Jim Rosica
The bill meant to be the vehicle for the House of Representatives’ 2016 business and economic incentives package will be considered by the full chamber soon.
But it still doesn’t have a dollar amount.
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli yanked the legislation (HB 1325) from its remaining committee stops this week, meaning it will go straight to the floor for discussion and vote.
“We’re ready to bring that forward … it’s been very important to me that we have some policy in place before we start talking about the dollars and cents,” the Merritt Island Republican told reporters Thursday evening.
“There’s no money in the bill,” he said. “It’s just the policy piece. We’ve worked closely with the Governor’s Office to come to some kind of understanding of what that might look like.
“We have to have more conversations on it with our Senate partners … but it was important to us to go ahead and move that (legislation) out of the House.”
The Senate earlier committed to one of Gov. Rick Scott‘s requests for the 2016 Legislative Session: a $250 million Florida Enterprise Fund that state officials would use to entice businesses and their jobs to come to the Sunshine State.
Last month, state Sen. Jack Latvala said he would push the proposed pot of money through the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development, which he chairs.
“We’re all on the same team, we all want to produce jobs,” the Clearwater Republican said. “We want to give him the tools he needs for business recruitment.”
Everything, though, depends on allocations, the big silos of money available for each major section of the 2016-17 state budget.
House budget chief Richard Corcoran and Senate budget Chairman Tom Lee have been trying to come to agreement on those numbers, which has delayed the start of the budget conference process to next week.
