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Florida Legislature: Budget drains oxygen from session
For lawmakers with an agenda, many were dismayed.
By DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE — There are many years when lawmakers stay late into the night on the last day of the legislative session, trying desperately to work out a few compromises, pass one more bill.
This session couldn’t end soon enough.
The Legislature quit Friday night at just 2 minutes after 6 p.m., and the usual post-session congratulations didn’t go on much longer. There wasn’t much to be happy about.
For nearly everyone who wanted something from lawmakers, this year was an exercise in futility. Almost nobody got what they wanted.
“I couldn’t make anybody happy,” said Sen. Victor Crist, summing up a session in which lawmakers had to shrink just about every part of the budget to keep spending in line with shrinking tax collections.
The most ardent opponents of taxes were happy — the Republican-dominated Legislature kept a promise not to raise them.
People who want to be able to keep their gun in their car when they go to work were happy, a bill allowing that passed and was signed by the governor. Families of some children with autism were given a potential helping hand with treatment costs in the final hour.
And advocates who didn’t expect much to begin with because of the slumping economy at least knew this was coming. A few were surprised that cuts to their particular items of interest weren’t deeper.
But, generally, the people who wanted lawmakers to do something came out of the two-month session disappointed.
It wasn’t just that they couldn’t get money in what was ultimately a $66.2 billion budget, $5 billion less than last year. As people fought desperately for a few extra dollars here and there, in some cases to literally try to keep people alive, there wasn’t much interest in doing much else.
“I’m leaving a session for the first time with nobody happy,” said Crist, a Tampa Republican who has been in the Legislature 16 years. “A lot of the bills weren’t able to come to the floor. While they were good ideas and great things that needed to be done, because they had a price tag, they got left.
“And that’s disappointing, because there were a lot of folks that were counting on different things to happen during the process that just didn’t come to fruition,” Crist said. “Not a lot of bills passed.”
Among those who were disappointed were families of children with many developmental disabilities like Down syndrome. Generally, the GOP-led Legislature is loath to tell insurance companies what they must cover. But this year several Republicans in the House were pushing for a broad bill to try to force coverage of several disabilities. It failed because Senate leaders said it would cost too much.
A compromise did provide one of the few happy endings — the Legislature agreed to force insurers to cover autism therapies.
The environment didn’t fare as well as it has in previous years, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. After some lawmakers wanted to cut money for Everglades cleanup entirely, the Legislature agreed to $50 million in spending, a quarter of what it was last year.
At Gov. Charlie Crist’s behest, lawmakers passed legislation that tries to make Florida a national clean energy leader.
It focuses on promoting renewable sources of energy and using less power and also begins planning for a program that would require polluters to pay for the carbon emissions they produce. Other provisions would strengthen green building codes and energy efficiency standards for appliances. It also simplifies the process for building new nuclear plants.
And that wasn’t easy — even though it doesn’t have a big immediate price tag.
Besides bills that couldn’t pass because of their cost, the budget itself was, as one lawmaker said during the session, simply “a bummer.”
That characterization by Rep. Aaron Bean seemed to sum up the session for many, but it was most acute in the budget written by Bean, a Republican from Fernandina Beach who is normally extremely upbeat and known as the House’s jokester. His jokes weren’t as frequent this year, and his job wasn’t funny.
Nearly every time he spoke, Bean apologized for the budget, which also cut funding for nursing homes, forcing lawmakers to back off recent increases in staffing levels.
Hospitals didn’t get the money they sought, doctors and dentists will be paid the same to treat people in Medicaid, which they say isn’t enough. The program that provides a safety net for people with catastrophic illnesses was saved for a year but will cease to exist next year for everyone but pregnant women and children.
Paul Belcher is a lobbyist for hospitals, but for many years was a top health care committee staffer in the Legislature. He wouldn’t say it was the worst year ever.
“One of the worst,” said Belcher. “And next year may not be much better.”
The House Democrats called the session “all pain, no gain,” citing cuts to public education, health care, and law enforcement.
But Republican leaders bragged that they did manage to get some things done, despite the tough times. And more importantly to many of them, they stuck to their guns on a key ideological point. They refused to consider tax increases, including a cigarette tax hike suggested by Democrats.
They also didn’t dip deeply into emergency savings, or try to increase gambling or the Lottery to bring in more tax dollars, as suggested by Gov. Crist, who is not related to the senator.
The state must live within its means, even when that’s tough, Republicans insisted.
“We didn’t fall into the easy trap of raising taxes, we didn’t borrow money, we didn’t spend money we didn’t have,” said Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Destin, the chairman of the House budget committee and the likely next speaker of the House.
That may not help when people start actually seeing the cuts, advocates said.
Richard Gordon, a probation officer and union representative, said the cutting of about 200 of the state’s roughly 2,600 probation officers will increase case loads and might risk public safety, and that could come back to haunt lawmakers.
“We’re still going to do the job, but it’s going to be difficult,” said Gordon. “My hope is that we don’t have another Xbox murder or Carlie Brucia,” Gordon said, referring to two notorious crimes committee by people who fell through probation cracks.
Sen. Steve Geller of Cooper City agreed that the true measure of this session can’t yet be taken.
“Right now, these cuts are pen on paper,” said Geller, the Senate Democratic Leader.
