Fla. lawmakers agree on state worker pay cut

By Bill Kaczor
Associated Press Writer
© 2009 Associated Press
Sunday, May 03. 2009

State employees who make $45,000 or more a year will take a 2 percent pay cut, legislative budget chiefs decided Sunday as they settled a major issue in House-Senate negotiations over a new spending plan.

The cut would save the state $30 million and help balance an austere budget that's expected to top $65 billion for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The pay cut was one of the last major sticking points in talks between the chambers.

"It preserves about 79 percent of the employees that take no pay cut and takes a 2 percent cut for the top 21 percent of state employees," said Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales. "We thought it was fair and equitable."

Not to Doug Martin, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

"We had hoped they would have found a pay level above that," Martin said. "This is very disappointing."

Martin questioned why state workers, who have gone without a raise for three years, should sacrifice when the Legislature has a current year surplus of $56 million that lawmakers may keep in the state treasury to earn investment income.

"I just hope that there are no layoffs to go with this," Martin said. "We think there will be some layoffs."

Legislators, who took a 5 percent cut in the current budget year, will see their pay drop another 1 percentage point to about $30,000.

The state worker cut doesn't apply to public university employees because faculty salaries already lag those in other states and Florida is having a hard time attracting and keeping professors and other staff, said Rep. Marcelo Llorente, a Miami Republican who leads one of two main budget panels in the House.

House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, and Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, had agreed to reduce pay by $30 million before formal budget talks began last week. How lawmakers would get to that number, though, wasn't determined until Sunday in a proposal offered by Llorente and accepted by Alexander.

Lawmakers plan to complete budget negotiations Monday and vote on a compromise plan Friday to end a one-week extension of the 2009 legislative session. The overtime resulted from a stalemate between Cretul and Atwater over preliminary budget issues that wasn't resolved until last week.

The Senate on Sunday also dropped a proposal to privatize a new prison in Live Oak in the interests of compromise, Alexander said, although still contending that would have saved the state money.

School boards, meanwhile, received approval to raise property taxes an additional 25 cents per $1,000 of value, but only if they vote by more than a simple majority. To keep the increases for more than two years, though, they'd have to get voter approval.

Talks over expanding gambling to generate more state revenue were suspended until Monday to focus on spending issues.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who dropped in on a negotiating session, said he was encouraged by the latest offer from the House, which has been reluctant to approve additional gaming.

The chamber's chief gaming negotiator, Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, proposed allowing the Seminole Indians to have black jack tables at their Hard Rock casino in Hollywood, one of seven tribal gambling facilities.

"That's a bit of a breakthrough," Crist said. "That gives you some hope that there's real good faith negotiating going on."

Crist, though, upped the ante by threatening to veto spending items from the budget if lawmakers fail to approve a gambling compact with the tribe.

The Senate wants to allow blackjack and other card games three Seminole casinos in Broward County and one in Tampa but not at smaller ones in Immokalee, Big Cypress and Brighton.

The House's other main budget negotiator, Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, agreed to drop college and university provisions that would have banned the use of state-appropriated money for embryonic stem cell research and student trips to Cuba and three other counties the State Department considers sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria and Sudan.

Rivera said he backed off on stem cells because "at this moment there aren't any funds on the horizon to engage in that activity."

He said existing law already bans the use of taxpayer money, though not other funds raised by the schools, for trips to terrorism-sponsoring nations.

Budget negotiators also agreed to restore money that had been cut for library and cultural grants but had to dip into the state's transportation trust fund to do it, which could delay some road projects.

The Florida Forever environmental land buying program remained shut out of the budget. Lawmakers, though, agreed to carry over authority to sell $250 million in bonds for such land buys from this year. The bonds couldn't be sold because of a decline in real estate transaction taxes used to pay them back. Legislation has been passed to improve the security of the bonds and lawmakers are confident they now can be sold.