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Budget Cuts Frustrate Lawmakers

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI and MIKE SALINERO

cdolinski@tampatrib.com msalinero@tampatrib.com

Published: March 24, 2009

TALLAHASSEE - For three weeks, they've listened. Now comes the hard part.

Lawmakers spent the first weeks of their spring session listening as state agencies rolled out the stark options for shrinking the $65 billion state budget.

Reducing services for the disabled and the elderly; cuts for public schools; emptying state courts of all but a bare-bones staff. After perpetually cutting the budget since spring 2007, many of the latest proposals aren't pretty.

The frustration has been palpable at times - as in the last meeting of the Senate health care budget committee when, at the end of a 10 percent budget-cutting exercise, chairman Durell Peaden declared it impossible.

"These cuts are on a continuum between malpractice and malfeasance," said Peaden, R-Crestview.

This week the decision-making starts, as both House and Senate budget committees start work on their spending plans for 2009-10.

The state is staring down a $700 million deficit for the remaining fiscal year, and a whopping $6 billion deficit in 2009-10. Lawmakers and Crist are now counting on the federal government to send Florida at least $700 million in economic stimulus dollars by June 30, and roughly $3 billion for the following year.

That leaves another $3 billion for state lawmakers to make up - and there is little agreement yet on how to do it.

Senate Budget Chief JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said the state must find new sources of money.

"I don't know how to make this budget work responsibly without a mix of reductions and revenues."

The House is less convinced. Rep. Marcelo Llorente, a Miami Republican who chairs one of the House's top budget councils, said Monday that the House will increase or create new taxes "only as a last resort."

Rep. David Rivera of Miami, chairman of the main House budget council on education and economic development, said he thinks the state can balance the budget reasonably without raising new revenue.

Rivera could foresee a bottled water tax passing, he said, and some motor vehicle and government fee increases. He also considers salary cuts for state workers as somewhere "between likely and inevitable," and hasn't ruled out layoffs or combining agencies

For now, neither chamber is counting on new revenue, other than federal stimulus dollars. Both chambers are studying options ranging from a cigarette tax increase to repealing sales tax exemptions, but there is little agreement yet.

Lawmakers are likewise contemplating new terms for a gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe. No one knows yet what it will ultimately look like, or how much it will raise for the state. Crist is urging a compact but continues to speak against raising taxes.

"You might ask him where he's going to get the cuts," Alexander responded. "There's no free ride."

Democrats, meanwhile, are complaining about being in the dark.

Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-Lake Worth, said she has not seen any numbers showing how deep the reductions will have to be, and where. It also remains unclear whether House leaders will use every available federal stimulus dollar to avoid harsher cuts, she said, expressing her frustration. "I can't see how anyone with any common sense could even question that for a minute."

Those are the only real questions remaining, said Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton: how exactly to handle the stimulus issue, and where the cuts will be. "There's no magic bullet at this point as far as new revenue sources."

Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382.

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