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Family Threatens To Sue If State Taps Chiles Fund

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The Associated Press

Published: December 7, 2008

MIAMI - The family of former Gov. Lawton Chiles said they will sue state leaders if they decide to raid the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund for children and seniors in an attempt to balance the budget.

"It is unconscionable that the state is willing to put children's lives and health on the line by destroying one of the only reliable funding sources available," Bud Chiles, the son of the late Democratic governor, said in a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist, Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Ray Sansom on Friday.

The budget permits the state to borrow up to $1 billion from the endowment, which invests money from Florida's tobacco settlement for future use on health programs for children and seniors. The budget has a roughly $2 billion deficit.

Last month state finance chief Alex Sink said Florida's revenue outlook is so bleak that lawmakers should meet in special session next month or in early January to prevent an unconstitutional budget deficit.

Crist, Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum serve as the State Board of Administration, which oversees those investments.

In the letter, Bud Chiles said the endowment was his father's legacy to help "our most vulnerable citizens" and that depleting it "is an affront to all Floridians."

Last spring, Crist asked Lawton Chiles' 78-year-old widow, Rhea, for support in allowing the state to borrow up to $1 billion from the endowment to cover future budget gaps if the state paid the money back. The fund was worth $2.1 billion then, and has since about half of that.

A phone call to Crist's spokesman was not immediately returned to The Associated Press on Saturday.

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