On tap for 2011 session: Budget cuts, Medicaid and pension changes

The Sunshine State is open for business.

With a new governor vowing to make Florida the most business-friendly state in the nation, lawmakers will gather Tuesday in Tallahassee with marching orders to slash corporate taxes, ease permitting processes, undo government regulations, cut unemployment costs, make it harder to sue companies and generally create a haven for those who want to start or relocate a business.

Republican Gov. Rick Scott, the Naples millionaire elected last fall on a jobs-jobs-and-more-jobs platform, said he will run the state like a business.

"We've got to understand if we're going to grow jobs in the state of Florida, we have got to be better than everybody else," he said at a recent session preview. "It's just like in business. If you're building a business and you're just a little bit better than somebody, the odds are you're not going to change the world. Nothing is going to happen. You have to make a dramatic shift. You've got to do something dramatically different than everybody else. And that's my focus on what we have to do in Florida."

The 113th regular legislative session will, of course, focus on additional issues.

The state is in a $3.6 billion budget hole, and next year's spending plan will come with brutal cuts. Health care and education alone account for nearly two-thirds of that budget; a Medicaid overhaul, classroom cutbacks and changes in teacher pay are also on tap.

The single-minded governor has a relatively inexperienced, Republican-dominated Legislature he hopes will do his heavy lifting. But don't necessarily read that as an impending love-fest at the state Capitol.

Lawmakers have already expressed skepticism with the governor's $65.9 billion budget proposal, which slashes $4.6 billion from current spending. After Scott said thanks-but-no-thanks to $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail system, 24 state senators - including 14 Republicans - signed a letter pleading with the feds to let a rail consortium work around the governor. Two of them - a Republican and a Democrat - sued Scott, albeit unsuccessfully.

Scott barred his staffers from testifying before a Senate budget committee after they got a thorough grilling from the Republican committee chairman. Another GOP senator says Scott's sale of the state's aircraft fleet was illegal.

Is the new governor's honeymoon over? "I don't think the honeymoon ever started," said state Sen. Nan Rich, a Democrat from Weston.

Here is a look at some of the major issues expected to dominate the legislative session, which ends May 6.

THE BUDGET

Florida's biggest sources of revenue have historically been the sales tax collected at cash registers and fees on real estate transactions.

When we cut back on spending our money and building houses, that puts the state in a bind. When we cut way, way back on spending and building, it puts the state in a severe bind.

Welcome to the 2011-12 fiscal year.

With the aftermath of the Great Recession still choking Floridians, economists have forecast that the state will have $3.6 billion less to spend for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

With another $1 billion needed to shore up a reserve fund, that means lawmakers will have to trim $4.6 billion, or about 6.5 percent, from this year's appropriation of $70.4 billion.

It's not going to be a tidy surgical procedure. "It'll mean real cuts," said House Speaker Dean Cannon, a Republican from Winter Park. "It'll mean reductions in probably every area of the budget."

The state could conceivably work on the other side of the budget equation by raising revenue to keep existing services intact, but a tax hike of any kind amounts to heresy in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Scott's proposed budget cuts education ($3.3 billion), natural resources, environment, growth and transportation ($1.3 billion) and criminal justice and corrections ($713 million). The budget also includes tax cuts of $2.3 billion.

It's the full Legislature, however, that will craft the official appropriations bill by the end of the session.

MEDICAID

The state's health-care program for the poor and disabled will likely receive a major makeover under proposals from Scott and Republican lawmakers.

Since the inception of Medicaid in 1965 as one of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" anti-poverty programs, eligible beneficiaries have been allowed to make most of their health care decisions independently and have the government foot the bill on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Lawmakers want to place Florida's 3 million rank-and-file beneficiaries in managed-care programs such as health maintenance organizations, which would receive fixed payments to cover all aspects of an individual's health care.

That would save $1 billion in the first year of the program, and $4.3 billion over three years, said state Sen. Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican who is the chamber's point man on the project. "Medicaid is a very generous program," he said.

A managed-care overhaul has been on the table since Gov. Jeb Bush first singled out the Medicaid program as a budget-buster in 2005. The $20 billion program now represents nearly one-third of the state budget.

Changes to Medicaid would require the approval of the federal government, which oversees individual state programs.

FLORIDA RETIREMENT SYSTEM

It's often considered the crown perk of a government job: You might not earn a big paycheck, but the retirement benefit is pretty sweet.

That could change if Scott and the legislative leadership get their way in the upcoming session. State, county and school district employees could be required to pay as much as 5 percent of their salaries into their retirement.

"They (state benefits) are more generous than the private sector," said Senate President Mike Haridopolos, a Republican from Melbourne. "All we're asking the governor to do is act on what a lot of us campaigned on - running the state more like a business."

That, of course, is music to Scott's ears. Right now, the Florida Retirement System is run like a traditional, old-school pension plan - what is known as a "defined benefit" plan. The employer -- in this case, the state -- pays into a massive fund, assumes investment risk, and upon retirement, the worker is paid a promised amount from the fund. It has 655,367 participants.

The Legislature's plan would require future state employees to enroll in a "defined contribution" plan. This is the more typical 401(k)-style plan, in which employees contribute a percentage of earnings to a retirement fund or funds of their choosing, and assume the risk themselves for their retirement fund performance.

There are other public employee benefits in the crosshairs, including elimination of the Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP, which allows some longtime older employees to keep working and collect both a state salary and pension benefits; a tweak of health insurance premiums, and whether to consider overtime when calculating retirement benefits, which is of particular interest to police and firefighters.

Scott says the moves would save nearly $3 billion over two years. But the siege on public employee benefits is sparking demonstrations statewide and in Tallahassee.

