Apparently, Gov. Scott has gone on record saying that he wants less government regulations and has the Dept. that oversees our licenses done away with. Let's hope that the state society is not asleep at the wheel this time as it looks like we will have another fight on our hands.
I said years ago that moving the board from the professional division to the aricultural division was a mistake, but the board wanted this move because they thought they'd have better enforcement. We need to get back into the DBRP as soon as possible ... this is just nuts.
Scott is a scum bag of the first order. I just hope that we don't have to depend on the state society this time given the way they were soooo prepared the first time.
Look like another of hhis controversial bills that passed is going to come under fire in the courts from the ACLU. Apparently as of July 1, anyone getting welfare assistance from Florida will be subject to drug tests. The wording says if you pass then you get he benefits (if so otherwise qualified) and you also get your money back for the test, which you have to pay for up front. If you fail then you don't get any money back.
Not sure how many are on welfare but if 5,000 are and the test are around $100 then that's about $500,000. If only 1% test positive then that still leaves a big money loser for Florida with the paybacks. Did they run the numbers on this bill first? I agree with the sentiment but it seems like a money loser on the face of it. Of course the Governor put his stock in one chain that performs these test in his wifes name recently and now says that she will sell all her stock within a couple of weeks.
Follow that logic. If the company stands to make tons of money off of these tests then she will likely make a killing on her stock sales so the damage has already been done. Selling it now does mean that they were not complicit in the passage of this bill for personal profit.
Just my take from a long ways from Florida and only reading the articles available.
> I said years ago that moving the board from the professional division to the aricultural division was a mistake, but the board wanted this move because they thought they'd have better enforcement. We need to get back into the DBRP as soon as possible ... this is just nuts.
As someone that doesn't live in the state, let me say this. My interaction with the surveyor's board when it was under DBPR was nothing short of awful. You couldn't get anything out of those people. In fact, that outfit still owes me $155 that I overpaid due to confusing instructions regarding retakes. They refused to deal with the issue.
If the board does go back to DBPR there needs to be a serious make-over regarding customer service.
Take it from someone who has dealt with both. The survey board support folks at the Dept. of Agriculture are miles ahead of anything the DBPR offered when it comes to service and just flat out being nice to talk to.
That has been my experience also, although, I have had limited dealings with them since they moved.
Wow, that makes a lot of sense...
The War on Drugs is an obvious failure, so let's extend it into the welfare system! That will fix things!
Let’s do the math with your numbers:
$100 per test.
Average welfare recipient’s monthly stipend $1200 per month = $12,000 per year.
1% of recipients spend welfare proceeds on drugs = 50
Money saved from welfare abuse: 50 X $12,000 = $600,000 per year savings
Cost analysis: testing $500,000 savings $600,000 = $100,000 government savings.
More likely scenario:
15% of recipients spend welfare proceeds on drugs = 750
Money saved from welfare abuse: 750 X $12,000 = $9,000,000 per year savings.
Cost Analysis: Testing $500,000 savings $9,000,000 = $8,500,000 government savings.
You could fund 8 professional licensing boards with that kind of money.
Some of what he wants to do makes sense. Licensing requirements are getting out of hand. You don't need a license to tell someone what color curtains they can hang in their house. You don't need a license to cut or style hair. You don't need a license to rent storage units. You don't need a license to give people rides to town. You don't need a license to move people's stuff.
Thanks Gene. Obviously I had not thought this through enough. Now I get the bigger scope on things. I failed to weight in the yearly stipends.
Even more-likely scenario:
Most welfare recipients are elderly, disabled, or single parents with kids, and are barely making it as it is. Drug tests always have some percentage of false positives, and all of these people would be forced to deal with the trouble that arises from a false positive. Maybe this means they only have to be retested, but they may be denied benefits for some time while things are sorted out, and the starving kids won't understand.
Welfare payments are extremely small, and people could spend the entire welfare payment on drugs and still not be able to support a decent habit. So very few serious drug users look at welfare as a viable way to continue their habit. Things like prostitution and crime work much better. So it targets people who need welfare more than it targets drug abusers.
And the most-abused drug is alcohol, which is not being tested for. Alcohol is also one of the easiest things to abuse without getting caught, unless we put all welfare recipients on one of those systems of random breathalyzer tests, which would be even more expensive than the drug tests. So what's the point, anyway?
And cost savings estimates fail to include the administrative costs added by forcing drug testing on welfare recipients, or the inevitable court costs that will also arise through this sort of system.
I'd say the only things we can say for sure is that welfare recipients are losers, and companies that provide drug testing are winners. Little else is clear.
I get the same whine from some of my employees when they get tested. However, I have noticed that the employees most prone to being late, missing work and lazy, have the most false positive tests. We always offer to re-test and 99% of the time we get, "never mind." It seems unlikely to me that welfare receipents would have a harder time complying with testing than your everyday employee. Senior citizens have Social Security and Medicare, I doubt many are on welfare, because they typically have no children. I would argue that booze hounds should not get welfare as well. Whats our plan to keep them of the goverment handout?
Want to regain who is nominated, or control who's names are on the ballot and have better choices on who to vote for, then have a legally counted option of, "None of the above" place on every position being voted on. If None of the above is the winner, then none of those, none of the above, can reappear on any ballet for 6 years.
jud
Quite a few registration boards either break even or come out ahead.
But, the other issue is that folks are quick to talk about welfare abuse, yet do we really have any bonafide statistics or numbers? We can speculate all we like, we can all probably cite some example, but do we really know what the big picture looks like?
Welfare has a 5 year lifetime cap, which can be extended in hardship cases. I don't know enough to know what qualifies for "hardship" - and how are things being evaluated, and are they in fact being periodically re-evaluated? Is anyone looking at the big picture of what's going on, for example couples deliberately not marrying so that they can give the appearance of being single to get bennies - for example Mormons with multiple wives and kids who all list themselves as single moms. How does the mosaic effect of government subsidized housing + wic + welfare + whatever else stack up and compare - if people are doing better not working and cheating than honest working families are, then there is a problem with equity.
I'm not saying there isn't welfare abuse, and I'm sure there is plenty of abuse of government abuse all around, just as there is medicare abuse, there are folks who abuse government overtime, heart and lung disability programs, and so on - there is plenty of abuse to go around, at the local, state and federal level. But the logical first step would be to quantify it and prioritize it. Eat the apple one bite at a time, approach it systematically and rationally with the facts and figures at hand, rather than just generically referring to some abstracted bogeyman of "hordes of welfare queens" with a lot of handwaving.
Welfare has became a way of life for many and those who work for the system, wanting full employment, will do their best to keep it that way.
jud
Yeah, I agree, our biggest problem is those nasty welfare recipients sucking our government dry. If it weren't for that, our economy would be in great shape.
Tommy and Joe Surveyor are right. When the board changed departments our interactions with them improved by several factors of 10. It was like night and day.
Does that solve anything? No. But I have to figure that going back to really bad service and worse attitudes can't help things.
Larry P
Tommy,
The hair-dressers and cosmotolgists had enough brains to stay with the DBPR, so they are less exposed to deregulation. The way this would likely play out, if the Agriculture Commission is disbanded, is that the professions/occupations worth regulating would move to the DBPR.