Item L05
Board of County Commissioners
Agenda Item Summary
Meeting Date: December 19, 2001
Bulk Item: Yes C No .
Division: Board of County Commissioners
Department: George R. Neugent
AGENDA ITEM WORDING:
Discussion regarding Monroe County 2003 Budget and the implications due to
House/Senate special session budget approval concerning tax to the County.
\
"
ITEM BACKGROUND:
PREVIOUS RELEVANT BOCC ACTION:
CONTRACT/ AGREEMENT CHANGES:
STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS:
TOTAL COST:
tJj-f:l.
BUDGETED: YES C NO C
COST TO COUNTY: $
REVENUE PRODUCING: YES C NO C AMT PER MONTH: YEAR:
APPROVED BY: COU~TY ATTY COMB/PURCHASING C RISK MANAGEMENT C
APPROVAL:
ommissioner GEORGE
DISTRICT II
DOCUMENTATION: INCLUDED. TO FOLLOW C NOT REQUIRED C
DISPosmON:
AGENDA ITEM #
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Mon, Dee 3, 2001
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REA L E S . ( ATE ':IIJ..L td ~I
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Senate approves budget -- again
BY DAVID ROYSE
The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE -- The state Senate voted Friday to cut just under $1 billion
from a budget that can't be supported by dwindling incoming taxes, setting
up negotiations with the House over a final plan.
The vote on the Senate bill (SB 2C) was 26-12, with the Republicans, who
control the Legislature, voting for it and most Democrats against.
Debate on the Senate bill came a day after the House passed its plan. The
Senate and House will have to work out differences between the plans over
the weekend, and hope to vote on a final product next week.
The economy shrunk over the summer, and forecasts for incoming taxes
have dropped by $1.3 billion since lawmakers wrote the budget for the
current fiscal year back in the spring.
Republicans said they swallowed a difficult pill, but were able to avoid what
might have been far tougher cuts, largely by delaying a tax break and
dipping into the state's rainy-day fund.
"No one likes the cuts we've made, no one takes pride in the fact that we
have whittled away what we ... had put in to begin with," said Senate
Majority Leader Jim King, R-Jacksonville. "But there's no wooden stake
driven into any program that we know of. Will some programs have to
tighten their belts? Yes."
But Democrats said the cuts would condemn school children to crowded
classrooms and hurt the neediest Floridians.
"There are times when we must draw a line in the sand and say, 'This far
and no farther,'" said Sen. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Weston. "(
would have drawn that line much farther back.... I believe in my heart we
will be hurting people, real people."
The Senate Democratic Leader, Tom Rossin, said the cuts would be worst
for school children.
"We are going to be, after these cuts, the 50th state in the union in terms of
funding education, and I'm ashamed of that," said Rossin, D-Royal Palm
Beach.
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But school boards told the Senate they could absorb cuts of less than 3
percent to their budgets without laying off teachers - and the Senate met
that goal. After adding $40 million to basic school budget with an
amendment Friday, the Senate plan would cut 2 percent from what it gave
schools earlier this year.
"Armed with what we had available to us, I think it is a great budget," said
King, R-Jacksonville.
Republicans focused on cuts that were avoided, noting their budget
reductions are shallower than the House's.
"You didn't change the funding for pregnant women in the Medicaid
program," Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Seminole, told his fellow senators, listing
programs that avoided the ax. "We didn't kill anything. We didn't cripple
anything. n. Criminals are still going to be in jail. ... We did a good job
under difficult circumstances." :~
The overall Senate and House approaches to balancing the budget are
more similar than when lawmakers tried to do it in October. A special
session then derailed when the two chambers couldn't agree on whether to
delay a tax break.
Gov. Jeb Bush called the Legislature back for the current special session
to try again, and has brokered a deal that calls for delaying a tax break that
stock and bond holders would have gotten Jan. 1.
That frees up $130 million, which the House was able to add back to its
budget Thursday.
But differences in some details remain.
For example, a Senate reduction would cost Florida's program fighting teen
tobacco use $7.5 million, 20 percent of its budget.
The House would cut twice that, $14.7 million.
The House cut "would destroy the program," said Ralph DeVitto, vice
president of the American Cancer Society in Florida.
DeVitto noted that the program's funding has already been cut from $70
million when it began in 1998 to $37 million last year. He credited the
program with a 47 percent reduction in middle school smoking since the
campaign started.
The House effort to cut the budget was bitterly partisan, with the 78-41 vote
coming nearly along party lines, with the controlling Republicans supporting
it and Democrats against.
In the Senate, three Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for the cuts with
Republicans, but much of the debate there was about the need to consider
not just reductions - but the incoming revenue side of the question.
Rossin noted that 53 percent of the state budget goes to education and 37
percent goes to health care and social services.
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12/3/0 I
"If you only look at the cut side, you really have no choice but to look at
those two areas," said Rossin. "What we are saying as the Democratic
minority is that you have to look at both sides of the ledger.
"This body did the best it possibly could with what it had, I don't disagree
with that," Rossin said. "But what we had was not enough."
Story was published in the Key West Citizen on Saturday,
December 1, 2001
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12/3/01