When State Rep. Chris Sprowls and State Sen. Jack Latvala filed bills in their respective chambers last December that would make it legal for craft brewers to sell 64-ounce growlers, as is legal in every single other non-Utah state, we were admittedly skeptical.
After all, it's tough for even the most sensible, consumer-friendly and small business-benefitting bill to even get a committee hearing. Even after a bill clears committee, in both chambers, and sees passage, again, in both chambers, it has to get the governor's signature. Latvala and Sprowls assured us last December that wouldn't be a problem once the bill was passed.
Since Governor Rick Scott has changed positions on things like, oh, I dunno, Medicaid expansion, we were skeptical.
But they were right. The bill passed a couple weeks ago, and Thursday it got the governor's signature, which, again, surprised us.
Even though 32-ounce and gallon-size growlers are legal in the state, for some stupefying reason, 64-ounce ones haven't been for nearly a century. In recent years, small craft brewers have fought major beer distributors to change that, to no avail, until this year.
According to the News Service of Florida, Scott said the state was "eliminating another burdensome regulation" by signing the bill.
Good stuff, good stuff.
But just as growlers will officially become legal, July 1, the state government that kept them illegal in the first place could shut down.
That's because Scott, who is entrenched in a budget impasse with the State Senate over Medicaid expansion — which the State House also opposes — asked multiple departments what they we need in order to function at a barebones, er, emergency, level come the first of July (think CDC in a zombie apocalypse-type stuff).
"While we have asked the federal government for guidance on what health-care access proposals they would approve at no cost to Florida taxpayers, it is possible that Florida Senate President Andy Gardiner and the Florida Senate will not agree to any budget without the specific expansion of Medicaid (at a cost to state taxpayers of $5 billion over 10 years)," Scott wrote in a letter to agency heads, according to the News Service of Florida. "Therefore, we are also requesting your agency prepare a list of critical state services our citizens cannot lose in the event Florida is forced into a government shutdown on July 1st."
The state House and Senate are poised for a special session for three weeks in June in order to hammer out a budget, which they were supposed to do before May first, but the House adjourned three days early in order to avoid talking about Medicaid expansion, despite being well aware of $2.2 billion missing from the state budget due to disappearing Low-Income Pool dollars, which help hospitals treat the poor. That money could have been easily replaced by billions in federal Affordable Care Act dollars to expand Medicaid, but since it's being offered through the Affordable Care Act, Obama-phobes will have nothing to do with it.
Leaders in the House and Senate have indicated they're ready to start negotiating (we're not sure how that would work), but Scott seems to be preparing for the worst.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2015.