State: Argenziano ousted from key House finance panel

TALLAHASSEE -- Just in time for a special budget cutting session, House Speaker Tom Feeney has removed feisty Rep. Nancy Argenziano from the committee that makes key budget decisions.

Feeney wrote a letter last week to Argenziano, a Dunnellon Republican, advising her that he was removing her by invoking a House rule that allows members to serve on committees "at the pleasure of the speaker."

Argenziano didn't find out about it until she arrived in Tallahassee Monday for a special session that begins today. The news came in a message left on her office answering machine shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.

She said House Fiscal Responsibility Council Chairman Carlos Lacasa doesn't want her on the committee because she has been very vocal in criticizing some of the budget cuts. She has opposed proposed cuts in programs that provide care for Alzheimer's patients and prescription drugs for the elderly while leaving money in the budget to pay for citrus trees destroyed because of canker and two new law schools.

Argenziano said Lacasa wants to keep $27-million allocated to repay the owners of South Florida citrus trees and a $10-million allocation for new minority law schools because he is running for a Senate seat and needs to keep potential constituents happy. Lacasa did not return a telephone call to respond to her charge.

Argenziano said she gets in trouble with Feeney and other House leaders because she is so vocal and votes her conscience.

"I may not do everything the most diplomatic way," Argenziano explained. "But I do it for the right reasons, and it comes from a sense of frustration with what I see up here. If Feeney could, he'd remove me from the Legislature."

A spokeswoman for Feeney said her removal came about because legislators are involved in "an extraordinarily difficult special session that will take a lot of teamwork."

"We want to make sure we have people who aren't using the process for their own personal reasons," said Feeney press secretary Kim Stone. "All of the members are free to vote their conscience, but if there is going to be any grenade or bomb throwing, it should be on the House floor."

Argenziano said she believes some of the trouble occurred as a result of a conversation she had with the editorial board at the Citrus County Chronicle. The paper's editorial board took her to task for voting against a bill that would have repealed a 2.5 percent pay raise for lawmakers. The measure, offered last month, was largely symbolic and would have only trimmed $80,000 from the state's $50-billion budget at a time when the state needs to trim $1.3-billion.

After being criticized, Argenziano went to talk to the editorial board, which includes Richard Corcoran, a Republican who ran against her last year. During the conversation Argenziano said she explained that cutting legislative salaries would be meaningless as long as the House continues to pay high salaries to former Rep. Paul Hawkes and two attractive female assistants she described as "little bimbettes."

Argenziano said Monday that her description of the women -- Stone, the speaker's press secretary, and analyst Bridgette A. Gregory -- was wrong, and she has since apologized. But she makes no apology for criticizing the $146,592 a year that Feeney pays Hawkes to be his policy director.

Stone defended the salaries paid by the House, noting that they total $597,000 a year, substantially less than the $631,000 paid in 1992-1994 under former Speaker Peter Wallace and other administrations run by Democrats.

"When we are taking money out of the mouths of people who really need it for medications, this is wrong," Argenziano said. "I thought Republicans were defenders of the right to free speech, but if you don't walk in lockstep, this is what happens to you."

Argenziano said Feeney and others try to make her look like she isn't being a good Republican.

"But if you look at my votes, I'm not against the party," Argenziano said. "I am a Republican. I vote Republican most of the time. It's not the philosophy I oppose, it's what I see some people use the party for that bothers me. When I look back on it, representative government has died."

Earlier this year Feeney removed Argenziano as chair of the House Council for Healthy Communities after she got in a high profile dispute over a nursing home bill Feeney supported. In the midst of the battle Argenziano sent a 25-pound box of cow manure to an opposing lobbyist.

"They want to get rid of me," she said. "They feel I'm trouble because I do what I think the people sent me here to do."

Argenziano plans to run for re-election in 2002, but she's also eyeing a Senate seat as a possibility.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk