Plan cuts taxes, health funds

Gov. Scott touts $500M boost for education in budget proposal

TALLAHASSEE — Businesses would get $1 billion in tax cuts; hospitals and county health departments would see their funding slashed; and schools would get a more than $500 million boost under a budget proposal released Monday by Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott’s total budget is $79.3 billion, an increase of about $855 million on the current year. The proposal is a recommendation to lawmakers, who will convene a two-month session in January to craft the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

In addition to the $1 billion in tax cuts, Scott is also pushing for $250 million in incentives for Enterprise Florida to entice businesses to relocate or add jobs in the state. The group received $43 million for the current year, but Scott believes the tax cuts and a fivefold increase in business incentives are crucial to keep up Florida’s economic momentum and make the state less reliant on tourism and construction.

“If we put money back in [businesses’] pockets, they’ll help us di-

versify the economy and they’ll help us create more jobs,” Scott said during a news conference in Jacksonville.

Per-student funding at K-12 schools would jump to $7,221, an increase of $95 over the previous high in 2007-08. More than 84 percent of the $507.3 million increase in school spending comes from revenue derived from a jump in property values.

That reliance on property taxes to fund increases to education spending has concerned some lawmakers in recent years who regard it as a tax increase, even though the spending comes from increases in property values, while the overall tax rate for schools stays the same.

“I think it’s disingenuous for Tallahassee politicians to take credit for tax cuts and not take the blame for [a tax increase],” said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.

Gaetz, who chairs the Senate education budget committee, said he wants to work with Scott to “find an alternative to raising property taxes on homeowners and small businesses.”

Democrats decried Scott’s plan to cut $400 million from a federal Medicaid program that pays hospitals for care for the poor, as well as an $82.6 million cut in Medicaid rates for hospitals, which the governor noted made a record $4.3 billion in profits last year.

“It’s irrational what he’s doing. He’s playing with fire, and the people of Florida are getting burned,” said House Democratic Minority Leader Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach.

Pafford also slammed Scott for finding room for tax cuts, but not enough to eliminate the waiting list of 20,000 disabled residents in Florida who are seeking state services. Scott’s budget includes $15 million to remove 700 “high-risk” patients from the wait list, but not enough to drastically reduce the list.

“What he wants to do is go back to the public and pat himself on the back for eliminating the high-risk wait list,” Pafford said. “Floridians need to begin looking in the mirror and begin putting this together.”

Local projects in the plan include a 5-mile extension of the Wekiva Parkway into Seminole County worth $246 million, $6.3 million for passenger-terminal improvements at Orlando International Airport and $20 million to coordinate water projects in Central Florida with three different state agencies.

Scott also wants to trim the 113,686 positions in the state work force by 863 jobs, mostly by cutting county health-department openings, the majority of which, Scott officials say, are vacant. There are no raises for state workers included in his plan, but a maximum $1,500 bonus is available to most state employees.