$2.6B budget deficit plan gets final approval
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Disabled people will soon lose some of the help they’ve been getting to live on their own, school children could have fewer teachers and builders might be unable to finish apartments under construction under an affordable housing program.
Those are just some of the Floridians affected by spending cuts in a $2.6 billion budget deficit-elimination package approved Wednesday by Florida’s Legislature to end a nine-day special session.
The plan cleared the Republican-controlled Legislature with most Democrats in opposition. The bill goes to Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who has indicated he will sign the measure but is considering some line-item vetoes.
Cuts totaling $1.2 billion most heavily hit education, health care and social services and reduced the current year budget to $65 billion.
The package also taps reserves, shifts money around within the budget, raids trust funds and increases traffic fines. A self-imposed tax on nursing homes will draw down additional federal Medicaid money to more than offset the assessment.
A program that lets 32,000 developmentally disabled people live in their communities instead of institutions is being reduced by another 5 percent after taking a 7 percent cut when the budget was adopted last spring, said Deborah Linton, executive director of The ARC of Florida, an advocacy group. Another 17,000 people are on a waiting list and get no help.
The cut means job and living coaches and an in-home support aide will spend fewer hours every week – half the time in some cases – with Daniel Finlay, 28. He’s autistic but has his own apartment and works at the Wal-Mart in Pea Ridge just across Escambia Bay from Pensacola.
His mother, Ann Smith, of nearby Milton, said Finlay likes to repeat things he hears without realizing what he’s saying. He’s fascinated by the Russian language, and his job coach once interceded to smooth things out with a customer when he innocently but inappropriately asked if she knew how to say “I love you” in Russian.
“Why cut people who didn’t ask to come here with a disability?” Smith asked. “In this day and age we as a society should be more considerate.”
She said some parents she knows “are considering the horrible decision of sending their children to institutions.”
The legislation plugs a hole of at least $2.3 billion in the budget that runs through June 30, with millions to spare in case revenue keeps falling. Collections from sales and other taxes have been dropping because of the national recession and near collapse of the state’s housing industry.
The centerpiece is a budget bill (SB 2A) that passed 27-13 in the Senate and then 74-43 in the House. Both chambers also passed a series of implementing bills.
State agencies and schools were warned about cuts as far back as June, when Crist ordered a 4 percent holdback, so many already have laid off workers, frozen hiring and taken other steps to cut expenses.
Teresa Folsom, who teaches seventh-grade science at Deltona Middle School in Volusia County, was spared when her district laid off about 200 teachers. The cuts, though, have affected her in other ways, such as being ordered to cut utility expenses.
“We were told we can’t have any personal appliances,” Folsom said. “If you had a lamp on your desk that was supposed to go.”
Folsom said her school’s sports activities were discontinued and the building closed on weekends, so she had to cancel an ad hoc basketball program she ran gratis on Saturday mornings. The district also will run out of money to pay substitutes before the year ends.
The latest cut will reduce per-student spending by an average of $140. That’s 2 percent overall but 4 percent in state money because schools also get local tax dollars.
Most districts are expected to survive by using reserves and cutting expenses. Some, though, are barely making it and officials are worried about more cuts in the next budget year.