There are ways to cut Florida’s budget

Florida legislators are already planning how to deal with a looming budget shortfall when they convene for their annual session in March. They deserve credit for thinking ahead. It’s too bad their cousins in Washington, D.C., don’t operate the same way.

This past week, House budget chief Carlos Trujillo, a Miami Republican, launched an exercise with a goal of identifying up to $2.2 billion in spending cuts. But before legislators consider taking an ax to investments in education, health care, public safety and other core services that impact the quality of life for Floridians, they would be wise to consider other, less detrimental ways to achieve savings in the state’s $82 billion budget.

Senate President Joe Negron has offered a good place to start. Negron, a Stuart Republican, recently vowed to renew his effort to eliminate a tax giveaway for the insurance industry that costs the state treasury about $300 million a year. The break allows insurers to claim a 15 percent credit on the salaries they pay their fulltime employees in Florida.

Four years ago, when Negron was the Senate’s budget chief, he persuaded his colleagues in the upper chamber to put an end to the insurance industry’s sweet deal. But then the industry flexed its considerable lobbying muscle and — presto! — House leaders restored the tax break.

Now, as the Senate’s presiding officer, Negron shouldn’t have any trouble getting a majority of his colleagues to vote to repeal the break again. And if his House counterpart, Speaker Richard Corcoran, really means what he says about eliminating “corporate welfare” from the budget, his chamber will go along with the Senate this time.

Corcoran, a Land O’ Lakes Republican, has denounced what he sees as instances of state government “picking winners and losers.” It’s hard to come up with a better example than singling out an industry for a tax credit for its employment costs. If the tax break is so vital to insurance jobs in Florida — the argument the industry used to rescue the break four years ago — how do other employers in the state manage to make payroll without it?

Meanwhile, legislative leaders could score billions of dollars in additional savings by following suggestions from the Government Efficiency Task Force, a panel that the Florida Constitution requires to convene every four years. In a report issued in June, the panel offered 18 recommendations worth up to $12 billion in annual savings.

Some of the recommendations, such as imposing higher, market-rate health insurance premiums for state employees, would be controversial and long shots for passage — even though the state could save up to $448 million that way. But others, such as a package of criminal justice reforms, are likely to find support from members of both parties.

Releasing more non-violent elderly inmates from state custody, for example, could save almost $80 million a year without compromising public safety. Expanding the use of electronic monitors in lieu of imprisonment for non-violent inmates could save more than $20 million. Three more recommendations in this category together could save another $20 million.

State economists have projected a small budget surplus for the year that begins in July, but widening shortfalls of more than $1 billion in the following two years. The budget could be squeezed further if legislators go along with Negron’s visionary proposals to invest more in higher education and environmental protection.

There’s enough room in the budget to spend more on new priorities and not sacrifice core services — but only if legislators end costly giveaways to special interests and take advantage of good opportunities to make government more efficient.