to Navarre Beach in 2013 when she was only 11-years-old. Sage Paddle Company now offers services from Pensacola Beach to Fort Walton Beach, covering a 60-mile radius. The company is also one of the largest rental fleets in the area, with 50 boards and 12 kayaks and more expected to be added this year. Last year, Sage Paddle Company was awarded the Best Recreation Paddleboard Rental Company in Navarre and Sage was presented with the Young Entrepreneur Award by Governor Scott at a Cabinet meeting in December.
Linda Cooke, Director of Manufacturing Operations at HABCO Manufacturing, Boca Raton
Linda Cooke is the Director of Manufacturing Operations at HABCO Manufacturing, a manufacturer in Boca Raton that employs 200 Floridians, including 150 individuals with unique abilities. Linda has worked at HABCO since 1991 and has played a major role in turning the facility into a job training center and a multi-million-dollar manufacturing company. In 2015, Linda was presented the Excalibur Award for Small Business Leader in Palm Beach County.
Advocates Respond to Governor’s State of the State
“We need a Florida that works for all Floridians”
Advocates gathered at the State Capitol and in cities throughout Florida to “Awake The State” on the opening day of the 2017 legislative session. Labor leaders and legislators joined advocates for access to health care, quality public schools, reproductive and immigration rights to provide a counterpoint to Gov. Rick Scott and his legislative allies’ agenda that rewards their corporate backers while ignoring the needs of everyday Floridians. The event at the Capitol was part of a series of statewide actions and events promoting a different agenda: “a Florida that works for all Floridians.”
“We’re focused on promoting a state budget that works for every Floridian, not just the wealthy and well-connected,” said Rich Templin, Ph.D., Legislative and Political Director of the Florida AFL-CIO. “Instead of making smart investments in our communities that will create jobs, this legislature is actually considering preempting local governments from having the ability to do anything to advance workers’ well-being.”
For years Gov. Scott and the legislature have wasted billions of tax dollars in corporate handouts at the direct expense of hardworking Floridians who can least afford it. Instead of more unnecessary tax giveaways to corporations that serve to boost the bottom line of the very wealthy, Florida must create opportunities for all Floridians to get ahead.
“Everyday people are fed up with politicians balancing the budget on the backs of hardworking Floridians and our most vulnerable residents – children, the disabled, and frail elders,” said Karen Woodall, Executive Director of the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy. “We simply can’t afford any more tax giveaways to corporations or cuts to services each of us rely on – from our schools to our health care to our highways and bridges. In fact, we need more investment in our human infrastructure.”
Instead of more corporate tax giveaways, Awake The State advocates are calling on Gov. Scott and lawmakers to invest in Florida’s future and fully fund public education, increase access to health care coverage, protect our land and water, and upgrade our infrastructure.
“This is not about hard choices, but a question of priorities,” said Rep. Shevrin Jones. “It’s time to Awake The State.”
FSU graduate student Haley Gentile spoke out against recent and pending legislation designed to undermine safe and legal abortion care. “It’s time to Awake The State and recognize that a woman’s experience having an abortion should be supportive, affordable, available in her community, and without shame or stigma,” she said.
“In Florida, our quality of life depends on a healthy environment. Millions choose to live here and even more visit because of our rivers, springs, beaches, and access to nature,” said Aliki Moncrief, Executive Director of Florida Conservation Voters. “And yet every year, Gov. Scott and legislative leaders misappropriate funds intended for conservation, stand in the way of renewable energy options, and push policies that damage natural treasures like our springs and the Everglades. It is time to Awake the State and invest in protecting our water and the natural places that make Florida special.”
“Anti-immigrant and anti-family politics and policies are not a winning strategy in a state like Florida where a growing majority of Latino, Immigrant and African-American voters are key to municipal and the 2018 elections,” said Francesca Menes, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Florida Immigrant Coalition. “These measures would undermine the authority of local governments to protect its residents, public safety and trust, our economy and the very principles – diversity, opportunity, inclusion – that define us as Americans.”
In addition to the event at The Capitol, Awake the State activists have shared or will be sharing later this afternoon their progressive platform at events in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Stuart, Cocoa and Ocala.
Awake The State started as a Facebook page that quickly grew to thousands strong, resulting in events in cities across the state in March of 2011. Every year since, Floridians have organized Awake The State events in their communities at the beginning of the legislative session to engage their neighbors on important issues affecting our state. The Awake The State movement provides a platform for everyday Floridians to make their voices heard and fight for a Florida that works for all Floridians while pushing back against Rick Scott and the legislature’s wrongheaded priorities that reward the wealthy and well-connected.
