from staff
On Nov. 7 of last year, Charlie Crist was elected governor of the State of Florida. On Jan. 2, he was officially sworn in as the state’s 44th governor, succeeding two-term Gov. Jeb Bush.
Crist is an attorney by education and elected official by trade. He was elected to the State Senate in 1992, became Florida’s last elected Commissioner of Education in 2000 and was elected Attorney General in 2002. Since taking over, Crist has spent time touring the state and working on a plan to tackle runaway property taxes.
An Altoona, Pa. native, Crist moved to St. Petersburg when he was a child, graduated from a public high school, went to Wake Forest where he played quarterback on the football team, received his undergraduate degree from Florida State in 1978 and his law degree from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Ala. A former intern with the State Attorney’s Office, Crist also served as general counsel for the minor league division of the Baseball Commissioner’s Office. Crist then went to work as state director for former U.S. Sen. Connie Mack before returning to private practice with the law firm of Wood and Crist in Tampa.
Thursday, Crist stopped by the Daily Record to meet with the editorial staff.
Question: You’ve only been in office a couple of months. How are things going?
Answer: This is day 65 and I love it. I absolutely love it. I am so honored and privileged and enormously grateful to the people of Florida. There is no better state. Florida is truly special.
Q: You’ve been an elected official since 1992 when you were elected to the Florida Senate. You were also elected Attorney General in 2002. How have those positions helped you prepare for being governor?
A: I think well, more so as Attorney General, but all have played a role. Both the Lt. Gov. (Jeff Kottkamp) and myself served in the state Legislature. Serving in that branch helped us and our administration. We pay enormous respect to the Legislative branch. As both lawyers, we pay enormous respect to the Judicial branch. I think the job as Attorney General helped more because of the administrative aspect of running an office similar to this one. Only one other Attorney General in Florida has ever been elected governor and I am the first Republican. My experience, especially with consumer issues, really opened my eyes.
Q: How did being Attorney General for four years help?
A: I think a lot. Obviously, you don’t need to or have to be a lawyer to be governor. But, the skills you attain in becoming a lawyer are very beneficial in helping you develop good judgment. People come to you all day long with data and you begin to learn fairly quickly how to size up where they are coming from, how to judge character, their sincerity, demeanor and integrity. It’s been an enormous help to have the formal education.
Q: The number of attorneys in the Legislature is on the rise. How does that help your administration?
A: I have a deep respect for my profession. Doctors in the Legislative branch are helpful and so are teachers. In the past, there has been a negative view of lawyers and that has been talked about a lot. I think attorneys are back. The Lt. Gov. and I are both lawyers. (President) Abe Lincoln was a lawyer.
Q: Will you ever practice law again?
A: I don’t know. That’s up to the people.
Q: Over the course of every year, judicial openings occur in circuits all over the state. What will you look for in the new trial judges?
A: People who are fair, honest, have great integrity, who are open-minded and realize it’s just as important to exonerate the innocent as it is to prosecute the guilty. I will be looking for people who are compassionate.
Q: What is your relationship with the Duval Delegation and how important is that relationship?
A: It’s extremely important. Sen. (Jim) King is a good friend and someone I have known for a long time. You have a great delegation. As I look at it, it’s a regional delegation. (State Rep.) Aaron Bean from Nassau County and I have worked together. The mayor (John Peyton) is a great friend. I think the world of John.
Q: When the Florida Lottery was established, it was designed to supplement the state budget solely for educational purposes. Since then, the funding generated by the Lottery has been filtered to many other projects. Can you do anything to reallocate that money to education alone?
A: My predecessor (Jeb Bush) went a long way to getting that accomplished. In his first couple of (legislative) sessions, he vetoed lots of projects (that used Lottery money instead of other funding sources). Those pet projects, the governor plugged the leaks. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of vetoes. (Crist went on to explain how the state budget was like a cup that was full. The Lottery money allowed the cup to overflow with funds. However, as pet projects began to tap into those funds, a leak developed in the cup, the Lottery money simply helped fill the cup.) We have allowed the Lottery to be augmentative again. We’ll watch it carefully.
Q: A few weeks ago I had the chance to listen to Sen. Jim King speak about problems the state of Florida is facing. One of the areas he spoke about was public education. What is your plan to improve public education?
A: Number one, pay our teachers more. We have $300 million for that in our budget this year. We need to re-focus our emphasis on public schools. I am a public school kid and I believe in the public school system. In addition to raising the salaries for our hard-working teachers, it is important to put more focus on our schools, because not everyone can afford private schools. We are also putting more emphasis on physical education for children in grades 1-5.
Q: Florida is one of only seven states in the country that doesn’t have a personal income tax. Have you given any thought to proposing such a tax that could help ease the state’s funding issues?
A: No. (After a few moments, Crist did elaborate) There will have to be some significant reworking and reduction of property taxes. The people won’t stand for it if we don’t. What makes Florida special is our low taxes, but it won’t stay that way thanks to property taxes. If we can handle it even moderately well, our economy will light up like Christmas.
Q: Has the way the business of government is done in Tallahassee changed since your first day in the senate?
A: Not really. It’s a lot bigger because the state is a lot bigger. When I was first elected, the budget was $40 billion. Now it’s over $70 billion. The population has grown to the point that we’re almost the third-largest state in the country. Florida is an important place. The sheer growth alone has been the most dramatic change, not only in Florida government but in the state as a whole.
Q: Are you hopeful an increase in the budget of the state’s Jacksonville based Child Predator Cyber Crime Unit will pass the Florida Legislature? (The unit, which Crist created as Attorney General, has six members.)
A: It’s hard to imagine what could be more important. We are supporting, with every amount of energy we can muster, getting it up to 50 people, because the rewards we saw when I was Attorney General were dramatic.
Q: There is $75 million in your budget to promote and bring more motion-picture and video production to Florida. Why is that such an important industry?
A: The importance can’t be overstated in my opinion. Number one, it’s a cool business. Number two, it’s clean. It pollutes nothing. Number 3, the jobs it brings are high-paying. If a business doesn’t hurt the environment and stimulates Florida’s economy, I’m all for it. Plus, one of the only byproducts is it spotlights our state. We talk about tourism funding. If we are willing to help bring more film and video production to the state, all we do is win, win, win.
I’ve had extensive conversations with Burt Reynolds about this. John Travolta – who is a Floridian – is willing to help us with this. I think there is a great synergy throughout the state to continue to nurture the film and television industries to a much greater degree. Trying to recruit more of that industry is in our best interest and I’m very passionate about it.
“CSI Miami” is one of my favorite shows. I enjoy watching it not just for the storyline, I love the scenery. They show the Everglades and Biscayne Bay and the skyline and it’s beautiful.
That’s true all over the state. Anywhere in Florida, it’s not ugly. It’s a beautiful state.
Q: What’s the plan to bring private space travel businesses to Florida?
A: First, we have to care about it, which we do. I moved here when I was 3 years old. I grew up in a state where NASA and all the aerospace in our country is based.
It’s inspiring. Florida is literally the place where America reaches for the stars. It’s inspiring about our country and about our state and it’s good to be inspired. The private space industry can provide great economic gains for our citizens with high-paying jobs in a technical field that is important scientifically.
What made me anxious about it was other states in the southwest were doing so much to attract that kind of business. God bless them, but I’m a Floridian. It made me think, why aren’t we doing that here?
We weren’t doing much to try to get it here. Well, no longer. We’ll do everything we can to make sure it comes here.
Q: Sixty percent of the St. Johns River is in Jacksonville. You have earmarked money for other waterways restoration projects across the state. What can you do to help the St. Johns?
A: (Crist said the answer is a combination of people treating the river properly and the state funding clean up projects.) I think it’s a relatively easy fix. In the late 1970s, Tampa Bay looked like the St. Johns does today. Now, you look 12 feet down and see the bottom (of Tampa Bay). It was dramatic. Awareness is the biggest issue. People need to address the problems. Once you put the investment in, all the money in the world won’t help if people don’t pay attention. It’s self-defeating. Citizens can help, the state can help with funding and we can get help from the federal level from people like Congressman Ander Crenshaw.
I want to clean it up. Mother nature is so powerful, all we have to do is give her a little hand she will take care of it.
Q: In pushing for voting machines that produce paper trails and state funding for stem cell research you are backing initiatives the majority of Republican legislators have not supported. Did you decide to support issues you believe in regardless of of the party with which they are most associated?
A: I took the advice of former Florida Governor, Reubin Askew, when deciding to fight for initiatives largely unpopular with state Republicans, including mandated paper trails for voting machines and an increase in state funded stem cell research. He was very strong in his advice to me to trust your instincts, Charlie. You got elected based upon having good enough instincts to get elected, and I would recommend that you continue to follow those instincts that got you here. If it’s something that I believe is right, the people were kind enough to elect me based upon what I told them I would do – I better do what I said.