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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Scott's budget stretches from unrealistic to draconian

By the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
From the Sun Sentinels editorial board

Balancing Florida's bleeding budget gap will take a lot of work. Unfortunately, the proposal Gov. Rick Scott released on Monday would make the task even harder.

Yes, everyone likes tax cuts — well, almost everyone. And yes, reducing the government's take would free up capital for business investment.

But to propose a $507 million school property tax cut while calling for $4.6 billion in cuts that could gut education budgets and other services is irresponsible. Fortunately, the leaders of both the state House and Senate have made clear they think major tax cuts are not doable at the moment. Hopefully, they will bring some more sober reasoning to the budget-making process.

We understand Gov. Scott and the Legislature do face a difficult challenge, and they will have to make painful decisions. And we agree that some of Gov. Scott's ideas are reasonable and overdue.

One of those is his plan to require more than 600,000 public employees to contribute to their retirement plans. That would save over $2.8 billion over two years.

There's also potential merit in revising the corporate tax. Rather than phasing it out, as Gov. Scott calls for, it would better serve the state to restructure the corporate tax to apply only to sales instead of also levying it on corporate properties and payroll.

But too much of the governor's plan is simply unrealistic and potentially harmful.

For example, his calculation of $4 billion in savings from establishing a managed care system for Medicaid could well be too optimistic. The governor also seems bent on eliminating the department of Community Affairs, which regulates growth, seemingly without regard for lessons learned the hard way through decades of unchecked development.

One of his proposals is simply tone deaf. While the governor's budget takes aim at different state agencies, he proposes to double the budget for his own staff and add almost 100 employees.

All in all, the good in the governor's draft budget is far outweighed by the unaffordable and potentially damaging. Floridians must now press their elected representatives in the Legislature to block and redirect those proposals that would inflict too much harm.

Will their lobbying work? Floridians have one advantage.

Besides the governor's Tallahassee offices, his gatherings with the friendliest of crowds, and appearances in a few enclaves, like Eustis, Gov. Scott seems unlikely to sell or defend his plan to the public.

So, people power, anyone?

BOTTOM LINE: Positive nuggets aside, this budget proposal is unrealistic, draconian.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorials/fl-governor-scott-budget-editorial-af20110209,0,2158973.story

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