House, Senate agree on broad budget outline

By Marc Caputo
Herald Tallahassee Bureau
© 2009 Bradenton.com
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

TALLAHASSEE — Breaking a week of tense gridlock, the leaders of the Legislature announced Tuesday that they finally have a broad agreement on tax increases and a balanced budget.

Though the details still need to be worked out, the budget deal all but guarantees that smokers will pay $1 more a pack, gamblers will get to play more poker, drivers will be stuck with higher license fees and hunters will pay more for licenses to shoot deer, ducks and turkeys.

All those tax and fee increases come on top of $5 billion in federal stimulus money lawmakers are plowing into the proposed state budget, which had a deficit of more than $6 billion.

Just a few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that conservative House would consider higher taxes and more gambling. Now the House is embracing them.

“It’s certainly significant,” said the House’s lead budget negotiator, Dean Cannon, who calls the tax hikes “fees,” “revenues’’ or “surcharges.”

“It is certainly unprecedented that we have this combination of an economic downtown, a Republican-dominated Legislature willing to consider revenues like the tobacco surcharge and the complexity of the federal stimulus,” Cannon said.

As is the norm, Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul privately agreed on a bottom-line number for next year’s budget of more than $65 billion. Their agreement capped days of sometime-acrimonious talks between Cannon and Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander.

Since they reached agreement so late in the legislative session, Atwater and Cretul said the Legislature couldn’t finish the 60-day session on time Friday. They plan to extend the session by a week. The final budget will likely be printed early next week.

Atwater, echoing Cretul, cautioned lawmakers to “be very thoughtful and careful’’ in their conversations about the budget, to ensure that they discuss public business in the sunshine. He also issued a rare request to refrain from slipping in new budget language that hadn’t been discussed in public -- a nod to the fact that former House Speaker Ray Sansom was indicted two weeks ago for alleged misconduct in handling the budget.

“This this is a very, very open process,” Atwater said.

Still, the details of his agreement with Cretul didn’t become public until much later in the day, when budget negotiators met publicly for the first time all session in joint conference committees composed of legislators from both chambers.

Under the budget agreement, the House and Senate agreed to take $100 million from a transportation trust fund, trim about $30 million from employee salaries, exempt cigars from the cigarette-tax proposal and trim higher education by about $100 million more.

In all, the plan calls for the state to sock away about $1.7 billion in savings. It also raises $930 million in tobacco taxes, $800 million in fees and fines, and $600 million in raids on savings accounts called trust funds. A raid on a transportation trust fund could endanger existing projects, such as a Central Florida commuter rail, called SunRail.

The budget committees will have to hammer out final details of the bottom-line agreements, determining what programs to cut, which to fund, what fees to raise and what type of worker pay cuts to impose.

This year, in addition to the budget conference committees, House and Senate members will also meet to reconcile differences in their proposed gambling agreement with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and with parimutuels.

State Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said late Tuesday although final appointments have not been made, he would be chairing one of two conference committees dealing exclusively with the gambling issue. While Galvano is leading the House’s committee, Sen. Dennis L. Jones, R-Seminole, probably would chair the Senate’s, Galvano said.

“Basically, we’re the two who have carried the bills,” he added.

Among Galvano’s “must-haves” would be an agreement, called a compact, with The Seminole Tribe of Florida, owner of seven casinos in the state. It should come first, before legislators consider help for pari-mutuel businesses, such as dog and horse tracks, he said.

“I don’t want to see us address one issue without the other,” Galvano noted.

Galvano hoped his committee could start work immediately, this morning if possible.

“We’ve got to get going,” he added. “It would behoove us to start as early as possible.”

Atwater said “there’s no predestined’’ outcome for the gambling deal. “There’s going to be a lot of dialogue in that conference,” he said.

At stake: $360 million to $500 million in potential revenue. The Senate wants more gaming, the House less.

— Herald reporter Sara Kennedy contributed to this report.