Dockery: No such thing as a continuation budget

Paula Dockery
View Comments

How will the Florida Legislature divvy up $80 billion?

Each year the legislature meets for 60 days to sort through all types of issues but the only bill they are required to pass is an annual spending plan referred to as the appropriations bill — more commonly called the state budget. This year the Republican-led House and Senate failed to pass that one bill before session ended.

The two chambers could not reach a consensus on whether to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid coverage to an additional 840,000 of Florida's working poor. The full Senate wanted to, the House leadership did not.

Why did this hold up the entire budget? The Senate plan included the health care expansion along with the federal dollars and totaled $80 billion. The House budget did not and totaled less than $77 billion. Without agreement on the total spending amount, the budget process could not be completed.

Senate President Andy Gardiner suggested the two legislative chambers should extend session to work out a compromise. The Speaker of the House, Steve Crisafulli, decided to adjourn three days early without a budget instead.

Strategically, it was a good move for Crisafulli if his goal was to avoid insuring these 840,000 individuals. Don't get me wrong, the right thing to do for Florida's working poor, for our hospitals and businesses and for all Florida taxpayers would have been to negotiate, compromise and finish the budget, including some form of health care expansion.

So here we are awaiting the start of the special session. Gardiner promises a budget will be passed.

Enter Gov. Rick Scott.

Instead of sitting down with the two leaders, Scott has formed a commission of nonexperts to examine hospital funding; has instructed his agency heads to create budgets based on a doomsday scenario of a government shutdown; has proposed using a "continuation budget," which does not exist in Florida; and has insisted that this fictional budget would have an $8 billion surplus.

Wow! My head is exploding. Let's break this down. And let's start using the correct terminology.

In Florida we are required to have a "balanced budget," which means we must not spend more than we take in which would result in deficit spending. In the same vein, any surplus funds must be appropriated to account for every projected dollar.

We don't have a "continuation budget," a creature of the federal government where deficit spending is common as are partisan impasses.

The Office of Economic and Demographic Research is an arm of the Legislature whose role is to forecast economic trends and revenues. In other words, the EDR updates the Legislature on revenue projections so it can make informed policy decisions and craft a balanced budget.

During its revenue estimating conference, the EDR projected 2015 revenues would exceed last year's revenues, creating a surplus of $1.8 billion. Scott's claim of an $8 billion surplus has many of us scratching our heads. He has yet to explain his fuzzy math.

When there is a revenue surplus, the Legislature decides whether to spend those surplus funds, give some or all of it back to taxpayers as tax cuts, give it to special interests in the form of tax incentives — reducing future tax collections — or save it in reserve for contingencies like hurricanes or an infrastructure collapse.

If revenues decrease from the previous year, it creates a deficit. When that happens legislators decide on overall spending cuts or cuts in specific areas. The Legislature can also raise taxes or fees to cover all or part of the shortage. In any case, it cannot deficit spend.

This doesn't mean the state can't borrow money. It does. We issue debt for transportation projects, school construction, and other infrastructure. The budget includes funding to pay for the debt service on the bonds. Issuing debt is not the same as deficit spending.

As for Scott's new commission, while the goal is laudable, the timing is questionable and the composition is laughable. Members should be experts on hospital funding and charity care, not political pawns and donors.

Lastly, Scott's doomsday scenario of a government shutdown while the two sides are talking and making progress is a rather bizarre tactic for a governor from the same party as the leadership of both chambers.

If state funding is genuinely the concern, the Legislature could sunset the health care expansion in 2017, when the federal share decreases from 100 to 95 percent, and re-examine the costs at that time.

The House should allow a floor vote on a modified Senate health care plan with the promise that no member would be punished for his or her vote. That would enable voters to hold representatives accountable.

I'm betting that would also lead to a balanced budget.

The writer


View Comments