Scott still positive on jobs despite Fla. losses

By: Bill Kaczor and Brendan Farrington/ Associated Press

Gov. Rick Scott said Friday that the state is doing the right things to create jobs despite an employment report showing 22,100 jobs were lost in July, the first monthly job loss since he took office in January.

The governor said Florida’s economy is also based on the national economy and that isn’t getting better and will continue to have problems because of
federal tax rates, spending and overregulation.

“There’s two sides. The positive side is we’ve had 64,300 jobs this year, about 9,000 a month. That’s a positive,” Scott said in an interview with Associated Press editors and reporters. “The negative is in July we lost jobs and even worse than that, we still have 900,000 people out of work.”

More than half of the jobs lost were due to state- and local-government cutbacks, leaving the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate unchanged from June’s 10.7 percent revised rate.

The state’s job loss figure is the second-highest nationally behind Illinois, which lost 24,000 positions.

Scott said Florida is still in a better position to create jobs since he’s taken office. He said his agency head appointees are all business-oriented, he is
seeking to phase out the business tax and eliminate state regulations he says are barriers to doing business here. And he said expanding economies
in Central and South America along with the expansion of the Panama Canal will put Florida in the position of being a shipping capital.

“We’re going to be the state that’s going to be the job winner. It’s logical for us to win,” Scott said. “We’re competing with 49 other states. I think the two
states that are going to continue to do better than the others are Florida and Texas.”

Scott, however, backed off a claim previously made by his campaign and his transition team that his promise to create 700,000 jobs in seven years was
in addition to the million jobs a state economist predicted would be created over the same period no matter who was governor.

“No, that’s not true,” Scott said, adding that he didn’t know who made the claim. “I ran on a campaign of getting the state back to work and creating
700,000 jobs over seven years.”

When he was told again that his promise is 300,000 fewer jobs than what a state economist predicted would happen anyway, Scott replied: “That would
be nice if a million jobs were created. If you look at the trajectory of the state and the country when I took office, that’s not what was happening.”

When asked to point at specific projects that will create jobs over the next year or two, Scott said most of the state’s job growth will be through
luring existing companies to Florida. He wouldn’t discuss specifics, saying conversations with companies are confidential.

“We’ve got lots of conversations going, but until they come to fruition, you don’t know they’re going to happen,” he said.

Scott was asked about the people affected by the Legislative Budget Commission’s decision to turn down federal money to help move disabled
people and the elderly out of nursing homes. The grant was offered under the federal health care overhaul, which Scott has vehemently opposed. He had recommended taking the money, though the Republican-controlled commission rejected it.

“It’s frustrating,” he said, though he added that government has an unbelievable number of problems and they can’t all be solved with limited
money.

“The problem is we don’t really get rid of programs. People come to me … and they say, ‘I think you ought to put more money into this issue.’ And
I say, ‘That’s great, what should I get rid of?’ Not one person has told me one thing to get rid of yet. Not one thing … Everybody wants to do more of
everything.”

Scott also said charter schools, which he supports, need to have the same accountability as traditional public schools.

“If a charter school cannot do well, then we shouldn’t have students going there, no different than a traditional public school that’s not doing well,” he
said. “The real benefit of charter schools is that they bring new innovation to the table. They provide choices for parents.”

Scott also said he has no regrets spending close to $80 million of his own money on his campaign.

“It’s been absolutely worth it. If you like people and you want to try to have a positive impact on their lives, there’s no better job than being governor or
mayor,” he said.

The former private hospital chain CEO also commented on the main difference between his old job and his new one.

“The thing that’s different between this and being in business is you spend more time with the media,” Scott said. “Other than that, you have similar
issues. You have to be goal oriented, you have to be measurement oriented, you have to surround yourself with really good people.”