Before Gov. Rick Scott sailed into the port issue by backing the Port of Miami's effort to dredge to 50 feet, Florida business interests had been ratcheting up their focus on what they say had been a forgotten secondary piece of the state’s economy.

The public hook -- as highlighted in the attention given to the Port of Miami -- has become that Florida ports and accompanying commercial rail and highways must be ready when the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014.

But organizations such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Florida Seaports, a Tallahassee-based nonprofit corporation serving the seaports, were already sounding warnings that Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia were outpacing Florida’s ports in terms of spending and planning for waterfront commercial growth.

The canal is just another area of growth that needs to be captured by the state that supporters say is perfectly positioned to be the "world’s seaport" -- at the crossroads of growing global east-west and north-south trade.

“We have the hub of the world at our hands,” said state Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville. “We have to connect the parts into a single interest of gateway ports, to have 14 windows on the world.”

Trade from Central and South America is already growing. East-west trade, brought on by modification to the Suez Canal, is also expanding the maritime market.

'ONCE IN A GENERATION'

A report by the chamber, “Florida Trade and Logistics Study,” released in December 2010, claims the state has a “once in a generation” opportunity to add 143,000 jobs to the nearly 600,000 existing port-related jobs, boosting port business by $21.5 billion and tax revenue by $723 million a year.

Ray and state Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, are again teaming to file a bill before both houses that maintains the current-year funding for ports of $117 million -- the most the state has ever put up for ports.

And they hope legislators maintain that funding amount for four years.

“For something that takes 8 percent of the work force, I don’t think people think about our ports,” Ring said. “But it’s so incredibility significant. It’s not a high-profile issue, but it's mission-critical for the state. It would have a tremendous negative impact on the state if it wasn’t shored up.”

Florida Seaports has projected that 17 priority projects needed to speed cargo through nine of the ports would require $853 million.

Port funding from the Legislature stood at $8 million in 2008, when Ray took office, and has been increasing ever since.

Georgia, by comparison, since 2000 has spent $1.5 billion as part of a 15-year plan to increase capacity at the Port of Savannah -- Florida’s main port competition -- and Port of Brunswick.

Florida Seaports notes that 70 percent of the overseas products purchased by Floridians don’t come through any of Florida’s ports. Savannah alone accounts for 20 percent of the products that end up on Florida retail shelves. The number is even higher when one removes the southern portion of Florida from the equation.

“If we were able to capture half the cargo from out of state, it would be huge,” said Doug Wheeler, Florida Seaports president.

'150,000 JOBS'

Ray, a marine engineer, says his vision is for the leadership of each of Florida's 15 ports to understand they will be better served in the long run by complementing each other, with Florida being seen as the global cargo transportation gateway rather than each port as an individual gateway.

The money requested wouldn’t be specifically designated in the bill for any port, but rather made available when a project comes on line that fits in the vision.

“We have to be engaged or we’re not going to be engaged at all,” Ray said. “You’re either going to invest with a plan or you’re going to be left out.”