pinion Scott Touts Success and Ignores Challenges in State of the State Address

Governor Rick Scott issued the annual State of the State address as the 2015 Florida Legislative Session opened in Tallahassee on Tuesday. The governor spent much time celebrating the good news but received valid criticism for completely ignoring pressing issues, the outlooks of which seemed not nearly as rosy.

The governor lauded the recent reinvestment in education, but did not acknowledge that the “record investments” in student spending followed the “record cuts” his administration had previously enacted. The governor also made no mention of the widespread problems with the new standardized tests Florida implemented this year, after dropping out of a 23-state consortium and having to hastily decide on a plan to replace the FCAT exams with a product that teachers, administrators and educational advocates see as sorely lacking.

The governor was equally silent on scandals at the Department of Children and Families, the Department of Corrections and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. No acknowledgment, no vision for the future, no pledge of accountability or reforms. Indeed, it seems that the governor will get off scot-free (no pun intended) for what appears to be a very clear violation of state law by unilaterally ousting a department head, without cause no less, and one who had served three administrations with a stellar record.

The governor could have used the speech to rally his party on the issue of Medicaid expansion. One chamber – the Senate – stands poised to pass a much needed expansion in time to not only help the 800,000 Floridians without healthcare, but also prevent billions from being lost in hospital funding by way of Low-Income Pool money that will be phased out as part of expansion. The House remains stubbornly and now dangerously obdurate. Yet somehow the subject never came up in the governor's speech.

Florida's dour unemployment rates have finally improved, yet it remains one of the top states in which recovery has disproportionately benefited the wealthy. While the top 1 percent of Floridians saw a whopping 9.2 percent increase in income from 2009-14, the rest of Floridians actually saw their income drop 2.4 percent. Florida's economic recovery has been one of the most lopsided in the United States. The top 1 percent average income here is now 43 times greater than the average income of the bottom 99 percent.

That does not bode well for a governor who has relentlessly been criticized for policies that favor the wealthy, while punishing the poor. Perhaps not surprisingly, Governor Scott made no mention of Florida's growing wealth gap or plans to address it. All economists agree that an economy grows best from the middle out, if only because the lower you are on the economic ladder, the more of your income you spend into the economy.

Having so much of the gains go where they are most likely to sit idle does not have nearly the multiplier effect of an economy that grows with more parity. No one is saying there can’t or even shouldn’t be great disparity in wealth in a capitalistic economy. But when your gap is growing faster than almost everyone else’s it is, without question, a bad sign for the economic future – even for those gaining disproportionately now. That's not a leftist sentiment but rather an economic fact. At the very least, such a negative dynamic should be acknowledged. In the presence of real leadership, it would actually be addressed. Instead, birds chirped over more silence.

Scott has often been accused of running the state as if it were a company and he, rather than its elected leader, a CEO. If so, one might expect the State of the State to be akin to an annual address to stockholders. At least half of it was. While Florida is indeed on the uptick in many regards, it is far from a blue chip stock. There are many shareholders who are less than thrilled with the performance of their investment and the chief exec owed them a more thoughtful address of such concerns.

Alas, government isn't a private company with such accountability functions as a board of directors who can oust the chief executive for poor performance and stockholders who can vote with their feet on any single day. Taxpayers get only one shot every four years at making change and, too often, their choices are between Coke and Pepsi.

Governor Scott didn't address the state's many woes because he didn't have to. Voters didn't punish him for his performance at the polls in November, and now he has four more years to do as he pleases. From his perspective, things must seem to be going pretty well; but the reality for the rest of us is much less sunny.

Dennis Maley's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The Bradenton Times. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. Click here to visit his column archive. Click here to go to his bio page. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook.