by Michael Peltier
The News Service of Florida
The Florida Department of Health would be reorganized and its mission scaled back under a measure the House sponsor said Friday is needed to maximize efficiencies in a sprawling agency that now oversees initiatives from emergency response to outreach and counseling efforts.
But a proposed committee bill to reduce the scope of the agency met with initial skepticism from a key Senator who said it’s too late in session to get such legislation through and it may not be a good idea even if adequate time existed.
Released late Thursday, PCB HCR 10-03 would reduce the number of agency missions from 12 to seven in an attempt to more clearly focus agency responsibilities, said the House sponsor, Rep. Matt Hudson (R-Naples).
A licensed physician would still run the agency, but with more well-defined duties related to public health.
Hudson said the goal is to restructure the agency by setting up more objective performance criteria, increasing legislative oversight and shedding some responsibilities that have been assumed by the public health agency since its creation in 1996.
“They have some things that we believe need to be honed down a little bit,” Hudson said Friday. “Our citizens expect us to be focused. The Department of Health has a mission that is a little broad and unwieldy.”
Created in 1996 as part of a reorganization that also produced the Department of Children and Families, the agency now employs 17,000 and oversees a budget of $2.9 billion. Hudson said the agency’s roles have been allowed to expand largely unchecked.
Agency officials would have until Dec. 1 to produce organizational plans for seven divisions to reflect the streamlined mission outlined in the bill. The divisions themselves would sunset on July 1, 2011, unless re-enacted by lawmakers.
Among the reorganization proposals is a requirement that DOH get legislative approval before accepting federal grants, which often come with strings attached that require further state funding for the programs to continue.
The House proposal also calls for the elimination of some programs including the Children‘s Early Intervention program and the Office of Women’s Health Strategies. Other functions would be merged. The measure could come before the committee as early as Monday.
But Sen. Durell Peaden (R-Crestview), chairman of the Senate’s Health and Human Services budget committee, dismissed the proposed Health Department reorganization as a waste of time at this point in the session. He also disputed that the move would save money.
“Probably the most money you’re going to save is changing the signs,” Peaden said. “We need to leave it alone. We’ve got enough problems. We don’t need to create anymore. There’s no efficiencies.”
“I don’t have any appetite at all for that,” he added. “If you create one savings, you’re probably going to create two or three new problems.”