Gov. Rick Scott has his office working to determine what he can do to keep up the effort to bid out the services of up to 26 Central and South Florida correctional institutions this session.

With the private outsourcing effort projected by state economists to save at least $16.5 million a year, Scott is trying to determine if he can proceed on his own or through other means after the Florida Senate -- with 10 Republicans joining the entire Democratic roster -- rejected a bill on the future management of the facilities on Tuesday.

“I’m disappointed the Senate didn’t do that; I’m going to look at what I have the opportunity to do,” Scott told reporters while at the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy in Havana Thursday morning.

“I’m going to make sure we don’t waste money in the state.”

There has been unconfirmed talk throughout the Capitol that Scott could act on his own to proceed with privatization -- an effort approved by the Legislature a year ago but halted by a judge in late September.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said after the vote that further cuts would have to come from education and health care.
Scott, noting that he didn’t include the privatization effort in his proposed budget for the coming year, said the Senate had a chance to save money for health care and education.

“I got elected to hold the government accountable, to not waste taxpayers’ money,” Scott said. “So here was an opportunity that the Senate had, to give us an opportunity to save us a significant amount of money.”

The outsourcing effort was approved as part of the state budget in the previous session, only to be overturned by a Leon County Circuit Court judge who accepted the Florida Police Benevolent Association’s argument that the privatization effort should have been done as a separate bill.

The state continues to challenge the court ruling.

For many of those in the Senate opposed to the privatization bill, the question was more a matter of public safety than cost-cutting.

Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, whose opposition to privatization cost him seats on two budget committees, including a chairmanship, said he hopes Scott will consider the Senate’s vote before proceeding further on the issue.

“It’s his prerogative, but I hope he learned that the direction that was abandoned is not the direction that the taxpayers of Florida wanted to go,” Fasano said.

The Senate vote was declared a victory by unions representing the nearly 4,000 correction workers who would have been affected by the conversion from state to private management.

Ken Wood, acting president of Teamsters Local 2011 in Tampa, which represents 20,000 corrections officers, also said the Senate vote reflected the will of the citizens.

“Floridians do not want the rules changed so private companies can get secret contracts with no cost-benefit analysis and no public review,” Wood stated in a release on Thursday.

As part of the plan, none of the prisons would have been turned over to a private company if the bids failed to provide the state with at least 7 percent savings from the existing costs.

The effort to privatize came as the Department of Corrections is moving forward with plans to close 11 facilities because of an overall drop in the prison population statewide. The full House and the Senate Budget Committee have since budgeted money to keep one of the prisons, the Jefferson Correctional Facility, open due to concerns about the economic impact of the closing on the community.


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