Ryan Ray
The Government Operations/General Government budget conference held its second meeting Saturday, as the sub-chairmen for each chamber – Rep. Jeanette Nunez and Sen. Alan Hays – continued to wrangle spreadsheets as they inched closer to squaring the $10 million in differences between their respective proposals.
This time it was the House’s turn to respond to a Senate offer from earlier Saturday morning, and Nunez made progress toward reconciling the outstanding line items, though they remain about $11.6 million apart.
Major sticking points include about $7 million in the House proposal for new law enforcement radio equipment, part of a bitter intra-industry battle between Harris Corp. – the current state vendor for such radios – and Motorola, which would like the state to hold off on buying more radios until a competitive bidding process on the contract expires in 2021.
Harris is headquartered in Brevard County, which is represented by Speaker Steve Crisafulli. Sen. Jack Latvala last year called a similar budget move “a back-door extension” of the contract that would obviate the bidding process.
The Senate is also proposing $7.2 million more than the House for statewide capital depreciation, to pass through the Department of Management Services.
Among the House’s new proposals were five additional investigators for the state’s Public Assistance Fraud Unit, a priority of CFO (and former Senate President) Jeff Atwater.
Hays said he felt the conferees could probably close the gap with a third meeting Saturday, but that wasn’t an option because their budget is linked to agriculture and natural resource spending being worked out in another conference panel.
Hays advised members to “hang loose” while he and Nunez devised a time to meet next, likely about 11 a.m. Sunday. Nunez said the meeting would be noticed either Saturday evening or early Sunday.
