Backroom briefing: Legislature not ready to play ball

The House continues to play hardball about tossing money into sports-stadium projects.

House Speaker Steve Crisafulli isn’t saying the issue is dead for this year’s legislative session, but he doesn’t appear ready to put the fields into play as the House and Senate remain at a budget impasse.

“The House’s position on stadiums is mixed among our membership,” Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said in an email. “We do not have a bill that contains stadium language.”

Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, spurred some hopes this week for backers of funneling sales-tax dollars to stadium projects in Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami-Dade County and Daytona Beach.

Latvala on Tuesday attached to an economic development bill (SB 1214) an amendment that would advance a $7 million-a-year package for improvements at Daytona International Speedway, the Miami Dolphins’ home of Sun Life Stadium and EverBank Field in Jacksonville and for construction of a soccer stadium in Orlando.

The money was part of a new process created by lawmakers last year intended to reduce the lobbying for stadium-funded proposals by requiring applicants to submit proposals that would be ranked on economic viability.

But the issue has been on the sideline since February, after four House members on the Joint Legislative Budget Commission pushed the stadium funding decision off to the full Legislature.

Ron Book, a lobbyist for Sun Life Stadium, said the ongoing work in Miami-Dade won’t stop without the state money, but lawmakers made a commitment last year that encouraged the $350 million stadium work to proceed.

“We all had a reasonable expectation that we would submit an application, comply with the conditions that were laid out in statutes and rule, and we would ultimately have some state participation in a partnership that would generate tens of millions of dollars in sales tax,” Book said.

Other officials where the stadium work is proceeding are publicly downplaying concerns as the process continues.

“We are working cooperatively with the Florida Legislature as they continue to review and discuss the sports incentive applications before them, and continuing to tell the great story of Daytona Rising and what it means to the state,” Joie Chitwood, Daytona International Speedway president, said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

Orlando City Lions, however, is urging supporters of the planned $85 million downtown soccer stadium to contact lawmakers on the need for sales-tax money.

“We are getting closer to obtaining the funding for the new Downtown Stadium in the State Legislature,” the Major League Soccer team said in an email Wednesday. “While we are excited with all the progress made so far — we need your help.”

Nothing personal, commissioner

Sen. John Legg, R-Lutz, cast the only dissenting vote this week when the Senate confirmed Public Service Commission members Julie Brown and Jimmy Patronis.

Legg said his vote was directed at Patronis, a former Republican House member from Panama City who was an early ally of Gov. Rick Scott. But it wasn’t personal.

“I just think we as a legislative body should take two years off before going directly to the Public Service Commission,” Legg said. “We have to wait two years before we can lobby, so it’s a principle.”

Scott in September selected Patronis and Brown for four-year terms on the utility-regulatory board, with the jobs paying $131,036 a year. Patronis finished his House term in November and began the PSC role in January.

Brown, an attorney from Tampa, is now in her second term on the commission.

The confirmation vote came as the House on Wednesday approved a reform measure (HB 7109) that in part limits future PSC members to three terms. The Senate is set to vote on the bill Friday.

In December, Legg and Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, filed legislation intended to make the “out-of-control” utility-regulating commission “more reflective of the people they are supposed to serve.” The proposal, which didn’t advance, would have limited commissioners to two terms, divided the state into five single-member commission districts and prohibited elected officials from being appointed to the commission for two years after they leave office.