by POLITICO Florida’s Jessica Bakeman
May 31, 2017
An open government advocacy group that has pushed Gov. Rick Scott to veto the Legislature’s state budget and a controversial K-12 education bill has now called for him to reject a related higher education measure. The First Amendment Foundation objects to both education conforming bills because of the process by which they were crafted, not because of their substance. The group denounced lawmakers for negotiating the two omnibus bills – combined, nearly 600 pages of policy – behind closed doors. Public school stakeholders, including school boards, superintendents, administrators and teachers, want HB 7069, a House priority bill that boosts charter schools, to go down in flames. But there’s been relatively little pushback against SB 374, which directs hundreds of millions to state universities and student financial aid programs and overhauls the governance of community colleges. [READ MORE]