Ryan Ray
The Senate Committee on Appropriations heard from Gov. Rick Scott‘s chief budget aide Wednesday morning, when she presented Scott’s $79.3 billion proposed budget for the 2016-2017 fiscal year before hearing some pushback from Senate Democrats on state worker pay, social services, and health care.
The presentation was a calmer affair than in the House, however, where Democrats “took out their knives” and carved up the governor’s proposal Tuesday.
Cynthia Kelly, director of Scott’s Office of Policy and Budget presented the governor’s “Florida First” budget, the sixth since such proposal Scott took office in 2011.
Kelly began with an upbeat presentation, touting gains in revenue growth bolstered by growth in personal income, tourism and population.
Tourism is estimated to exceed 110 million visitors, noted Kelly, while Florida’s population is expected to top 20 million after a brief halt in growth after the 2009 recession. She also heralded positive job growth, presenting an employment chart Kelly says is constantly on display in the governor’s office which depicts job growth of some 36,600 for October, good for third in the nation.
Kelly outlined the Scott’s priorities – namely $1 billion in tax cuts, diversifying the state economy beyond tourism and services, and “historic” funding for education.
Scott’s primary proposals, as outlined in his budget proposal, are to permanently eliminate a pair of manufacturing taxes, cut the commercial lease tax, extend a tax exemption on college textbooks, and extend back-to-school and disaster preparedness tax holiday.
A $250 million “Florida Enterprise Fund,” which Scott personally pitched before $38 million in additional business incentives and $15 million for “Florida Flex,” a related program, topped the governor’s spending requests, as did $9.2 billion State Transportation Work Program which is heavy on new roads construction.
Kelly also highlighted $20.21 billion for K-12 public schools, $11.01 million of that coming from the state. The remainder comes mainly from property taxes administered through local school districts.
Also controversial was the budget’s call for a 864 net reduction of state workers, though it requests extra staff in Florida’s ailing Department of Corrections and additional support to recruit Guardians Ad Litem.
While Democrats took turns needling Kelly over social services spending, though it was nowhere near the inquisition she received from House Dems in yesterday’s meeting.
Questions about whether Enterprise Florida spending and tax breaks for manufacturers and retailers amounted to “corporate welfare” by Minority Leader Rep. Mark Pafford were repeatedly ruled inappropriately “philosophical” by Appropriations Vice Chair Rep. Jim Boyd, for instance.
Miami Sen. Gwen Margolis told Kelly she felt the governor’s budget contained insufficient funding for beach renourishment, while Sen. Chris Smith questioned whether the budget does enough to diminish backlogs in state agencies.
Minority Leader Sen. Arthenia Joyner, for her part, voiced her displeasure with stagnant wages for state workers, calling the bonuses for state employees proposed by Scott “minimal.”
Majority Leader Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto also urged more funding to analyze a backlog of 11,000 untested rape kits currently shelved at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“I didn’t see anywhere in the budget where the governor contemplated more funding for clearing the back log of those kits,” said Benacquisto.
Kelly replied that the proposal included $8.5 million requested by FDLE to address the concern, and told Benaquisto the governor would be willing to support further funding.
Former Senate president and current budget chief Tom Lee ended the hearing on a conciliatory note.
“Budgets are a lot of hard work,” said Lee, who recently said he had not spoken to Scott in some time. “They require a lot of difficult choices.”
“The governor has been a good fiscal steward. It’s a lot easier to critique something than to create it,” said Lee.
After the meeting, Joyner released a statement calling on lawmakers to reject a “tax hike” proposed by Scott, in the form of increased reliance on local property taxes.
“Floridians shouldn’t have to pay almost half a billion dollars more in property taxes because his priorities are all wrong,” said Joyner, referring to Scott. “With hundreds of millions of dollars in projected surplus, there is ample money to increase Florida’s obligations to better fund public education, health care, criminal justice, the courts, transportation, infrastructure, the environment, and, finally, improving the salaries of the people who make this state run.
“These are the services that businesses look to for relocation and expansion. These are the qualities that attract investment. And these are the necessities that determine the quality of life and the quality of jobs that come to our state,” concluded Joyner.
