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Florida Weekly Government Roundup
April 3, 2011
Every year as the Senate and House finish up work on their respective budgets someone utters the cliché: now the real work begins as the two sides of the Capitol prepare for the horse trading of conference.
But if what’s to come is the hard work, don’t tell that the people who spent the last week – or for that matter much of the last month – sweating over the individual Senate and House budgets.
It’s already been one of the toughest weeks of one of the toughest years in the last decade for lawmakers, who have had to face crowds of people who will be affected by painful budget cuts, state workers who will lose their jobs, and fellow lawmakers who have pleaded, there must be another way.
“I wish the decisions were simpler and easier,” a tired Senate Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, lamented this week.
“It’s a tough year,” said House Appropriations Chairwoman Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring. “We’ve been forced to make some very tough decisions.”
It’s already been serious work, so to think that it’s going to get even more difficult is a bit hard to imagine.
But at the end of this week, as the Senate passed its budget out of its final committee and sent it to the floor with significant differences from the smaller House budget, Grimsley acknowledged that the conference indeed may even be harder.
“It’s just going to be tough to try to reconcile our differences,” said Grimsley. The chambers are nearly $3 billion apart just in their bottom line, not to mention vast differences in approaches to spending.
The House’s $66.5 billion budget passed its Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and the Senate’s $70 billion plan was made ready on Thursday for the full chamber. Both chambers plan to bring their respective plans to a vote this week on the floor. One of the main differences in the bottom line amount is what is included. The Senate puts more on the books, folding in, for example, water management district spending, while the House keeps that money separate.
There are big differences – such as the Senate relying heavily on significant prison privatization – putting almost 1 in 4 prisoners in a private prison, while the House has a more limited privatization plan. In some areas, they’re already in synch: both cut about 5,000 state jobs.
MEDICAID
Five years after it started with a pilot in two counties, the Florida House on Thursday voted to take the state’s Medicaid privatization experiment statewide, moving a step closer to a dramatically different way or providing health care to the poor by shifting Medicaid patients into managed-care plans.
The Republican-dominated House voted 80-38 along almost straight party lines to approve a bill that sets out a five-year process for overhauling the Medicaid program. Lawmakers for years have desperately tried to find ways to save in the now $20 billion program. Backers said not only would this plan do that, it would be better for patients.
“This bill is about taking a look at where we are today and asking a very simple question: Are you satisfied with the status quo?” said Health Appropriations Chairman Matt Hudson, R-Naples.
PENSION REFORM
Another sacred cow was tipped this week as the Senate Budget Committee voted in favor of a sweeping pension bill that would ask current employees to pay more and lock future employees out of the defined-benefit plan. Backers of the plan – the outline of which was initially pushed by a Democrat – lost two Republicans in the final vote. All session, police, teachers and firefighters have been at the Capitol to lament that they are scapegoats for the state’s fiscal woes and won’t happily bear its burden.
DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Meanwhile, the Senate threw in its cards in an effort to provide a new way for gambling interests to get people’s money – and send some of it on to the state – when backers of “destination resort” casinos ended their effort to pass a bill to allow five big new attractions based on betting.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The House and Senate budget committees this week bled, sweated and cried out budget plans that now head to the floor. Both have drastic cuts aimed at closing a $3.75 billion shortfall.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“This was one of those decisions that had to be made.” Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, echoing himself, and several others in shrugging off various deep cuts in a year when the budget is out of balance.
Comments
2 Responses to “Florida Weekly Government Roundup”
Guess what? People who don’t work for the government have been paying their own pension plans for years! Why should the taxpayers pay for government workers pensions? Let’s put everyone in the same boat, including the lawmakers!
Just curious if all our state elected officials are going to pay into their pensions? If it is good for the “working people” then its good enough for them.