A.G. Gancarski
The Duval County Legislative Delegation has a lot of new faces and a crowded agenda in front of it on Wednesday afternoon, when they convene at Jacksonville’s city hall.
New to the body: Republican Reps. Cord Byrd of House District 11 and Clay Yarborough in HD 12, Democratic Rep. Tracie Davis of House District 13, Democratic Rep. Kim Daniels in HD 14, and Republican Rep. Jason Fischer of HD 16.
Those new members — along with veterans Rep. Jay Fant and Senators Audrey Gibson and Aaron Bean — will elect a new chair, a new vice chair, and hear from 44 speakers, ranging from Mayor Lenny Curry to representatives of the school board, local colleges, and sundry local non-profit agencies.
Though 44 speakers sounds like a lot, the number is down from the 60 speakers who addressed the body a year before.
Among some of the more interesting speakers: Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, whose legislative agenda in the upcoming session won’t be quite as ambitious as the 2016 iteration, in which the combined power of the local and regional delegation was employed to get authorization for the referendum extending a current half-cent sales tax to pay for Jacksonville’s pension debt … assuming that collective bargaining closes at least one of the current pension plans.
Representing the Duval County School Board: Scott Shine, one of the members of the conservative wing of the board. Ironically enough, the current school board chair, Paula Wright, was linked with a possible bid for the seat that Tracie Davis now holds in Tallahassee. However, Wright ultimately demurred on a run.
College presidents will speak, such as University of North Florida head John Delaney and Florida State College Jacksonville president Cynthia Bioteau.
Both schools have seen rapid expansion and evolution of their missions in recent decades, with UNF growing from its former commuter school status to becoming a destination institution. Meanwhile, FSCJ is now a four-year college that has long since outgrown its 20th century reputation as the ultimate in fallback schools.
State driven PECO funding has been good to UNF. $40 million went to the biology building in 2012. In 2016, $11 million more was allotted to refurbishing Skinner-Jones Hall, one of the campus’ original classroom buildings, built in 1972.
Another interesting speaker: Penny Thompson of UF Health – Jacksonville.
With uncertainty looming over the future of subsidized health care, both due to questions about Low Income Pool funding and vagueness about what the Donald Trump administration wants to do about Obamacare, Thompson’s call for funding from a conservative legislature will be worth watching for specifics.
For those who can’t get enough of legislative delegation meetings, the First Coast Legislative Delegation will convene on Thursday morning at Jacksonville University’s Public Policy Institute.
“I want to get their mind in the perspective of understanding the region and different sectors as it relates to past, present and future goals,” State Sen. Travis Hutson, who is organizing the conclave, told the Florida Times-Union.
