$65.6B budget passes in Senate
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – A unanimous Florida Senate on Thursday passed a $65.6 billion budget proposal that includes a $1-a-pack increase in Florida’s cigarette tax and other revenue-generating provisions that aren’t in the House’s spending plan.
The House, meanwhile, began a partisan debate on a budget that would spend $549 million less than the Senate’s version in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The House will vote on its plan – split into two bills – Friday.
Joint conference committees will convene Monday to begin resolving differences between the two Republican-controlled chambers in time for final action by the end of the regular legislative session on May 1.
While the Senate voted 39-0 for its budget bill (SB 2600), House Democrats complained their chamber’s plan lacks the cigarette tax increase and other new revenue in the Senate measure.
Besides raising the present tax of 34 cents a pack by $1, a Senate budget conforming bill (SB 1840) would add a surtax of $1 an ounce to other tobacco products including cigars and snuff. The measure is expected to raise $1 billion for heath care.
“We think that’s a fair an equitable tax,” said Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales. “It’s equitable since it’s a decision that an individual makes in their own lives.”
The sponsor, Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, said that, more importantly, it would save lives by encouraging tobacco users to quit and discouraging youngsters from taking up the habit.
The Senate voted 39-0 as well for the tobacco bill after agreeing to exempt Florida-made cigars sold out of state.
Alexander offered the out-of-state provision as a compromise with senators who wanted to keep an existing exclusion from state tobacco taxes for all cigars.
“Don’t send the cigar industry up in flames,” implored Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, before withdrawing an amendment that would have killed the cigar tax in the face of leadership opposition.
Florida manufactures about 90 percent of all U.S.-made cigars. Industry officials say the tax would result in reduced sales, layoffs and companies going out of business or moving.
As a move to prevent smokers from avoiding the new tax by purchasing cigarettes on Indian lands, the Senate added a provision to limit the quantity of cigarettes tribes can sell – five packs per day times the number of members the tribe has.
The Senate also plans to close loopholes in corporate and certain real estate-related taxes and expand Seminole Indian and pari-mutuel gambling to raise additional dollars.
The Senate voted 27-11 in a bipartisan roll call for a gambling conforming bill (SB 1840) expected to raise $400 million a year. That’s about twice as much as an earlier compact with the tribe Gov. Charlie Crist negotiated before the Florida Supreme Court ruled any such deal requires legislative approval.
The Seminoles could turn their Hard Rock Cafes into full-blown casinos while South Florida dog and horse tracks and jai-alai frontons could install more lucrative slot machines than now permitted.
A pending House bill would give the Seminoles little more than the same slot machines voters have already approved for pari-mutuels in South Florida and provide the state with about $100 million a year.
Both chambers are raising community college and university tuition and fees on a variety of services ranging from issuing driver licenses to certifying scales. The House, though, relies more heavily on fee increases than the Senate. Both also are relying on about $3 billion in federal stimulus money to help close a $6 billion gap between anticipated revenues and expenses.
Spending cuts and the new revenue provisions fill the rest of that hole. The Senate version would spend about $100 million more than the current budget and the House about $400 million less.
While Senate Democrats voted for their chamber’s budget bill, some complained it doesn’t spend enough on education and health and human services.