House panels begin work on budget deficit
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Florida’s top education official urged lawmakers Tuesday to give school districts more spending leeway as the Legislature began trying to erase an estimated $2.3 billion state budget deficit.
Education Commissioner Eric Smith told a House panel that maximizing flexibility and holding off on adding new programs are the two leading requests from local school officials.
The Prekindergarten-12th Grade Appropriations Committee is one of 10 House panels that held initial meetings on the deficit in advance of a special session set for Jan. 5-16.
Due to falling tax revenues, Gov. Charlie Crist directed state agencies to hold back spending by 4 percent even before the original $66 billion budget went into effect July 1. They now are being asked to offer proposals for a theoretical 10 percent across-the-board reduction even though the final cuts may not be that deep.
A 10 percent cut is $865 million less for public schools, and it would put some districts into a “financial emergency,” or at least uncertainty, Smith said.
“This is a staggering number,” he said.
“Reductions in the middle of the year are extraordinarily, extraordinarily challenging,” Smith told the panel. “They have employees under contract – legal contract – teachers, support personnel. They have vendors under contact. They have purchased their books.”
Many districts already have depleted reserves and cut support services due to a 1.2 percent midyear cut in last year’s budget and a 6 percent reduction in this year’s original budget.
To make another midyear correction, schools probably would have to cut support functions again, including central administration, food and custodial services, transportation, psychologists, counselors, social workers and reading coaches to spare classrooms, Smith said.
The state’s 10 public universities also have economized due to previous spending cuts, said Tim Jones, chief financial officer for the Board of Governors.
They’ve conserved energy, shared support services, increased class sizes, reduced library services, frozen hiring, eliminated degree programs and capped enrollment, Jones told the State Universities and Private Colleges Appropriations Committee.
More cuts could mean reducing enrollment – currently about 300,000 students – and faculty, limiting course selections, dropping more degree programs, lowering graduation rates and skimping on research, Jones said.
“Right now our universities have been trimming around the edges,” he said. “You can only do so much of that before you really start getting into the meat of the institutions.”
The cuts may be even tougher for the Agency for Health Care Administration, which includes the state-federal Medicaid program.
Health Care Appropriations Committee Chairman Kevin Ambler, R-Lutz, said nothing is sacrosanct but noted nursing homes for the profoundly disabled depend almost entirely on Medicaid.
“If you cut them, you’re literally putting people out on the street,” Ambler said.
One money-saving option may be merging the Agency for Health Care Administration with the Department of Health, but Ambler said most of the easy cuts already have been made.
“We’re pretty much at the end of the rope,” Ambler said. “We’re pretty lean already.”
Social services advocate Karen Woodall said in an interview that cutting state Medicaid contributions would cost Florida federal matching money.
“We don’t save the federal dollars to use somewhere else in the budget, it goes to another state, so it’s really stupid,” Woodall said.