Jacob Ogles
As the Florida Legislature wrestles with budget disagreements as vast as they have been in a decade, former lawmakers who led budget negotiations offered insight into what negotiations lay ahead.
At a Florida TaxWatch panel, former Sens. Lisa Carlton, Denise Grimsley, and Kelli Stargel also suggested that budget negotiation challenges are complex and intimidating. But they also sounded optimistic that The Process would eventually force lawmakers to come together.
“The main problem we’re having right now with this budget is they have too much money,” said Carlton, a Sarasota County Republican. “We never had that problem with the three of us when we were Appropriations chair. We were cutting budgets instead of trying to spend budgets.”
All three Senators previously served as Appropriations Chair. They spoke as part of a Sarasota panel moderated by Brandi Gunder, a former Acting Director of Policy and Budget at the Executive Office.
Florida Politics Publisher Peter Schorsch also took part in the panel.
The budget standstill between chambers has consumed coverage of Tallahassee. Schorsch noted remarks by Speaker Daniel Perez accusing Senate President Ben Albritton of abandoning a deal at the scheduled end of the Legislative Session.
“The currency of Tallahassee is your word. Once that word is perceived to be broken, it’s really hard to walk back from that,” Schorsch said. “I’m not saying that what people are saying is accurate. But that is what one presiding officer thinks about another one right now. Until you can back down from that game of chicken, I think you’re going to hear a lot of people in and out of the process game-out scenarios.”
The veteran lawmakers said plenty of other personal factors throughout the House and Senate’s membership can also complicate talks.
Stargel, a Lakeland Republican, said she believes the influx of revenue during the COVID pandemic left the Legislature too used to having a surplus of funding. She served as Senate Appropriations chair when that first rush of money came in, and the Legislature ended up approving a record number of local member projects. That has left an expectation both with lawmakers and their constituents to bring money home.
“You can’t take politics out of the appropriations process,” Stargel said. “You can’t take politics out of politics.”
But Grimsley, a Zolfo Springs Republican, said serious vetting and evaluation of both individual projects and sweeping fiscal policies are still needed.
“It’s not just good to vet them for fiscal reasons, but it’s also good to vet that so the community understands why those legislators are asking for that money,” she said.
Grimsley expressed some optimism about the chance to explore property tax relief for Floridians. However, members noted key differences in the timing of cuts, and a House-favored sales tax cut could take effect immediately.
But any revenue cut has its own challenges, especially when economists predict revenue shortfalls in just a few years.
“It’s really challenging to start thinking about taking $5 billion of recurring revenue off with the sales tax reduction. Really challenging,” Carlton said. “Can it be overcome? Can there be a negotiated point? Can there be a midway point? Maybe so, but it really complicates your budget negotiations when that is in there.”
But property tax proposals, while giving more time to adjust spending, could also leaves particular holes in silos like education.
“You have to be careful,” Carlton warned. “In today’s world, what you don’t want to do is hand another legislative group of people a problem that you created. I think if you’re looking at, let’s decimate the property tax and get rid of it, the Legislature has got to be eyes wide-open.”
