By BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
Budgets have been approved. Committee meetings are dropping off. And the major differences between the House and the Senate are coming into focus.
The halfway point of the legislative session passed this week, and lawmakers were already trying to set the stage to avoid the kind of slow-motion train wreck that accompanied the end of their 2015 gathering. With a more modest gap between spending plans this year — and no unbridgeable policy divides like last year’s fight over health-care spending — there’s hope, at least, that the Legislature can finish its work on time.
Or at least the necessary work of agreeing on a final budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and the likely tax-cut package that goes along with it. But there are still key differences between lawmakers on everything from a lucrative gambling agreement with the Seminole Tribe to whether the state should change the public employees’ retirement system.
The to-do list is set. The story of the second half of the session revolves around how many items lawmakers will check off.
A BILLION HERE, A BILLION THERE
While there is occasionally an outbreak of bipartisanship over the House budget, the chamber is generally more given to argument over its spending plan than the Senate is. And this week was true to form: While the Senate debate was sleepy, the House discussion was charged with objections from minority Democrats, none of those complaints noisier than a fight over whether to ban funding for Planned Parenthood.
The legislator who sponsored the Planned Parenthood provision didn’t really talk about what motivated it, instead giving a presentation heavy on the separation of powers and mechanics of the process and light on his decision-making.
“This is a matter of legislative authority,” said Health Care Appropriations Chairman Matt Hudson, R-Naples. “We have a choice. … Given the fact that we had never expressly said to fund them, when you see that happening, I think it’s incumbent upon us as a Legislature to say, ‘Hey, no, that’s not what we want to do.’ ”
Democrats continued to hammer away at the cut, which they said would harm women’s health, given that there is already a federal law preventing federal money that flows through the state budget from being used to pay for abortions.
“The funding that they get from this state is for the things that women need,” said Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach.
The Senate budget debate was, as usual, a more collegial affair. The chamber’s spending plan — which lacked the Planned Parenthood language in the House blueprint — was approved unanimously, even though some Democrats made clear they would like to see a different approach.
“For me, personally, even though I’m going to support this budget, I just want to let you know: I think it’s more important for us to spend that money on our students than it is to spend it on a tax cut,” said Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth. “I think it’s more important to spend this money on health care for children or on mental health services than it is for a tax cut.”
But the more notable comments might have come near the end of the debate, when Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon, delivered his closing arguments for the bill.
Senate leaders have clearly been more hesitant about the size of the tax cuts offered by Gov. Rick Scott and the House, both of which amount to roughly $1 billion. Lee issued the most scathing critique yet about a large package — the Senate’s opening offer was $250 million — signaling a major hurdle for one of Scott’s top priorities.
“I can tell you that, in my view, if we even begin to entertain tax cuts remotely in the area of that billion-dollar number, it would be fiscally irresponsible of us,” Lee said.
CUTTING TO THE CHASE
Lee’s comments came shortly after the House charged ahead with a $991.7 million tax-cut bill (HB 7099) that includes provisions aimed at reducing taxes on commercial leases, permanently eliminating a tax on manufacturing and filling the calendar with sales-tax “holidays for consumers.”
House Finance & Tax Chairman Matt Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican who has spearheaded the House package, said the measures will help boost Florida’s economy and he’s optimistic most of the proposals will get accepted by the Senate.
“The goal in the House is to return $1 billion to the people of Florida,” Gaetz said. “On the methodology, I’m eager to have a discussion … on how that can be done.”
The House voted 96-17 to approve the package, with a few Democrats saying they voted in favor because there are “good elements” in the proposal and that they anticipate the total cuts will be reduced during budget talks with the Senate.
“I do not believe there is one chance, one iota of a chance, that when we finish this process on day 60 (the final day of the legislative session), that there’s going to be a $1 billion tax cut,” said Rep. David Richardson, a Miami Beach Democrat who voted for the bill.
The Senate has been slowly piecing together its tax package through individual member bills still in the committee process and formally unveiled a plan this week to add a temporary reduction in education property taxes to the mix. Those taxes, known as the required local effort, form the overwhelming majority of a proposed increase in education funding and have sparked criticism that lawmakers are balancing the budget on the backs of property owners.
