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An Easy-Way-Out Budget

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 13, 2009

The Florida Legislature returned to Tallahassee last week to make the budgetary reductions necessary to meet our state's constitutional requirement for a balanced budget.

It was immediately clear that most of the key decisions already had been made before the special session. The emergency budget is expected to be adopted Wednesday.

It's nothing for lawmakers or Floridians to be proud of. True, legislators faced tough choices. But in most cases, they took the easy way out.

They came up with nearly $2.6 billion to close the deficit in the $66.3 billion budget primarily by drawing from reserve and trust funds.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who showed little leadership during the session, said these are "rainy day" funds set aside for dire financial times, but that isn't quite right. These are dedicated monies put in place to fund health care, road and school construction, affordable housing programs and other projects, or to be used in true emergencies such as a Hurricane Katrina hitting Miami Beach dead on.

This recession points to Florida's need to find new revenue sources, which legislative leaders steadfastly refused to do during the special session.

It's true that some revenue ideas, particularly tax reform, do require more time than the special session allowed. But it was an outrage that leadership refused to put a cigarette tax on the table, when the state's cigarette tax is one of the lowest in the nation. This should have been a no-brainer.
Senate President Jeff Atwater at least acknowledged the tobacco tax as well as the myriad tax exemptions extended to businesses will be discussed during the regular session that begins in March. But it's hard to hold out much hope that this leadership crew will do anything to upset the tobacco lobby or other special interests.

And so our state government finds itself in distress, with key programs jeopardized for the sake of political expediency.

For example, lawmakers looked to the Lawton Chiles Endowment anti-tobacco fund for $700 million as part of the solution. While every program in these tough times should come under scrutiny, the Legislature plans to take half the endowment, interest from which pays for child welfare, and child and elderly health care programs as well as anti-smoking efforts.

Because that raid would not occur until June 15, lawmakers said they hope the state will receive stimulus money from the federal government to preserve the endowment.

But the language in the legislation doesn't require the funds to be restored. Don't be surprised if the money is gone forever.

Similarly, legislators decided to postpone for at least a year the Florida Forever land purchase program that has preserved nearly 2 million acres for the benefit of Floridians. The decision to halt all funding may tempt lawmakers to eventually abandon it.

The debt service on the $300 million in bonds issued annually through the program is about $20 million. Lawmakers could have reduced the funding but still found a way to continue Florida Forever, which some environmentalists said could be done for as little as $5 million.

In contrast, lawmakers could have saved $450 million by scrapping or at least postponing the purchase of 61 miles of railroad tracks from CSX Corp. for commuter rail near Orlando. Lawmakers had plenty of other options, including eliminating the $50 million in members' pet projects or "turkeys" that Florida TaxWatch estimates remain in the next budget.

The point is there were ways to produce a responsible budget without endangering programs designed to promote health, save land and build a better Florida for our children.

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