Tallahassee gives state a real budget mess
As of last week, the Florida Legislature looked worse than Gov. Rick Scott on the new state budget. As of Tuesday, it’s more like a tie.
On Friday, the Legislature approved a $78.7 billion budget. As required by a 1992 constitutional amendment, the budget was available for 72 hours before legislators voted on it. So everyone could see all the last-minute deals that, according to news reports, swelled the budget by $300 million with legislators’ pet projects — many of them bad.
Case in point: IMG Academy in Bradenton, a private boarding school where parents spend as much as $80,000 per year on tuition, room and board for what they hope will be children who go to college on athletic scholarships and/or make big money as professional athletes. IMG, the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reported, was set to get just $50,000 for next year. During budget negotiations IMG got almost $2 million, which would have brought the school’s three-year haul of public money to $9.3 million.
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, praised IMG for offering “more choice in education,” though that choice extends only to an elite slice of Florida, and the company is seeking more foreign students. Then, Crisafulli said, there’s economic development. IMG wants to attract a division of Gatorade, for possible research on energy drinks. IMG hosts tournaments that draw tourists.
We suggest that there was a more practical reason for the Legislature’s generosity. IMG’s lobbyists include Michael Corcoran. His brother is House Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Corcoran, RLutz. Corcoran will be House speaker in 2017-18, and everyone in Tallahassee knows that he’s already the real power in that chamber. Corcoran was most responsible for the House blocking Medicaid expansion.
Ultimately, though, the budget has to get through the governor. When Gov. Rick Scott signed it Tuesday, $461 million in projects didn’t get through. The money for IMG came out. Good call. Other Scott vetoes, however, seemed more like political payback and self-promotion than sound policy.
During the session, Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, was the leading advocate for Medicaid expansion, which Scott opposed. Out of the budget came $15 million for a downtown campus of the University of Central Florida, a Gardiner priority. In his veto message, Scott said the project didn’t go through proper approval by the Board of Governors and thus would be wasteful. In 2012, though, Scott approved creation of an entire unneeded new university — Florida Polytechnic.
This year, Scott also vetoed spending for Florida’s special-needs children and young adults and their parents. That was another priority of Gardiner, who has a specialneeds child. In his veto message, Scott claimed to have cut the money because his own budget — the one he is touting on a statewide tour — provides enough for Florida’s “most vulnerable individuals.” As Gardiner pointed out, however, Scott also vetoed $10 million for health clinics that serve the poor after the state failed to expand Medicaid.
The governor inserted political commercials throughout his transmittal letter. Many vetoes of education spending came with this explanation: “School districts have the ability through record-high state K-12 money to implement these programs if desired.” Not my fault. In vetoing about $121,000 for Broward Health, Scott declared the system would be getting plenty of other public money “to expand services to low-income populations through this kind of initiative.” Scott’s hospital commission — which includes no hospital administrators — is looking for ways to recommend to the Legislature that non-profit hospitals get less public money.
Time after time, Scott vetoed an item because “it is not a statewide priority for improving cost, quality and access in health care.” He has decided? A criminal justice item also was “not a priority for taxpayer investment in public safety.” Again, he has declared himself to be the decider. Scott vetoed higher education items because a university raised tuition more than he considered acceptable. He vetoed a raise for state firefighters. Huh?
State Sen. Jack Latvala declared that Scott had “declared war on the Legislature.” In fact, the clash is between Scott and the Senate. Gardiner said in a statement that Florida’s disabled and their parents “have seen their dreams shattered.”
The Legislature looked bad last week by stuffing pet projects into the budget at the last minute and calling the process “transparent.” Scott looked bad Tuesday by signing the budget behind closed doors, declaring victory and ducking questions. The budget that is short on too many priorities symbolizes Tallahassee’s dysfunction.