Negotiations on

Budget negotiations move a little closer to finalized deal

the $83 billion state budget plan make some progress Friday.

TALLAHASSEE — Lawmakers inched towards a final budget agreement Friday, getting closer to filling out the final details of an $83 billion state budget.

Included in the broad deal is a $70 million fund for universities to hire elite faculty and research scientists and professors. The money is to be issued by the State University System Board of Governors, and University of Central Florida vice president Dan Holsenbeck said his school is well-positioned to compete with others for the funds.

“Given our ability through previous performance funding competition in the emerging preeminence — I think that’s a signal right there that our data will be right in the same ball park as the other institutions,” he said.

In other areas of the budget, K-12 schools would get $20.4 billion in the latest House offer, about a 1.2 percent increase that would come out to $7,221 per student.

Lawmakers have also decided not to give additional funds to Florida Forever, a land conservation program that consistently got $300 million annually before the Great Recession hit in 2008.

Another part of the budget deal between the House and Senate includes $1.6 billion to buy land and build a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee to store polluted water, a priority of Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart.

Among the House priorities included in the budget deal are large cuts to tourism marketing and business incentives, a top priority of House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes.

Visit Florida, the state’s tourism promotion group, is funded at $25 million and Enterprise Florida has operating funds but gets none of the $85 million in business incentives Gov. Rick Scott

Lawmakers plan to work on the budget through the weekend. They must complete it by Tuesday to allow for a 72-hour “coolingoff ” period and adjourn on time on Friday.

had requested.

Ken Lawson, CEO of Visit Florida, told a legislative budget panel Friday that cuts to his agency will be a drag on the state’s economy and cost jobs.

Scott has asked lawmakers for $100 million for Visit Florida.

Lawson said the cuts mean he won’t be able to conduct marketing campaigns in international markets.

“It would limit our resources, it would limit our ability to market, say, Kissimmee, Eatonville, even Orlando,” Lawson said.

Scott has expressed his anger at lawmakers for cutting funding for Visit Florida — which is getting $76 million this year — and Enterprise Florida, two agencies he has championed throughout his term in office that are central to his economic platform.

Scott returned to Florida on Thursday from a four-day trade mission to Argentina and met with several lawmakers to press home the importance of Visit Florida and Enterprise Florida, but he spent much of Friday in Atlanta, where he gave a speech to a gathering of the National Rifle Association.

Corcoran and Negron have defended their deal-making, largely conducted in private meetings, but Democrats have harshly criticized the secretive nature of the negotiations.

“All the lofty speeches we heard about the new era of openness and transparency that would be brought to the budget process this year were apparently nothing more than meaningless words,’’ said Rep. Loranne Ausley, D-Tallahassee. “Instead, the priorities of two people are taking precedence over the priorities of the people of Florida,”

Lawmakers plan to work on the budget through the weekend.

They must complete it by Tuesday to allow for a 72-hour “cooling-off” period and adjourn on time on Friday.