Gov. Rick Scott signs the budget Thursday in The Villages, as students from Four Corners Charter School look on.  | Credit: Gray Rohrer

UPDATED: Gov. Rick Scott signed the 2011 Florida budget Thursday in the rural setting of The Villages, simultaneously announcing $615 million in line-item vetoes.

The final budget now comes in at $69.1 billion, Scott said. He said the vetoes would have gone to "special interests," but now the majority of the money will go into pre-K through 12 education.

Not so, say some budget analysts. Not all the vetoes, they say, come from "real money."

"There were 3,036 line items in that budget. I know that because I looked at every single one of them," Scott said.

Scott said the hardest decision he made was to cut $150 million from road and bridge construction in order to put the money into education.

"The Legislature forced me to decide whether to spend that money on roads and bridges or to spend those same dollars on quality teachers and textbooks for kids. To me, it wasn't much of a choice," Scott said.

Scott has dubbed the document the "jobs budget," and said it meets his priorities of shrinking government and providing tax cuts. The tax cuts for property owners and business come to more than $300 million, a far cry from the billions in tax relief Scott asked of the Legislature.

“I commend the Legislature for sending me a budget that reduces the size and cost of government and provides tax relief to individuals and business. Special interests probably aren’t happy with the tough choices I made, but I am confident everyone can agree that funding for our children and students is more important than pleasing Tallahassee’s special interests," Scott said.

The biggest chunk of the last-minute cuts, however, came from zeroing out the $305 million in Florida Forever funding. The money was supposed to be derived from selling land that the state already owns.

"It's meaningless, it's no cut at all," said a Tallahassee budget analyst who asked not to be identified. "You can't zero out Florida Forever funding when it comes from money that doesn't currently exist. The land hasn't been sold yet, there's no money to be saved there. It's ridiculous."

The governor's rationale in this veto statement, nevertheless, was this: “This line item does not represent an appropriation of readily useable funds, but rather only authority to spend proceeds derived from the future sale of surplused state lands. According to the Department of Environmental Protection, the average annual proceeds from the sale of such lands is approximately $6 million.”

Said another analyst, "Money taken from these trust funds can't go into education. This isn't going to work." Lane Wright, the governor's press secretary, said Scott "feels comfortable" that he has the authority to move the funds.

About 200 people cheered as Scott signed the budget into law, and passed out veto pens to students at Four Corners Charter School in Sumter County.