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Tallahassee Trend
The '06 Agenda
In Jeb Bush's last session, the Legislature has billions to play with as it considers everything from tax cuts to land conversation.
? Spending
The tax cuts, however sized and distributed, will be small compared to the new spending. Again, it's a question of who shares in the largesse.
Social services, including Medicaid, inevitably consume a big chunk of new money, and there will probably be pay increases at the cost-of-living level for state employees.
State universities want full-enrollment funding. Private colleges and universities want more for financial-need scholarships. Bush has his teacher-recruitment program and is proposing another increase in per-student spending on schools, much of which is going toward the new class-size requirements. He also is proposing $52 million in additional need-based aid to boost minority enrollment in state universities.
Bush also wants to do more capital spending from current revenue instead of relying on more debt financing.
Calabro of TaxWatch has endorsed that approach. "You can never go wrong paying down state debt," he says. Debt has doubled to $22 billion over the last 10 years. Even with the state's new AAA credit rating, interest can get expensive on $22 billion.
Calabro also thinks this would be a good time to restore money to various earmarked trust funds that were tapped for general spending during leaner times a few years back. Those trust funds were created for specific purposes and often were funded by new taxes, Calabro notes. "It's a matter of integrity," he says. "That's why they're called 'trust' funds."
? Land Conservation
Another place where paying now saves a lot later is in acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands. The Florida Forever program has been budgeted at the same $300 million a year for 15 years, even as land prices have soared.
A coalition of conservation and environmental organizations called the Forever Florida Coalition has detailed a need for $18 billion in spending on parks, recreation facilities and endangered lands and wildlife. And that doesn't include Everglades restoration. The coalition members, such as Audubon of Florida and 1000 Friends of Florida, aren't suggesting that all should come from the state, though.
The subtext for the land-acquisition portion of the $18 billion is that the land ought to be acquired as soon as possible, before prices go up even more or developers beat conservationists to the land.