LEGISLATURE VS. JUDICIARY

What's a poor Legislature to do when it can't get a darned constitutional amendment on the ballot?

Why, change the rules, of course.

Lawmakers are steamed that the pesky Florida Supreme Court keeps throwing their amendments off statewide ballots.

Last year, the high court nixed three of the Legislature's six proposed amendments, citing misleading or unclear summaries or texts.

"Just because the Supreme Court gives itself jurisdiction over a piece of legislation, that does not necessarily mean that the court has the authority to remove that legislation," said House Speaker Dean Cannon, a Republican from Winter Park. "The process has now gotten to the point where essentially the Legislature's authority ... has been either eviscerated or certainly damaged, and we need some clarity here."

The state's constitution can be amended in several ways. Citizens may petition for change, and if the signatures of eight percent of those who voted in the last presidential election are gathered - about 670,000 last year - the proposal goes to a statewide vote. Lawmakers can put an item on the ballot with a three-fifths majority vote in both the House and Senate.

In the case of citizen initiatives, the Supreme Court reviews the amendment's title, summary and text for clarity and appropriateness before it hits the ballot. There is no such prior review of legislative amendments, so if someone sues and the court has a problem, its remedy has been to remove it from the ballot.

The legislature is considering rewriting sections of state law and/or the Constitution that address constitutional amendments. Another idea is to have the Attorney General, Secretary of State or a commission draft, approve and correct amendment language.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have proposed bills that would give the Legislature, not the courts, the authority to set the rules for the judiciary. The Supreme Court currently has authority to make the rules for the court system.

FLORID PRIMARY DATE

The Legislature could be headed for a showdown affecting the 2012 presidential race over the date of the state's presidential primary.

The key question: Will Florida comply with the efforts of both national parties to shorten the primary season by outlawing early primaries, or will it seek to draw national attention and influence the primary race by keeping its primary date early?

The current date, early January, violates Republican Party rules. That would cost the state half its delegates to the national GOP convention, and cause embarrassment because the convention will be held in Tampa.

Nonetheless, Cannon, Haridopolos and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio favor staying with the early date, saying it will increase Florida's influence on the party's choice of its nominee. That date will stay the same unless the Legislature acts to change it.

Scott and party leaders want to change it to comply with party rules, to avoid the embarrassment of a conflict with the party while the state is hosting the 2012 GOP National Convention.

REDISTRICTING

The Legislature won't vote on a plan to redraw district lines for its own members and for members of Congress until its 2012 session, but redistricting committees in both houses are expected to start work this session.

How the lines are drawn affects election outcomes and leads to intense political horse-trading.

Meanwhile, Republicans including Scott are trying to stall implementation of two constitutional amendments passed by voters in November designed to cut down on gerrymandering -- arranging the districts to benefit a particular party or candidates.

Cannon has made the state House a party to a lawsuit by two Congress members alleging that the amendments, now part of the state Constitution, violate the U.S. Constitution. Scott, meanwhile, withdrew the state's application for federal approval of the amendments under the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

KEEP AN EYE ON ....

The Legislature's sole constitutional responsibility during the regular session is to pass a state budget. Of course, much more happens.

Scott, the new governor who campaigned as an outsider, is asking lawmakers to reshape state government in several areas.

He has proposed reorganizing health care agencies such as the Department of Health and the Agency for Health Care Administration into a single office. He also wants to merge growth-management and economic development offices into a new Department of Commerce (Florida had such an office until a reorganization in the 1990s; at one point, it was headed by a guy named Jeb Bush).

Scott is also proposing to consolidate prisons, cut corrections staff and privatize some lockups.

Other major issues likely to surface during the 60-day session include:

• Scott wants to kill a planned computerized prescription drug database that would track pain-pill prescriptions. Supporters say the bill would help police identify addicts, dealers and rogue pain clinics that churn out prescriptions. Scott says it's too costly and an invasion of privacy.

• Cuts to the state unemployment compensation system. Lawmakers are looking at reducing the number of benefit weeks and making it easier to deny an unemployment claim.

• A host of gun-rights measures. Bills have been filed to prevent local governments from regulating firearms or ammunition; to allow those with permits to carry weapons on college campuses and store them in their cars; and prohibit doctors from asking patients whether they own a gun.

•A "taxpayer bill of rights," or TABOR, which has become a national conservative campaign to write into state constitutions how much spending can increase from year to year.

•Tort-reform measures that would make it harder to sue insurance companies who decline to settle cases, nursing homes, and automakers who have produced defective vehicles.

•The targeting of cell phones. Bills would prevent texting while driving, talking on a cell phone in a school zone, and any form of "sexting."

Some high-profile issues won't be on the agenda in Tallahassee. Scott has said he won't push an ambitious expansion of school vouchers this year. And House Speaker Dean Cannon has declared offshore oil drilling "off the table."

PULL UP YOUR PANTS, KID

So many issues, so little time to write them into state law. Nonetheless, lawmakers could conceivably take up bills during the legislative session that would ...

...Require parental consent for minors to use tanning beds

... ban "sagging" in schools or exposing "underwear or body parts in an indecent or vulgar manner"

... outlaw sex with animals

... delete a requirement that schools teach abstinence in sex education

... allow advertising on the exterior of school buses

... Close schools on Veteran's Day

... add "simulated sex" to state obscenity statutes

... allow corporate logos on license plates

... make the barking tree frog the state amphibian

...sell naming rights for public schools

... increase the penalties for violations of the loud-car-stereo law

... require that any youth sports coach who is ejected from a game be ejected for the rest of the season

... endorse the Equal Rights Amendment

... sell naming rights to roads, highways, ramps, rest areas, toll booths and railways

... and make "Merry Christmas" the state's official greeting on Dec. 25.

jstockfisch@tampatrib.com

(850) 222-8382