House leaders are touting their proposed budget for being lower than spending plans offered by the Senate and Gov. Ron DeSantis, while the legislative packages include hundreds of millions of dollars lawmakers want to bring home to their districts.
The House last week released a $91.37 billion proposal for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, an initial step as legislative leaders prepare to negotiate a final spending plan in March. The Senate proposal, also released last week, totaled $92.83 billion, while DeSantis in November released a $91.4 billion plan.
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House Speaker Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, said his chamber’s proposal provides teacher pay raises, “augments” child welfare and prison workers and offers lower per-capita spending than in the current year’s operating budget.
“As Florida grows, and our economy grows, so, too, does the temptation to spend the natural increases in revenue received by the government,” Oliva said in a statement Saturday. “But the Florida House, like every individual and family in our great state, must plan for the down times and save for a rainy day.”
In some major respects, the House and Senate proposals are similar. For example, both exceed DeSantis’ request to spend $625 million for Everglades restoration and other water projects. Also, the House says it would put $3.7 billion in reserves, while the Senate is calling for $3.5 billion.
Both would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to increase public-school teacher pay. That is a DeSantis priority, but the House and Senate differ on the amount of money to spend and, unlike DeSantis, want to set aside a portion of the money for veteran teachers.
In other ways, the House and Senate have substantial differences. For instance, the Senate seeks a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise for all state employees, while the House proposal would add $1,800 to the annual pay of state workers who earn less than $50,000 a year. DeSantis did not propose wide-ranging pay hikes for state employees.
Another big difference is that the Senate would fully fund affordable-housing programs at $387 million. The House is at $147 million for affordable housing, while “sweeping” other affordable-housing trust fund money to help balance the rest of the state budget.
Meanwhile, the Senate wants to spend $125 million on the Florida Forever land-conservation program, while the House would spend $20 million. The program got $33 million in the current year.
Visit Florida, the state’s tourism-marketing arm would continue its current-year funding of $50 million in the Senate plan, which also would provide an additional $2.5 million for Visit Florida to run a marketing campaign for the state’s colleges and universities. The House wants to close the agency.
Though details differ, both legislative chambers would funnel money to projects and programs in lawmakers’ districts.
The House’s plan includes more than 650 bills by members seeking just over $210 million for spending in their districts. The Senate’s proposal features more than 600 proposals by its members that combine to top $360 million.
The member projects back local efforts to enhance educational and public-assistance programs, build parks, back economic development, clean waterways, advance road and bridge projects, improve stormwater runoff, provide septic-to-sewer conversions and support local events.
Among the myriad House member proposals is $98,000 to help promote the Miami International Agriculture, Horse and Cattle Show (HB 3669; $200,000 for the Florida Agriculture Center and Horse Park in Marion County (HB 3195); $250,000 to protect the archives at the Harry S. Truman Little White House (HB 2733); and $500,000 to replace and improve the Mexico Beach city pier that was destroyed in Hurricane Michael (HB 3845).
Examples of items found in the Senate proposal are $250,000 for a Fernandina Beach dune project (Senate Form 1365); $750,000 to assist the Inverness Airport Business Park in Citrus County (Senate Form 1905); and $150,000 for Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens rain harvesting (Senate Form 1966).
The projects that made the separate budgets were drawn from more than 1,500 proposals filed by senators that combined to total nearly $2.49 billion. House members submitted more than 1,600 separate bills seeking a combined $2.3 billion.
If DeSantis follows his veto approach from last year, it could be another lean year for such spending, which is often derided as “pork” or, in a Tallahassee term, “turkeys” because of how it gets into the budget or its lack of statewide relevance.
For the current fiscal year that started July 1, the $90.98 billion budget contains about $270 million for 440 local projects and programs. Legislators had approved nearly 600 proposals, worth a combined $400 million before DeSantis used his line-item veto to slash more than 160 proposals, worth $130 million.
The 2019 numbers were partially inflated by Panhandle lawmakers seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for communities devastated by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
For 2020, both chambers are pushing more than $100 million for such things as ongoing storm repairs and preparing for future storms.
Included in the House proposal is $3 million to design a new state Emergency Operations Center and nearly $1.3 million to cover Gulf Coast State College tuition and fee revenue lost because of Hurricane Michael.
The Senate plan includes $3 million to retrofit existing hurricane shelters and $250,000 to cover lost tuition and fee revenue at Gulf Coast State College.