Gov. Rick Scott using radio ads for his ‘Come to Florida’ campaign
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Sept. 23, 2015) — State officials have responded to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s “Come to Florida” campaign to steal jobs from the Bluegrass State. Scott has visited Kentucky several times and placed radio ads to try to lure business to a state that he says has lower taxes, less regulations and no union requirements. He has also targeted other states.
“If he wants to waste his time coming to Kentucky to try and convince our businesses to come to Florida, then come ahead because he will have no success,” Gov. Steve Beshear said. “Gov. Scott ought to be closing the roads leading out of Florida to stop all the folks who want to leave because they are sick and tired of paying the outrageous property taxes in that state.”
Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes responded on Tuesday at her “Kentucky Means Business” forum in Floyd County.
“Despite what Gov. Scott claims, Kentucky jobs are not flowing into Florida and I would put our pro-business climate up against the sunshine state’s any day,” said Grimes. “We have worked too hard to encourage job growth and lower our unemployment rate to let him jeopardize our middle class.”
The Floyd County forum was the ninth in a series of ten stops on Grimes’ “Kentucky Means Business” listening tour. Participants discussed a variety of issues, such as the availability of broadband, the Mountain Parkway expansion project, the coal industry and tourism opportunities.
In 1995, Scott, then the CEO of the Columbia HCA hospital chain, moved the hospitals’ headquarters—and about 1,000 jobs—from Louisville to Nashville in 1995. At the time, Scott said Kentucky taxes were too high.
“In 1995, Rick Scott left town in the middle of the night, breaking dozens of commitments he’d made here,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said. “Within two years, his Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty in one the largest Medicare fraud cases in U.S. history. The company paid an historic $1.7 billion fine, and Scott was forced to resign. And now, this guy is coming to Kentucky and saying, ‘Trust me?’ I don’t think so.”
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