RSS Feed of the blog

Contributors:

Reporter William March has covered state and national politics since 1994. Email

Reporter Mike Salinero has covered Hillsborough County government for The Tampa Tribune since 2007. Email

Reporter Lindsay Peterson has been a general assignment reporter at the Tampa Tribune since 2005, focusing on higher education since 2009. Email

TBO RNC 2012 Section

Florida Political Blogs:

• State Of Sunshine
• Pushing Rope
• Interstate4Jamming
• News Service of Florida
• FLA Politics
• Sayfie Review/

News Blog Search

Advanced Search

Most Recent Entries

• Memorial Day weekend deals to honor military, vets
• How come the poll results don’t match?
• Q Poll: Mack has long lead in primary, ties Nelson in general matchup
• Mack campaign retracts Fortuno endorsement quotes
• Coburn backs LeMieux, answering Mack’s Fortuno
• Q Poll: Romney has significant lead in Florida
• Storm The Swarm: SOCCENT deputy chief asks for technology to stop threat of Iranian small boats
• Nelson disses Obama on Castro daughter
• Hoyer to campaign with Ehrlich
• Mack dumbest speaker in Congress?  It’s complicated
• Guetzloe sentenced for not filing tax returns
• Mack asks feds to investigate LeMieux appointment
• Pentagon Reports Deaths of 7 Troops This Week in Support of Operation Enduring Freedom
• Mack demands investigation of LeMieux appointment
• Ross backs Mack

More

• Breaking News
• Command Post Tampa
• Fact Finders - Databay Blog
• Guestbook: Remembering The Fallen Soldiers
• Fresh Squeezed Politics
• RNC 2012: The Road to Tampa
• Political Safari

Monthly Archives

• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011

Much ado about special session turned out to be nothing

Posted Sep 1, 2010 by Catherine Whittenburg, Tallahassee bureau

Updated Sep 1, 2010 at 01:34 PM

Well, so much for that. House Speaker Larry Cretul and Senate President Jeff Atwater have no plans now to hold a special legislative session this fall to address Florida’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

When House and Senate members quit the July special session imposed by Gov. Charlie Crist without taking up his proposed constitutional amendment to ban oil drilling, many did so declaring their intentions to attend to the more urgent needs concerning communities’ recovery from the spill, primarily in Northwest Florida. Senate President Jeff Atwater, who was particularly bullish on holding a special session to address those issues, said as recently as Aug. 19 in a letter to fellow senators:

“After gaveling the Special Session to a close I publicly offered my views on what had transpired, and reiterated my desire for a more meaningful gathering.  I will repeat again what I said then, I will be disappointed if we do not return in a Special Session at the earliest possible date.”

The earliest possible date, however, has steadily been moving back—and now appears to be no earlier than the regularly scheduled session for Spring 2011.

Here’s what Cretul wrote to fellow House members today, upon reviewing reports from several House workgroups on issues related to the spill:  “Based on the workgroups’ recommendations, it would appear that while there are some issues where legislative action may be appropriate, there are no issues that require immediate formal legislative action.  Additionally, there are several areas where it is clear that we do not yet possess the information necessary to make informed decisions.  Moreover, many of these issues require solutions that would benefit from closer scrutiny during a regular legislative session.” 

Atwater forwarded Cretul’s message to the Senate, adding that he has asked the Senate’s committee on the economy “to continue developing proposals, gathering data, and working with incoming leadership in preparation for the next session.”