Rick Scott, the velvet rope and my guy
01/10/2011
Good lord, there is going to be a lot of strain between the Tallahassee press corps and the newly minted administration of Gov. Rick Scott.
Blame it on the velvet rope.
The fine folks of the media arrived last Friday for Rick Scott's first press conference as governor and were startled to see a velvet rope.
Brian Burgess, the communications director for Scott, informed the press corps that that the time-honored scrum of reporters surrounding the governor for a few final questions at the end of a press conference would be no more.
The kids must stay in their seats until Gov. Scott leaves the room. And there will be no crossing of the velvet rope.
In the great scheme of things it is no big deal. The scrum was often painfully silly and it was not suddenly governors were answering questions they refused to answer at the podium.
Still, while it added a bit of decorum to press conferences, the move needlessly annoyed the press corps which is already deeply suspect of the Scott administration.
As Crowley Political Report has noted before, for the next few years the press corps will dominate how the Scott message is delivered to Floridians. The campaign ads are over (we think) and the press corps still controls most of the informaton flowing out of Tallahassee.
And of course, we have already had questions raised about whether Scott fully understands Florida's Sunshine laws concerning open meetings.
Scott should throw the door wide open. It will enhance his credibility with the public and help him avoid the distractions of being constantly asked about his policy toward public meetings.
As a side note - tossing the state airplanes is a great idea although a bit of a slap at former Gov. Jeb Bush who got the state to buy the jet. Still, Scott's handling of it had a touch of a "let them eat cake" attitude.
While the rest of the rest of Tallahassee's leaders will have to join regular Floridians at the airport, Scott will continue to fly aboard his private plane.
Wonder if there is a velvet rope around the plane?
And finally there was this curious reaction from Burgess about a story reporting Scott's views on casinos - "You're making news and you're using my guy to do it. Leave my guy out of it when it's not on the agenda."
Well "my guy" is actually "our guy" and good luck with that agenda stuff.
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