Could Florida Legislature’s budget standoff be as bad as one of 1992?

Article Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post

By John Kennedy 

Published April 22, 2015

  

A standoff over health insurance is forcing Florida lawmakers into strange territory — the final two weeks of a legislative session without work on a state budget, the only bill they must pass each year.

But the clash also is likely to affect a host of other issues as the Legislature hurtles toward a May 1 finish line, with nothing to replace the $77 billion budget that expires two months later.

Proposals on education, tax breaks, the environment, prisons and social services – basically anything with a dollar attached – are threatened, as lawmakers lurch ahead without a spending agreement.

Budget items also are commonly used as a sweetener in policy deal-making. But that tactic has been taken off the table this year.

“We’ll use the time we’ve been allotted,” House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said of the remaining days of the two-month session “We’ll continue to move through on the agenda we’ve been working on. And that’s to move policy through this process.”

But signs of an awkward ending abound.

Most legislators cut out of the Capitol on Thursday — a sure sign of the deepening deadlock. A weekend normally marked by lawmakers and staff beginning to iron-out differences between House and Senate spending plans instead found Capitol hallways and offices empty.

A monstrous, $4.2 billion spending difference separates the two budgets. And an equally big dispute over health policy looms.

When talks start is anybody’s guess.

“If it means we extend, we extend,” Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said of going beyond the end of the two-month session. “If it means we come back in a month, a lot of us have been here a long time, that’s OK. What’s important is we get it done right.”

Florida’s current budget year ends June 30. While lawmakers extended the session to finish the budget as recently as 2009, it’s been 23 years since they went into June without a new spending plan in place.

Some think this year looks like 1992, when Democrats held the Legislature and the governor’s mansion and took the impasse right up to the deadline, nearly shutting down the state government.

“We have really, really vast policy differences,” conceded Senate Budget Chief Tom Lee, R-Brandon.

Without a budget, funding for public schools next fall remains an unknown, along with the fate of an endless stream of programs and projects filling the 400-page spending plans proposed by each chamber.

For Palm Beach County, that means dollars for Palm Beach State College’s new Loxahatchee campus, a downtown 4th District Court of Appeals building, beach restoration money and plenty more languishes in the House-Senate budget duel.

At the root of the fight is the Senate’s bid to extend health coverage to 800,000 low-income Floridians by adopting a private-insurance version of Medicaid expansion, authorized under the federal Affordable Care Act.

If it’s approved, the Senate’s Florida Health Insurance Exchange (FHIX) would be expected to draw $2.8 billion in federal funding this year – part of $51 billion the state could get over the next decade to cover one of the nation’s largest uninsured populations.

The Obama administration has signaled it supports FHIX, while Gov. Rick Scott and Crisafulli have rejected it.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last week told Scott’s office that broadening health coverage could be critical to the future of the $2.1 billion Florida hospitals receive for treating poor patients under the so-called low income pool (LIP).

Scott responded by threatening to sue the Obama administration for violating a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the justices’ 2012 decision validating the Affordable Care Act, they said states could not be forced to expand Medicaid – which Scott says CMS is now attempting.

Business associations, health care advocates and religious leaders are among those clamoring for FHIX and last week stepped up lobbying efforts even as the deadlock hardened.

Scott also ratcheted up his rhetoric.

“We will fight to protect the healthcare of Floridians, and their right to be free from federal overreach,” Scott said in a statement announcing his lawsuit plans.

Most involved agree the next scene in the Tallahassee drama could involve CMS giving Florida a better idea about how much money would be directed to Florida hospitals. But the timing of that is up in the air, increasing prospects that lawmakers will adjourn May 1 without a clear idea of when they’ll return for budget work.

If LIP is cut by $1 billion, leading senators have already said they would expect the Legislature to make up that difference with state dollars.

“We have to decide how that affects health care back home,” Lee said.

Crisafulli and Scott, however, have stiff-armed the idea of “back-filling” lost federal revenue with state cash.

Miami-Dade County health care providers would be hit hardest by an end to the program, losing more than $500 million. Hospitals in Palm Beach, Broward and Monroe counties combined would have a similar amount erased, according to a study by Florida Legal Services.

One item the Senate may consider sacrificing to help hospitals is the $690 million tax-break package already approved by the House and similar to what Scott has proposed.

With the governor, House and Senate led by Republicans, big tax cuts had looked a certainty this session. Until now.

Outnumbered legislative Democrats, who uniformly support the Senate’s health expansion, have been relegated to being observers in the GOP fight. So they’re sniping at Scott and Crisafulli.

“We have 60 days to get something done and that’s not happening,” said House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach.


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