Jacob Ogles
Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis will push the Legislature next year to create dedicated courts for business matters.
“We’re going to work with the Business Law Section of the Florida Bar to pursue statewide elected business courts,” Patronis said. “I want to have Judges on the bench to have an understanding and background of what it takes to do business law and have a better grasp of it.”
Patronis made the announcement at a Florida TaxWatch event in Palm Beach. There, TaxWatch CEO Dominic Calabro quickly endorsed the concept. “We will do some research on it in coming months,” Calabro said.
Patronis said he wants to work with the legal community on the specifics of any proposal, but said business owners he has dealt with suggested they would pay a premium in order to put cases in front of Judges with an expertise in business law.
Regardless, he doesn’t anticipate the expansion to be a significant cost. It may be that some judicial circuits need business-dedicated Judges and others don’t see enough appropriate cases filed. But he said any expense will be justified to make it into a fleshed-out proposal.
“If it means creating a new judicial seat in each one of the circuits, so be it,” Patronis told Florida Politics. “I think we’ll look at the caseload as we break it down. We can track the caseload, and track down where it is. And it may not be a need in every part of the state, but where the need is there, I think it’s important to start the dialogue.”
At the event, he also discussed a problem he has seen in the wake of hurricanes striking the Gulf Coast. He spent years fighting contractors and adjustors from abusing assignment of benefits to siphon claims from consumers. Now he is seeing a new technique: directional benefits.
At a Florida TaxWatch event, he discussed his office’s new “Check My Contract” online portal. And Patronis teased that he may make political news in the near future. The former lawmaker mentioned he has served in state office for 18 years, and would be happy to spend another 10 years in Tallahassee.
With his term as CFO ending in two years, what might he do for the next eight?
“I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I’m fine running again,” he said.
“If another opportunity comes up in a different office, who knows what that might be? But we’ll see. I think the election next week is going to probably create some dominoes, and we’ll see how the state landscape unfolds. You know, I had a lot of people say, ‘Would you consider running for Governor?’ I never thought I’d be asked that question, but that’d be pretty cool.”
