Florida’s budget

One thing remains consistent: Florida leaders know how to bring the drama. Even when it comes to something as seemingly mundane as writing the state’s budget for the coming year, they manage to be extra extra — the $117 billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year is a heap of head-fakes and last-minute script flips.

That’s before Gov. Ron DeSantis gets his licks in — with the full knowledge that this year, House and Senate leaders might not passively absorb the stabs of his veto pen.

But we can’t just regard this budget as entertainment for the politically plugged in. These decisions will make a big difference in the ways Floridians live and work. For many, it will spell the difference between misery and comfort. For some, the difference between life and death.

Here’s our list of takeaways — which are by no means comprehensive:

Florida’s families won surprising victories with a continued commitment to affordable housing, $550 million in rebates to defray skyrocketing property insurance costs, and $717 million to expand access to health care and educate more doctors, nurses and other medical workers. But too much of that housing money still runs through (and sticks to) the hands of private developers instead of going directly to those in need. Leaders also threw away billions of dollars in federal aid that could give low-income working families access to Medicaid.

Consumers will get about $288 million worth of sales-tax “holidays,” including breaks on disaster-prep supplies and breaks on back-to-school expenses. This will, undeniably, help low-income families who often scrounge for the dollars to pay for notebooks, pencils and shoes. But it will also boost the benefit to parents who can throw down their platinum cards for designer duds.

Big business interests lost tax-cut giveaways that many expected to be slam dunks, including a doubling of the exemption on so-called “personal property,” a $113 million boost in the kickback to businesses that collect state sales tax and a $309 million cut in business rental taxes. But it’s way too soon to rule out backdoor benefits that have yet to be revealed, and lawmakers didn’t plug a hole in the way Florida calculates business taxes that allows corporations to dodge billions of dollars worth of obligations.

On school vouchers, lawmakers finally accepted reality and acknowledged the $4 billion of public education dollars leaking into unaccountable, shadowy “schools without rules.” (Last year’s budget undercut that cost by at least $3.2 billion. Maybe lawmakers need to allocate funding for their own remedial math classes.) That giant hole could have been sutured a tiny bit by a demand to restrict the use of voucher dollars to pay for themepark visits, kayaks and big-screen TVs.

But even before the impact of that shift could be calculated, a last-minute move watered that down to a spending study by the state Department of Education. Don’t hold your breath for big changes.

Floridians with disabilities will see about $50 million to take people off the waiting list for in-home services, some of whom have been waiting for decades. It sounds like a lot, but in reality it will barely cover the increase in demand. Meanwhile, low-income working families who lack access to affordable child care got a little more help, but again, not nearly enough.

And DeSantis’ budget priorities got a much-needed haircut — but not the smack upside the head they really deserved. Lawmakers pared back his budget requests, giving him less than half of what he asked for toward his private state militia and ridiculous stunt to “defend the border” against undocumented immigration. But that’s still about 100% too much.

As previously noted, this drama has at least one more act to play out — DeSantis could slash billions of dollars with his line-item veto. However, he has to be aware that House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo could easily assemble enough votes to call the Legislature back into session and override him.

In a year this chaotic, don’t be surprised if there’s more drama to come. We just wish lawmakers had been more focused on the needs of average Floridians, and less obsessed with political games.