Legislative Committee Meets with Key Legislators

Date: January 26, 2009
Jason Caros (and Randy Felton, and Pete Cowdrey, Bob Bedford and Jon Conley)
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Our Group Met With: Sen. Wise, Rep. McBurney, Rep. Flores, and Rep. Legg
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On Tuesday, January 13th I drove to Bob Bedford’s office in Tallahassee where he and Jon Conley, his assistant, met with Randy Felton, Pete Cowdrey and me. We discussed Rep. McBurney’s bill and outlined a general game plan for the day. Our first meeting at the capitol took place in Senator Wise’s office with him, Representative McBurney and Richard Pra, McBurney’s aide. McBurney and Wise were very upbeat about Social Studies/Civic Ed and spoke optimistically about HB 13. Wise said he would sponsor the companion will in the Senate (Wise is the Senate K-12 Appropriations Chair and a ranking member of the PreK-12 Education Committee).

Their only hesitation was any potential fiscal impact in the upcoming year or two. Their idea was to establish a meeting with Chancellor Smith and the gentleman in the DOE that will write the fiscal impact report and review the bill with them and gain their support. Wise and McBurney want to schedule a meeting for next month with us and the Commissioner so we can hash it out. Bob Bedford is working on this.

Overall, the meeting with McBurney and Wise was very positive. From there we stopped by Representative Legg’s office. John Legg is the K-12 Ed Chairman and a former Social Studies teacher. He was not in Tallahassee but we met with his legislative assistant and left a set of materials for him. Later we came back to Legg’s office and met with Marleen Ahearn, the Staff Director for K-12 Education. She is also a former SS teacher and she was very much in support of HB 13. We had a good discussion with her and left her our presentation materials.

We were also able to meet with K-12 House Appropriations Chair Anitere Flores. She also strongly supports the bill and asked to be a part of the future meeting with the Commissioner, Wise and McBurney. Rep. Flores was positive and very supportive and wants to work on the fiscal impact issue.

I believe the only thing that will stop the House/Senate bills from passing this year is a DOE report showing short term fiscal impact. The 2014 date in the bill may help. I’ve asked Bob Bedford to try his best to schedule the February meeting the day before the Endowment meeting at FSU so I can attend both back to back…

On a related note, Senator Bob Graham is working for us again, and is going to meet with Governor Crist and the Commissioner on the issue.

Jason