“This is not just a tax cut,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, the chairman of the Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittee and father of Matt Gaetz. “This is making sure that the state, through its other revenue sources, picks up our fair share of our partnership with local school boards and local property taxpayers.”
Under the bill, at least half of the boost in education funding — scheduled to hit record levels — would have to come from state funds, not the required local effort. Using the Senate’s budget proposal — the most generous one on education funding — the state would need to kick in another $183.2 million to increase school spending by the same amount and get to an even split. An equivalent rollback in property taxes would be about $12.40 on $100,000 of taxable value.
There were still unknowns about how exactly the proposal would work. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, repeated Thursday that he would be interested in the proposal as long as lawmakers ensured the money made it back to taxpayers.
“Because if we’re just pushing money back to locals and not cutting the millage, then that’s not ideal, unless we’re writing checks back to the individuals that pay property taxes,” he said.
Lee said the proposal would likely work by lowering the millage and not by sending rebates directly to taxpayers, which he said would incur large postage bills.
MATTERS OF LIFE, DEATH AND PENSIONS
Lawmakers are also facing the clock when it comes to hammering out differences on how to fix Florida’s flawed death-penalty sentencing process, which was struck down as unconstitutional last month by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the heart of the legislative debate is an element of the death penalty not addressed by the high court: whether a jury should be required to unanimously recommend an execution before the penalty can be imposed.
The Senate backs unanimity, advocated by nearly all death penalty experts, while the House is supporting a 9-3 jury recommendation, pushed by state prosecutors. In the past, recommendations could come from a majority of jurors.
At a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, family members of murder victims talked about their support for not requiring unanimity.
“Justice won’t be served” by allowing a single juror to thwart a recommendation of death, Emilee Cope told the panel.
Cope’s father, Keith, was kidnapped, hogtied to a bed and left to die in 2009. Keith Cope died later from complications brought on by injuries sustained as a result of the attack. A jury voted 10-2 to recommend putting her father’s killer to death, Emilee Cope said.
The two chambers “have room to compromise,” particularly about providing notice to defendants when the death penalty will be sought, Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said later Wednesday.
“We will find a resolution to the issue. I think there’s some middle ground there,” Bradley, a former prosecutor, said. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Scott would not say what lawmakers should do to ensure that Florida’s death penalty system is fixed. But Attorney General Pam Bondi told The News Service of Florida she sides with prosecutors.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has not required (unanimity)” in previous cases, Bondi said, and the court did not address the issue in the ruling last month. That ruling found that that the state’s system of giving judges — and not juries — the power to impose death sentences was an unconstitutional violation of defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
When asked why she and the prosecutors supported a 9-3 supermajority vote to recommend the death penalty, Bondi said, “Compromise.”
Cracks between the two chambers were also showing up in other policy areas. House leaders want to combine a measure dealing with death benefits for first responders killed in the line of duty with a change to the overall retirement system for public employees. The change would involve whether employees would be enrolled in a traditional pension plan or a 401(k)-style plan if they don’t choose one. The Senate sponsor of the death-benefits bill called for his colleagues to reject the House plan and pass his bill.
“I hope we can make a very strong showing on this bill as it goes over to our friends on the other side. … I don’t believe we should ever be negotiating on the bodies of our dead first responders,” said Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate.
Also this week, House and Senate members took different approaches to major gambling legislation. A House panel overwhelmingly supported a trio of bills that would ratify a $3 billion gambling deal between the state and the Seminole Tribe, do away with greyhound racing while allowing dog tracks to keep operating other games, and open the door for slot machines in Palm Beach County.
Senators, however, were more cautious. A committee postponed consideration of gambling measures after Sen. Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican set to become the chamber’s president in November, filed a series of amendments that would dramatically change the proposal, months in the making.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The House and Senate approved budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1, setting up negotiations for the one bill lawmakers are constitutionally required to finish each year.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The death penalty to me is equivalent to euthanizing an animal. They’re given peace and they won’t have to suffer anymore. Meanwhile, my father suffered horribly. I wish he could have traded places with those defendants, in the sense that he would have been given a more peaceful, painless death.”— Emilee Cope, a victim advocate for the Edgewater Police Department whose father was kidnapped, hogtied to a bed and left to die in 2009. Keith Cope died later from complications brought on by injuries sustained as a result of the attack.
