Special session kicks off, so does the bickering

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

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Lawmakers begin special session to balance Florida's budget.

TALLAHASSEE (Bay News 9) -- The special legislative session devoted to balancing Florida's budget kicked off Monday in Tallahassee, and it didn't take long for the partisan bickering to start.

During the next two weeks, lawmakers will debate what to cut, what to spare and how much to borrow.

To fill the $2.5 billion budget hole, Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, says the Florida government may have to head to the bank.

"If you have an especially bad economic month, such as an unexpected illness or a major malfunction in your house or your car, just like families -- we've had to do this -- you temporarily dip into savings; you use that to make it through the tough spot," Cannon said. "And then when things go back to normal, you put that money back. And I hope that's the approach that we take."

But savings alone won't do it. That's why Republicans are looking at deep cuts to everything from education to health care.

Democrats want to avoid the cuts with new taxes on things such as private planes. And they want the legislature to sign off on the Seminole Indian Tribe's new casino games.

The casino games could give the state access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

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But Democratic budget chief Rep. Ron Saunders, D-Key West, says that his GOP colleagues aren't budging.

"We're not going to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. We're not going to cut someplace else deeper to avoid a cut someplace else," Saunders said. "We're basically going to say, 'okay, you made this budget, you're going to have to fix it,' and it's not going to be up to us to fix it because they've taken our options off the table."

During the next few days, appropriations committees will get to work on individual portions of the budget. Then during the weekend the House and Senate are expected to get together to hammer out a final plan.

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