Just days after news that Gov. Rick Scott's push to eliminate corporate income tax would end in failure, another big item on Scott's agenda now looks it's headed for defeat. Scott and Sen. John Thrasher, the former chair of the state GOP, made it a top priority to pass a bill that would ban public unions from collecting dues by automatically deducting them from payrolls, but after Scott failed to change the minds of four Republican senators, including three from Miami, it seems certain the measure will not pass this year.
In a last-ditch effort to drum up support for the controversial measure, Scott personally paid visits to the four Republican senators, including Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, Rene Garcia, Anitere Flores of Miami, and Charlie Dean of Inverness, according to Naked Politics.
All four wouldn't budge on the issue.
While Scott's agenda didn't quite have unions in its crosshairs to the extent that the agenda of other newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin did (and it should be noted that Florida is a right-to-work state where unions are less powerful), the measure was viewed as another Republican effort to chip away at the power of unions. Scott really became interested in the anti-union measures only once it became a national issue.
"It creates division and turmoil, and doesn't create jobs,'' Diaz de la Portilla said, according to NP.
The likely defeat of the measure joins a growing number of failures for Scott's agenda as the legislative session winds down. Besides his failure to eliminate corporate income taxes, Scott is also having trouble pushing through an immigration bill that was as strict as the "Arizona-style" one he campaigned on.
[Naked Politics: Scott makes personal pitch on union dues]
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