State Lawmakers Begin Deciding What to Cut from Next Year's Budget

by Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida

Lawmakers on Monday and Tuesday sat down to start the process of paring down the state's budget for next year as some lawmakers are projecting a shortfall as high as $5 billion.

For the next two weeks, appropriations committees will examine every program that can be cut or terminated. Instead of making the case for why a given program should receive more funds, school teachers, health care workers and police officers will have to tell lawmakers what can go.

{sidebar id=1}“Bottom line is, Where do we get the funding? And if we are not coming in with the allocations that we need to from the state, our job is, what are we going to nix?” said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, the chairwoman of the Senate's higher education appropriations committee.

Senate and House budget leaders on Tuesday laid out the parameters for cutting the budget. Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, and Rep. Marcelo Llorente, R-Miami, who chair the two House councils that write the budget, told members that they need to carefully examine the entire budget.

They told members to keep in mind constitutional requirements and programs that can bring in federal matching dollars when looking at what can be cut, but both acknowledged in nearly identical remarks, that it would not be an easy task.

“It’s going to be quite an excruciating process,” Rivera said.

On top of a projected $5 billion deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, lawmakers are also expecting that another deficit will be declared on the current year budget as revenue collections from the past few months are lower than expected.

Senate Ways and Means Chairman Sen. JD Alexander, R-Winter Haven, told senators Monday that it was likely the state could be short by about $700 million on the current budget. This comes on the heels of a more than $1 billion budgetary reduction passed by lawmakers last month.

“Even with anticipated federal stimulus funds, there is little doubt that further budget reductions will be necessary,” Alexander said.

State officials are still unsure how much money Florida will receive from the stimulus package and whether it will qualify for education dollars that are a part of that plan. The stimulus package language states that funding for schools must be equal to the allocation of the 2005-2006 budget year. But, analysts on the state and national level are unclear whether that means solely state dollars or a combination of state funding and local property taxes.

If it relies solely on state dollars, then the state would not qualify for the federal education money.

At a higher education appropriations meeting Tuesday morning, lawmakers asked the head of the Division of Workforce Education and recipients of the division's grants what could be cut for the upcoming year.

Atlantic Technical Center and Technical High School Principal Robert B. Crawford testified before Lynn's committee about the importance of workforce education, particularly in a bad economy but acknowledged afterward that his school is indeed bracing for tough times.

State officials have floated the idea of 15 percent cuts in some areas, which would translate into about $9 million for Crawford's school. He said the result would be layoffs and canceling night and weekend classes.

“We're already preparing ourselves to take a reduction,” he said. “We’re hoping that it won’t be 15 percent. That would be devastating to us.”

This article originally published on February 11, 2009.

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