- November 23, 2024
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Gov. Rick Scott signed off on the state budget this week and showed once again that he thinks like a businessman. And that’s a good thing for Florida.
The $70 billion budget approval came with a $142 million list of local projects (turkeys) that he vetoed. That wasn’t a popular move in the cities where the projects had been proposed.
For example, a Miami Herald story stated: “From vetoing $500,000 for a Bay of Pigs Historical Museum — on the 51st anniversary of the invasion — to rejecting a plan to replace aging trucks in the city of Hialeah, the governor vetoed $25 million from Miami-Dade and Broward alone.”
While Miami residents might be cursing Scott’s name, Flagler residents and everyone else in the state should be breathing a huge sigh of relief. As worthy as a Bay of Pigs museum might sound, how could it possibly help Flagler County? And if it won’t help us at all, why should our tax dollars build it?
Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich was highly critical of Scott’s budget. She wrote: “Gov. Scott vetoed programs critical to residents throughout Florida. These weren’t so-called ‘turkeys.’ These were programs that impact all of us statewide: He struck more than $900,000 that would have immunized children against meningitis, an often fatal and highly contagious disease.
“He eliminated $3 million from the University of Miami College of Medicine — money dedicated to training Florida physicians for practice in Florida. He vetoed more than $4 million earmarked for Nova Southeastern to train Florida residents enrolled in pharmacy, nursing and other allied health sciences, as well as an additional $2 million that would have steered these same professionals to Florida’s rural and underserved areas.”
All of these projects are worthy. But Rich never gives a solution as to how she might pay for them. It would be a great thing if the state paid every medical bill for every Florida resident, too, but there must be a limit, somewhere, to how much government can spend.
Again, in this budget, Scott thinks like less like a politician and more like a businessman. He knows debt can’t just be brushed under the rug. He wrote:
“We paid down $500 million in debt last year — the first time in 20 years that the state has paid down debt. As a matter of fact, state debt increased by an average of more than $1 billion annually over the previous 20 years.”
Many people hate Scott for cutting things from the budget. But to think that we never have to cut anything is naïve.
The argument could be made that these turkeys, when looked at in the aggregate, make Florida a more attractive place to locate a company. But most of the time, the politicians who seek these projects are simply looking for a prize they can bring home and use as a campaign carrot to get re-elected. That’s not smart government.
It’s easy to be dismissive of projects in distant counties, but there was at least one vetoed item that directly impacts Flagler County. Scott vetoed $250,000 that the county was hoping to use to plan an expansion of the Flagler County Inmate Facility. The expansion is badly needed.
County Administrator Craig Coffey told our reporter, Andrew O’Brien: “The governor’s veto is a setback, but we’ll find a way.” I’m sure Coffey is disappointed, but kudos to him for taking a leadership role on the jail project. If we want something, we should have to pay for it. Flagler County residents have to believe that and back it up if we want to be exempt from buying a truck that will never leave the city limits of Hialeah.
This is the first in a series of three columns about the budget. Send letters to [email protected]. Include full name and city of residence.
