Ryan Ray
Gov. Rick Scott denied giving consideration to his friends — or retaliating against his enemies — as he threw out more than $460 million allocated by lawmakers in this year’s budget.
“Absolutely not,” Scott told reporters Tuesday morning after the day’s Cabinet meeting concluded.
But a close look at what was axed and what was not tells a different story.
While lawmakers, state agencies and lobbyists wade through the governor’s hundreds of individual line-item vetoes, they would do well to keep a scorecard of who’s in and who’s out with Scott in mind.
A straightforward, if well-worn example: $15 million for a new University of Central Florida downtown campus was nixed while a similar a project of similar size and scope — $17 million for a new downtown medical campus at University of South Florida — was not.
Scott said the decision was made on procedural grounds, not political ones.
“That’s simple: One went through the Board of Governors process and one didn’t,” the governor said.
An inquiry to the governor’s office elicited the same basis for his decision: The project “circumvented the BOG’s campus approval process,” spokeswoman Jeri Bustamante said on Scott’s behalf.
Such concerns, though, seemed to have little bearing on the governor’s disposition in general.
“There are so many inconsistencies in the ways those things are applied,” Sen. Jack Latvala said to the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday afternoon.
“They don’t even know what he asked for before,” Latvala said in an interview in which he said outright that Scott has “declared war on the Legislature” with the veto list.
Non-legislative actors felt the sting of Scott’s veto pen as well.
One thing the governor has approved before, funding for a Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center at Florida State University in Tallahassee, was summarily vetoed.
Was it the process, largely the same as in the past years when the non-controversial item has been fully funded, or was it antipathy towards the item’s primary supporter — CFO Jeff Atwater — who has vocally criticized the governor’s handling of former top cop Gerald Bailey‘s exit?
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who along with Atwater is on the Florida Cabinet, saw a priority of his fall to Scott’s veto pen: $1.6 million to give the state’s 606 Forest Service firefighters each a $2,000 a year pay raise. Putnam, too, questioned Bailey’s departure.
Senate President Andy Gardiner, who supported the University of Central Florida funding, criticized the governor for his actions. Gardiner, at odds with Scott most of the Legislative Session after the governor reversed his position on a Medicaid expansion, contended in a statement that Scott’s vetoes were politically motivated.
Scott vetoed $9.5 million for the Florida Association of Free and Charitable Clinics and another $3 million for Florida State University Rural Primary Care Clinic.
“The Governor refused to support the Senate’s efforts to help the working poor in our state purchase private health insurance, yet vetoed nearly $10 million in funding for free and charitable clinics, again depriving these families of the chance for proactive primary care and pushing more and more Floridians without health insurance towards hospital emergency rooms when they are at their sickest and most vulnerable. He also vetoed funding for primary care residency programs and faculty to train physicians who work in rural and underserved areas,” Gardiner wrote in a news release.
“While I respect the Governor’s authority to veto various lines within our budget, his clear disregard for the public policy merits of many legislative initiatives underscores that today’s veto list is more about politics than sound fiscal policy. It is unfortunate that the messaging strategy needed to achieve the Governor’s political agenda comes at the expense of the most vulnerable people in our state.”
