Peter Schorsch
While Gov. Rick Scott is saying there’s plenty of money for next year’s state budget, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jack Latvala is far less sanguine.
Latvala, also a GOP candidate for Governor, spoke to the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists (FAPL) annual conference in Orlando Friday, where he said it was going to be a very tough budget year for a whole host of spending categories.
The Clearwater Republican went as far as saying his fellow Senators should think twice before filing spending requests if they’ve been vetoed before in the last three years.
Lawmakers also shouldn’t try tucking projects in university funding, as that is where “suspicious stuff” has been found, he added.
Funding toward Hurricane Irma repairs or storm hardening projects will fare much better, he advised.
Lawmakers face a tight budget going into the session, in part because of costs related to Irma. Gov. Scott insists the state has enough money to pay for priorities without dipping into reserves.
“I’m going to focus very aggressively on how we take care of families. I’m not, as you would expect, I’m not going to focus on member projects,” Scott said Thursday. “If we spend that money well, we will have the ability to, one, have significant reserves and to continue to reduce the debt of the state, which long-term is going to make it easier when we do, hope we never do, have a downturn in this state.”
Latvala also predicted a long debate over whether to dip into the state’s rainy day funds, saying, “If after a hurricane isn’t the right time to spend money out of the rainy day fund, when is?”
He further said it will be tough session for criminal justice and corrections. (The Department of Corrections has asked for money to take care of lingering lawsuit settlements, for instance, but Latvala didn’t give a specific example.)
On Thursday, Latvala told reporters at an Associated Press event he doesn’t expect any deep budget cuts for hospitals that get public dollars: “That would be a last resort.”
Hospitals “got a big cut last year and we need to see how all that works out,” he said. “A lot of people work in hospitals. It’s a major industry, and we just got to look at it very carefully.”
Material from the News Service of Florida was used in this report.
