Florida Ports Council President Doug Wheeler was encouraged that Gov. Rick Scott -- who championed the dredging of the Port of Miami earlier this year -- continues to stress the need to bulk up the ports in the state.

"We share the governor’s vision for Florida as an international trade hub and we look forward to working together with Governor Scott and the Legislature, as well as the Department of Transportation during the upcoming session, to make sure Florida is prepared to capitalize on current and future global trade opportunities,” Wheeler stated in a release Thursday.

Scott, during his budget address Wednesday, continued his push to improve Florida ports in preparation for the completion of the widening of the Panama Canal.

“If we want the standard of living to go up in our state, the only way it’s going to go up is if we increase people spending money in our state that come from out of state or we sell things that we produce here or we get people to ship through here,” Scott said.

“If we do the right things with our ports,” Scott added, “as you know, we put the money into Miami to make sure it will be dredged and ready for the Panama Canal expansion, if we do the right thing for our ports we’ll have significant manufacturing around our ports. With the Panama Canal and the growth of the economies in Central and South America, our ports should do well and manufacturing around our ports should do extremely well.”

The Florida Ports Council has projected that 17 priority projects are needed to speed cargo through nine of the ports. The work is projected at $853 million.

State Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville, 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.

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.

 

Reach Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 215-9889.