Secret Negotiations

So Rubio and Pruitt canceled the special session - or, "postponed" it, to use their words. And why did they postpone it?

"The common denominator for productive special sessions is an initial agreement on a framework for action... While there has been tremendous progress, there is still work to be done... We remain confident that an agreement will be reached and that we will have a fall special session."

So, there's no "initial agreement." Have you read anything in the press about about Pruitt and Rubio working towards an agreement? If, like me, you've been reading articles about possible cuts, reform ideas, and committee meetings where department heads present their budget cut proposals, you probably thought that legislators were educating themselves in the past few weeks, in preparation for the big decisions they would have to make in the special session. The press would mention, here and there, that the House wanted to do targeted cuts, and the Senate wanted to just do a uniform 4% cut. But it never mentioned - to my knowledge - that Rubio and Pruitt were trying come up with an "initial agreement" before the special session started.

My take on this is that the Republican leadership was trying to do what it did before in the property tax special session - craft a plan behind the scenes, then shove it through. I have two problems with this. First, cutting the budget should be a public debate. This isn't something that should be concocted in dimly lit, smoke-filled rooms. It ought to be done in the open, so that the public can act and react. Second, this kind of political negotiation produces crappy policy. Look at what came out of the last special session - a terrible "tax cut" which didn't address the main concerns of property owners, only benefited homesteaders, generated a huge amount of partisan politics, and, in the long run, actually increases tax revenue. Including the public - or at least the other party - in negotiations isn't just important as a matter of political morality, its necessary to produce compromises that everyone can agree to.

It appears that Gov. Crist didn't even know about postponement until everybody else did - is he kept out of the loop on these secret negotiations too? If so, that's amazing, especially now that he's put out a pretty comprehensive budget cut/economic stimulus plan. In fact, that he did put out this plan indicates that he's not really part of the Pruitt-Rubio budget cut cabal. So who is coming up with the initial agreement? Maybe Rep. Joe Pickens, who's head of the education council (and therefore supposedly in charge of education cuts): this Naked Politics post was the first indication I had seen that the special session wasn't really set in stone. And who knows who else?