Updated: Crist says special session to be held this month on oil-drill ban

Gov. Charlie Crist said a special session will be called later this month to propose a constitutional amendment banning oil drilling in Florida waters.

“I think it’s important we go ahead and have a special session,” Crist said before Tuesday morning’s Cabinet meeting. “I think the Legislature is of a mind to do so as well.”

Crist said he spoke on Monday to Senate President Jeff Atwater. The governor can call a special session. So can both presiding officers of the House and Senate, acting together. Crist didn’t say how the details would end up. He said the session would be “in a couple weeks.”

The session, Cris[sic] said, would also address alternative energy standards for the state, legislation Crist has sought unsuccessfully for four years. “I want to talk about wind, nuclear, solar, gas — natural gas, other alternative means to provide energy to our people in the wake of what’s happened in the Gulf,” Crist said.

Morning update
TURKEY POINT — As a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico lingers off Florida, local officials are bristling at a top-down, “unified command” that has the U.S. Coast Guard, two state agencies and British Petroleum signing off on their spill response plans.

Officials from a handful of mostly rural coastal counties vented their frustration Monday at a meeting sponsored by Our Region Tomorrow, a collaboration of eight counties in North Florida and two from southern Georgia.

“We have a lot of unknowns that continue to haunt us,” said Scott Nelson, Wakulla County’s director of emergency management. “This event leaves us with no local expertise.”

The standing-room-only crowd included state Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, who is running for Congress; Tallahassee Mayor John Marks; and top aides to Attorney General Bill McCollum, the Republican frontrunner in the race for governor; and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, his Democratic rival.

Also packing the tiny conference room at Florida State University’s Coastal & Marine Laboratory were environmentalists, small-business owners and waterfront-property owners.
Franklin County Commissioner Pinki Jackel said her board reviewed a unified-command response plan for her county, found it lacking and formed a contingency action committee that identified more fragile areas that need protection with booms.

The county submitted its plan last week to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection but has yet to hear back.

“As locals, we’re not going to take a back seat,” Jackel said. “We know best how to take care of Franklin County.”

DEP director of legislative affairs Cameron Cooper said Secretary Mike Sole has given everyone marching orders to respond to requests within 24 hours.

“You said 24 hours, in front of all of these witnesses in this room,” she said. “We’re going to hold you to it.”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

Gov. Charlie Crist, asked at the Capitol about local officials’ frustrations, said he was cutting out the bureaucracy himself.

“I think you do what we did this weekend and just go meet them directly. There was no bureaucracy between us. It was direct. That will only continue,” Crist said.

Taylor County administrator Jack Brown wondered who will be giving the orders if the spill hits his county. Taylor is in two U.S. Coast Guard districts. A BP response coordinator is being assigned to most affected counties, but Brown said he just learned that he will have to share his with another county.

“We’re concerned,” he said. “We’re split between the Mobile command and the St. Petersburg command.”

Caskey said the response plans will fall in place as the unified command creates more staging areas.

“Right now, you guys are five days behind Escambia. When we hit the ground with a staged area, it’s a massive effort. You’re going to see boots on the ground,” Caskey said. “This is going to be an all-hands-on-deck evolution.”

Jack Rudloe, founder of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, warned that the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil could disrupt the food chain.

“I have a request on the dispersants: Don’t use them here,” he said. “We need to think small. We need to think in terms of plankton and microbial organisms.”
Meeting organizers stressed the need for local cooperation, but some local emergency management directors are worried that they are competing with their colleagues and other states.

There aren’t enough booms to go around, and locals aren’t sure how the $25 million that BP gave Florida last week for response preparations will be divvied up.

Pam Brownell, Franklin County emergency management director, said small counties aren’t just angry about giving up control. Her three-person team had to work out a deal with a consulting firm, Calvin, Giordano & Associates, to draw up a response plan because she didn’t have experts.

The firm estimated that for consulting work, mostly mapping to determine where to put the oil capturing booms, will cost $250,000 for the first 30 days. The county doesn’t have the money, Brownell said, so the firm agreed to begin doing the work on a contingency basis.
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“I graduated the emergency management academy, and that’s mostly about hurricanes,” she said. “I call this the black storm.”