GOP Governors Keep The Fun Coming

by Stuart Shapiro

Last week it was Ohio Governor John Kasich.  Before that, Governor Paul LePage of Maine.  Now Governor Rick Scott of Florida is giving voters reason to think they may have been overly hasty when voting for him in November.

Gov. Rick Scott may have broken state law with his sale of the state’s two airplanes, according to Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander.

Scott used the sale of one state plane to pay off the lease on the second.

But in a letter to Scott sent today, Alexander says the governor needed the legislature’s approval to do that.

Using the money from the sale of the first plane to pay off the second plane “appears to be an expenditure of state funds not made in pursuance of an appropriation made by law,” Alexander wrote.

Of course Florida voters don’t have much of an excuse.  It came out during the campaign that Scott has experience testing the boundaries of the law.  In a sense, Scott could always fall back on the “you’re just getting what you voted for” defense for his latest actions.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.