Crist signs $66.5 billion Fla. budget
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a 2 percent pay cut for about 28,000 state employees Wednesday as he signed an austere $66.5 billion state budget. It’s balanced through a combination of spending cuts, federal stimulus money and higher taxes, fees and tuition.
The only other line item Crist vetoed would have shifted $6 million in fees paid by concealed weapons permit applicants to cover that program’s expenses to other state spending.
Crist said he vetoed the $30 million pay cut, which would have affected only those workers making more than $45,000 a year, to help Florida’s faltering economy.
“These 28,000 people and their families are consumers, too,” Crist said. “And I want them to continue to have the ability to make purchases and help stimulate Florida’s economy further.”
The Republican governor, who signed a no-new-taxes pledge for his U.S. Senate race next year, defended his acceptance of about $2 billion in tax and fee increases. They will fall most heavily on motorists, court users and smokers.
“We’d rather not have to do it,” Crist said. “But we’d rather not have the economy we have today, too. It is what it is.”
Crist said Floridians realize the state needs more money to overcome revenue shortfalls brought on by the global recession and the near collapse of the state’s housing market.
The new budget that takes effect July 1 is $5 billion less than the one Crist signed into law two years ago.
The governor, though, insisted the budget (SB 2600) is free of any “broad-based tax increases” – even the $1-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax that’s now just 34 cents. Crist said it’s a relatively narrow tax because only 2 million of the state’s approximately 18 million residents smoke.
“I view it as more of a health issue than a tax issue,” Crist said. “Ronald Reagan used to say if you want to kill something, tax it. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad if it killed smoking.”
The budget includes an 8 percent tuition increase for students at Florida’s public universities and colleges. A separate bill (SB 762) Crist says he’ll sign would let each university – but not the colleges – add another 7 percent for a total 15 percent increase.
Crist killed the employee pay cut by vetoing only proviso language although the Florida Constitution says he must also veto an underlying appropriation. The pay cut proviso, though, isn’t tied to any one appropriation.
The governor said his lawyers advise he’s on sound legal ground because he has not eliminated budget reductions expected from the pay cut. Crist said he will direct agency heads who report to him to make up for the vetoed pay cut by using their authority under state law to transfer money from other budget categories.
He also plans to urge the courts and Cabinet agencies to do the same.
House Health Care Appropriations Chairman Kevin Ambler, a Republican lawyer from Lutz, said there’s also more than enough reserve money – about $1.7 billion – in the budget to offset the pay cut veto. While any citizen can challenge the veto, he doubted lawmakers or anyone else would do that.
Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said he hadn’t had a chance to take a close look at the veto but respected the fact Crist lawyers had approved it.
Rep. Michelle Rehwinkle Vasilinda, a Tallahassee Democrat whose district includes thousands of state workers, praised the veto. But she said she’d still probably have voted against the budget even without the pay cut because the Republican-controlled Legislature failed to pass other revenue-raising measures such as repealing some sales tax exemptions.