State politics

A roundup of the previous week in state governemnt, compiled by the News Service of Florida

Florida chainsaw massacre

Gov. Rick Scott’s willingness to use his veto pen has waxed and waned over his years as governor. In 2011, his first year in office, he boasted of striking $615 million from the spending plan, but that was inflated by getting rid of $305 million of largely imaginary spending that would be supported by selling state lands — a scheme that even backers didn’t believe would produced anywhere close to the promised funds.

Last year, facing re-election and needing lawmakers’ support for his priorities, Scott had a particularly light touch, trimming just $68.9 million from a roughly $77 billion budget.

This year was more like 2011, and then some. The governor slashed away with gusto, removing 450 lines totaling almost $461.4 million from the spending plan for the budget that begins next month. Everything from pay increases for state firefighters to the orange and grapefruit juice tourists can pick up at visitors centers were cut. The once $78.7 billion budget shrunk to $78.2 billion.

“I went through the budget looking at every project saying, ‘What’s a statewide priority? Can I get a good return on investment? Has it gone through a state process?’ ” Scott told reporters.

Regardless of that official explanation, others saw an unstated game of hardball playing out. Almost every one of Scott’s legislative priorities were reduced in size during both the regular session that ended in May and the special session that ran through most of June, and the governor was sidelined on some of the other major debates.

A plan to increase hospital spending to offset a loss in federal funds — a fix Scott opposed — was put in the budget and written in a way that made it virtually impossible for the governor to veto. And a Medicaid expansion alternative that Scott fiercely opposed passed the Senate despite the governor’s threat to use his veto against supporters. The plan eventually died in the House.

“He promised that he would punish the constituents of those legislators who disagreed with him, and he kept his promise,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.

From ‘Scotuscare’ to ‘unique fulfillment’

Like many other states, Florida was keeping an eye on the U.S. Supreme Court this week as justices rolled out some of the most important decisions of their soon-to-end 2014-15 term. Two in particular could have shaken things up — a ruling on insurance premium subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, and a decision on whether same-sex marriage was a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

In both cases, the decision went the way of no change. But that meant more in one case than in the other.

In a 6-3 ruling issued Thursday, the court upheld the tax credits at the heart of the Affordable Care Act’s federal exchange, preserving health insurance for more than 1 million Floridians but providing no larger solutions to the national or statewide divisions on the law.

In a case that hinged on what Congress meant by making tax credits for insurance available to people using “an exchange established by the state,” a majority of justices found that credits could be given to people who purchase coverage through an exchange set up by the federal government because the state doesn’t operate one.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said other parts of the law made it clear that federal exchanges were supposed to function largely like marketplaces run by states.

“But state and federal exchanges would differ in a fundamental way if tax credits were available only on state exchanges — one type of exchange would help make insurance more affordable by providing billions of dollars to the states’ citizens; the other type of exchange would not,” Roberts wrote.

He was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

In a sharply-worded dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia accused the court of twisting provisions of the law to preserve the Affordable Care Act. Scalia also dissented in a 2012 case that upheld the constitutionality of the act.

“Today’s opinion changes the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act. That, alas, is not a novelty...We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Another sharp clash came in the court’s consideration of same-sex marriage. In that case, decided 5-4, the court found that gay couples could not be denied the right to marry. The ruling removed lingering doubts surrounding a Florida case in which a federal judge struck down the state’s voter-approved ban on gay unions.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

In both cases, those on the losing side vowed to fight on. Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger, the force behind the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, said the battle is far from over.