“When less people are out there to provide services, when the teachers have to go without raises ... when people go to visit Grandma and find more bedsores, when we start having more child abuse allegations because we don’t have the money to do this,” he said, “it’s going to be ... very grim.”
This session couldn’t end soon enough.
The Legislature quit Friday night at just 2 minutes after 6 p.m., and the usual post-session congratulations didn’t go on much longer. There wasn’t much to be happy about.
For nearly everyone who wanted something from lawmakers, this year was an exercise in futility. Almost nobody got what they wanted.
“I couldn’t make anybody happy,” said Sen. Victor Crist, summing up a session in which lawmakers had to shrink just about every part of the budget to keep spending in line with shrinking tax collections.
The most ardent opponents of taxes were happy — the Republican-dominated Legislature kept a promise not to raise them.
People who want to be able to keep their gun in their car when they go to work were happy, a bill allowing that passed and was signed by the governor. Families of some children with autism were given a potential helping hand with treatment costs in the final hour.
And advocates who didn’t expect much to begin with because of the slumping economy at least knew this was coming. A few were surprised that cuts to their particular items of interest weren’t deeper.
But, generally, the people who wanted lawmakers to do something came out of the two-month session disappointed.
It wasn’t just that they couldn’t get money in what was ultimately a $66.2 billion budget, $5 billion less than last year. As people fought desperately for a few extra dollars here and there, in some cases to literally try to keep people alive, there wasn’t much interest in doing much else.
“I’m leaving a session for the first time with nobody happy,” said Crist, a Tampa Republican who has been in the Legislature 16 years. “A lot of the bills weren’t able to come to the floor. While they were good ideas and great things that needed to be done, because they had a price tag, they got left.
“And that’s disappointing, because there were a lot of folks that were counting on different things to happen during the process that just didn’t come to fruition,” Crist said. “Not a lot of bills passed.”
Among those who were disappointed were families of children with many developmental disabilities like Down syndrome. Generally, the GOP-led Legislature is loath to tell insurance companies what they must cover. But this year several Republicans in the House were pushing for a broad bill to try to force coverage of several disabilities. It failed because Senate leaders said it would cost too much.
A compromise did provide one of the few happy endings — the Legislature agreed to force insurers to cover autism therapies.
The environment didn’t fare as well as it has in previous years, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. After some lawmakers wanted to cut money for Everglades cleanup entirely, the Legislature agreed to $50 million in spending, a quarter of what it was last year.
At Gov. Charlie Crist’s behest, lawmakers passed legislation that tries to make Florida a national clean energy leader.
It focuses on promoting renewable sources of energy and using less power and also begins planning for a program that would require polluters to pay for the carbon emissions they produce. Other provisions would strengthen green building codes and energy efficiency standards for appliances. It also simplifies the process for building new nuclear plants.
And that wasn’t easy — even though it doesn’t have a big immediate price tag.
Besides bills that couldn’t pass because of their cost, the budget itself was, as one lawmaker said during the session, simply “a bummer.”
That characterization by Rep. Aaron Bean seemed to sum up the session for many, but it was most acute in the budget written by Bean, a Republican from Fernandina Beach who is normally extremely upbeat and known as the House’s jokester. His jokes weren’t as frequent this year, and his job wasn’t funny.
Nearly every time he spoke, Bean apologized for the budget, which also cut funding for nursing homes, forcing lawmakers to back off recent increases in staffing levels.
Hospitals didn’t get the money they sought, doctors and dentists will be paid the same to treat people in Medicaid, which they say isn’t enough. The program that provides a safety net for people with catastrophic illnesses was saved for a year but will cease to exist next year for everyone but pregnant women and children.
Paul Belcher is a lobbyist for hospitals, but for many years was a top health care committee staffer in the Legislature. He wouldn’t say it was the worst year ever.
“One of the worst,” said Belcher. “And next year may not be much better.”
The House Democrats called the session “all pain, no gain,” citing cuts to public education, health care, and law enforcement.
But Republican leaders bragged that they did manage to get some things done, despite the tough times. And more importantly to many of them, they stuck to their guns on a key ideological point. They refused to consider tax increases, including a cigarette tax hike suggested by Democrats.
They also didn’t dip deeply into emergency savings, or try to increase gambling or the Lottery to bring in more tax dollars, as suggested by Gov. Crist, who is not related to the senator.
The state must live within its means, even when that’s tough, Republicans insisted.
“We didn’t fall into the easy trap of raising taxes, we didn’t borrow money, we didn’t spend money we didn’t have,” said Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Destin, the chairman of the House budget committee and the likely next speaker of the House.
That may not help when people start actually seeing the cuts, advocates said.
Richard Gordon, a probation officer and union representative, said the cutting of about 200 of the state’s roughly 2,600 probation officers will increase case loads and might risk public safety, and that could come back to haunt lawmakers.
“We’re still going to do the job, but it’s going to be difficult,” said Gordon. “My hope is that we don’t have another Xbox murder or Carlie Brucia,” Gordon said, referring to two notorious crimes committee by people who fell through probation cracks.
Sen. Steve Geller of Cooper City agreed that the true measure of this session can’t yet be taken.
“Right now, these cuts are pen on paper,” said Geller, the Senate Democratic Leader.
“When less people are out there to provide services, when the teachers have to go without raises ... when people go to visit Grandma and find more bedsores, when we start having more child abuse allegations because we don’t have the money to do this,” he said, “it’s going to be ... very grim.”
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