Senate Democratic Leader Oscar Braynon Response to State of the State
As Delivered March 7, 2017
Good afternoon. I’m Oscar Braynon, and I’m the leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
On behalf of the Senate Democratic members, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about Governor Scott’s State of the State address today.
Not just about what he said, but about what he didn’t, about the promises he’s broken, and why that matters.
For the past seven years, Governor Scott has talked a lot about the economy. “It’s all about jobs,” he says.
Well, he’s right. We couldn’t agree more. Everyone needs work; everyone needs a job.
The problem is the kind of jobs he’s been bringing home to Florida.
Because the majority of his jobs are great for teenagers, or someone just starting out, but not for someone with skills, with training, with a strong work history, or a family to support.
They’re not the kind of jobs that let you save for that new car, that down payment on a new house, or your kid’s future education.
They’re not the kind of jobs that invest in the people.
And it’s that commitment to investing in the people that’s been missing from too many areas in the seven years since Governor Scott first took office.
In states like Michigan, Arizona, and even Vice President Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana, the governors didn’t stand in the way of the people getting affordable health care.
They realized that bankrupting residents because of a medical emergency isn’t the way to prosperity.
They realized that the national health care law not only brought more medical coverage for people, but more good paying jobs in the health care field.
They knew that you can’t work if you’re sick, you can’t give 100 percent if your body is operating at half power, and you can’t take care of others if you can’t take care of yourself.
Time and time again, Governor Scott had the chance to do the right thing, to invest in the people by expanding healthcare coverage in Florida.
But he didn’t. He gave the public’s money away in big tax breaks to big companies instead.
It was a fool’s errand.
From conservative think tanks to top economists, there’s widespread agreement that the way to lure the top companies with the top paying jobs isn’t just dangling tax dollars in front of them.
Florida is and has been one of the lowest tax states for business in the country.
Business executives want what the rest of us do, and it all comes down to quality of life: good schools and top-notch universities, quality, affordable healthcare, efficient transportation, and clean water and air.
They want more than just a state that sells itself as “cheap.”
So as Governor Scott continues his sales pitch for more of your dollars for more of his corporate tax cuts, ask him about that big shortfall the state is facing because of these very same policies, and his broken promises to turn Florida around.
Ask him about the green sludge fouling Florida’s waters because money was never committed for prevention.
Ask him why we’re stuck near the bottom in high school graduation rates and educating our pre-school kids.
Ask him why 9,000 more people with developmental disabilities age 21 or older are waitlisted for services, or why we’re at the bottom of the national pack in our commitment to services for the mentally ill, or access to basic health care.
And ask him why investments in the people just aren’t as important as the people’s money for his tax incentives.
If you had the chance, what would you choose?
More jobs paying minimum wage, or jobs you could brag about, jobs you were proud of, jobs that were taking you somewhere?
If you had the chance, would you check the box for fewer doctors, less medical services, and higher costs?
Or would you check the box for a family doctor, preventative services, and treatment you can afford?
As Democrats, we believe in the right choices, the ones that deliver the good jobs we need, and the affordable healthcare we’re missing.
We believe in a future that aims higher, that wraps the hopes and dreams of every man and every woman struggling to hold on, into one unified march for better opportunities now – not some faraway date in the future.
And we believe that the way that you do this is by investing in the people.
Start with education, the great equalizer, and start young. Commit the money our public schools desperately need to shore up crumbling buildings, pay better salaries to our teachers entrusted with educating our children, and provide the tools students need to succeed and stand second to none.
Embrace health care coverage for all Floridians, and the financial sense it makes not just in eliminating expensive back-end treatments, but a boon in new high paying jobs.
And rethink opportunity and second chances by eliminating criminal records for minor drug and non-violent offenses so that job offers don’t vanish with the application form.
All of this was missing from Governor Scott’s State of the State speech today. It’s been missing for the past seven years.
For all his campaigning as an “outsider” his politics have been focused on the well-being of the insiders, his promised tax cuts mostly tailored for the well-off while the tax bills went to everyone else.
In his first campaign for president, former President Obama said: “Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work. That’s the promise of America.”
That’s the promise of Florida, too. And that’s the promise Democrats intend to keep.
Thank you.
