Governor signs new budget

Funding for local senior projects included

By MELISSA BURNSED

Florida Governor Charlie Crist last week signed the states 2008-09 pared-down budget cutting just over $1-million, with his line-item veto power. The governor left in the budget hundreds of projects totaling more than $109-million despite Florida TaxWatch having included them on their  annual "tax turkeys" list. The public watchdog group claimed the projects narrowly benefit one part of the state or were approved with no public discussion.

Among the projects labeled as turkeys that Governor Crist did not veto funding for were local senior center facilities and improvements in Baker, Bradford and Nassau County. County and state representatives had lobbied hard to insure the funding grants weren’t eliminated from the approved budget.

They all survived the governors veto along with other more questionable projects including a Latin Chamber of Commerce Miami film festival, a Haitian heritage museum, and a Miami zoological invasive species exhibit.

Crist signed the $66.2-billion spending plan compiled by the Republican Legislature without the usual public ceremony. It's the first time in memory that a governor held no public event to highlight the budget, even though Crist has held ceremonies for numerous other bills around the state and recently flew to Wall Street for a bill-signing ceremony.

The decision appeared to be based on a political calculation that there's little worth celebrating. The budget is nearly $6-billion less than the one Crist signed last year. The reason was a steep decline in tax receipts from Florida's boom-to-bust real estate market.

Crist axed two projects, $300,000 for a lake restoration program in Central Florida and $840,000 for a Miami festival promoting ties with Miami's sizable Nicaraguan community. Crist also formally vetoed a $250-million transfer from the state-run insurer, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., to provide startup loans to new insurers. He previously vetoed the bill creating the loan program.

The budget plan has been criticized by Crist's own child welfare secretary, Bob Butterworth. It cuts public schools funding and health care, eliminates hundreds of state jobs, freezes most state workers' pay for a second year and raises state university and community college tuition 6 percent.

Opinions on the governors budget decision and lack of line item vetoes, varied depending on party affiliation.

House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber of Miami Beach said Crist was right to stay out of sight because there was no celebration in a budget that "delivers a disproportionate amount of pain to developmentally disabled children and seniors in nursing homes."

Senate Appropriations Chairman Mike Fasano, a republican from New Port Richey said,

"The governor was clear in his message … that any dollar that goes to help jobs, any dollars that go to help our economy would not be vetoed."

Crist told reporters Tuesday that he supports projects that put people to work during an economic slump. He added that the legislative branch had done a good job in eliminating pork barrel projects.