Columns

Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature: Tough Choices or Wrong Choices?

Raiding trust funds piles burden on stressed local governments, lowers quality of life

By: Nancy Smith | Posted: May 31, 2011 3:55 AM

Around the State

Rick Scott isn't the first governor to make a play for Florida's 124 trust funds. But he joins the state's most egregious abusers of them. It's one of the things this rookie outsider has in common with the 2011 Legislature.

Trust funds are the Rodney Dangerfield of Florida's fiscal structure.

You always know when elected officials are planning a raid. You hear trust funds disparagingly, even sneeringly called names like earmarks, turkeys, pork, even slush funds. That's to cover up the fact that they know full well they should keep their sticky fingers off.

Trust fund proceeds don't come from ad valorem taxes, they come from the likes of doc stamps and license fees and the 12 cents-a-gallon add-on at the gas pump. The Florida Lottery, for instance, that's a trust fund.

In the late 1980s, voters approved the lottery for Florida primarily because those who sponsored the ballot initiative promised the proceeds would go to bolster education, not replace money the state held back.

It didn't happen. Year after year the Legislature was saying, great, let's pay for education first with lottery money, then we'll have plenty of the education money left over for something else. In fact, that broken lottery promise was a bone that stuck in the craw of voters for 10 years -- until 1997, when former Senate President Ken Pruitt, then in the House, and Don Sullivan in the Senate, crafted and sponsored Bright Futures scholarships. It was Bright Futures, a ringing enhancement, a trust fund promise, that now represents one of Florida education's biggest success stories.

Sadly, even Bright Futures has been raided -- and now it has been altered almost beyond recognition. Lawmakers who pulled off the raid would tell you -- and, please, don't believe it for a minute -- that their changes "saved" the program.

Tags: Bright Futures, Don Sullivan, Ken Pruitt, News, Rick Scott, trust funds, Columns

Comments (7)

chanel bags

11:42PM SEP 8TH 2011

The wind is Louis [filtered word] Bags causing problems for Burberry Bags firefighters who are battling a dozen brush and grass Coach Handbags fires all over the Chanel bags state.Bani added people in Bani Walid have told the rebels Louis [filtered word] Online that one of Gaddafi's sons, Saif al-Islam, had fled to Bani Handbags Purses sale Walid soon after Tripoli Coach Factory Purse fell, but left recently for fear townspeople Gucci Watches would hand him over to the rebels. ast week, a man claiming to be Saif Gaddafi Prada made an appeal from hiding that Christian [filtered word] was carried by a Syrian-based TV, urging his father's supporters to keep up the fight even if it meant "we are going to die on our land" .

John W. Stegkemper

12:26AM JUN 1ST 2011

Gov. Scott and his boys have set aside more money to fight redisticting than was allotted for the Everglades restoration project. Slashing jobs, cutting wages (state workers) and now he wants to put what little land we have to hunt or fish on will now be for sale. Tee-shirts for everyone at the new golf courses.

7:15PM MAY 31ST 2011

I find it interesting that you would publish your opinion column on this issue and at the same time have a poll on the very issue. If I am not mistaken this is called push poling when it is done during a campaign.

vey

10:46AM MAY 31ST 2011

"Let's see the Legislature and the governor reset their priorities to stop or reduce government programs and agencies that don't provide a long-term benefit to the state."

What program is that? Schools? Only if you think the only talent attends private schools. Prisons? And turn criminals loose to rape and pillage? Health Departments? How does killing someone that pays sales taxes (albeit a low amount) help the state? And then there is the cost of burial in potter's field to pay for.

Please be specific.

Tragic_consequences

4:38PM MAY 31ST 2011

The Legislature did have some good suggestions on getting prisoners out of prison and back to work, or even keeping them out of prison in the first place. They heard from a Texas Republican legislator about their success with drug treatment and rehabilitation of prisoners.

State prisoners may well commit crimes when released if they can't get a job and fall right back into the problems they had before. If you heard the testimony from the drug court judge, you know drug treatment makes a difference. It is possible to turn lives around and it's the right thing to do.

But, unfortunately, we have a large prison economy in many of our rural and Republican counties. The more prisoners locked up, no matter the cost, is good for jobs in areas where there are few alternatives. So the prison industrial complex lives and more lives are wrecked.

It is very expensive to keep people incarcerated, often more expensive than keeping them in school.

Susan

3:49PM MAY 31ST 2011

To the previous commenter: Actually, since Scott has gutted education, all that's left is private schools, whether one has talent or not. What's your point there? Had his intent been to cut the deficit, that would have been one thing, but he turned around and gave the money that should have been used for our children to corporations, saving nothing. As for the prisons, you seem to have quite an unlearned steriotype there. HUGE numbers of prisoners in the state--in the country, for that matter--are non-violent personal drug users--NOT drug sellers or pushers, just personal users. Letting them out would not cause anything like the drama your fearmongering is trying to drum up. But, of course, KEEPING them in allows those who just want to privatize the prisons and GET A KICK-BACK from that government money earned by those private companies which would then care only about the bottom line and not about human beings. (Regardless of how you consider prisoners, they are still human beings and, therefore, still due all United Nations Human Rights.) But, beyond all these kinds of specifics, raiding long-term investments is always STUPID. When you do that, you have NOTHING left to produce income. Then what? Scott claimed he knew something about business, but he has now proved, beyond ALL DOUBT, that he knows nothing about either business OR government. Apparently, you don't either, Mr. or Ms. previous commenter.

9:31PM MAY 31ST 2011

i operate a business that is regulated by the State and my license fees go into a trust fund. The trust fund is intended to ensure that my fees pay for adequate inspections and good service. Instead, the trust fund is raided each year and I get incompent inspectors and no one answers or returns calls at the Agency. So what I really have is a business tax - but wait, my party says they are against business taxes and they can't even de-regulated hair weavers. I will soon register as an independent.