Opinion: Johnnie's birds

The "kitchen table economics" that drive House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's stilted budget philosophy contain, as it turns out, a familiar holiday meal. It's turkey, about $400-million worth, and the discovery of all those expensive birds is only the latest misadventure for which the speaker ought to eat some crow.

The $52.2-billion spending plan the House adopted last week treats schoolchildren and sick elderly people as though they were budgetary luxuries. "When forced to set priorities," appropriations Chairman Bruce Kyle said, "we favored the needs of Florida's future over the pet projects of the past."

The House budget work papers, released only after public pressure, reveal a different story. There's Byrd's pet project, $45-million for Alzheimer's research at the University of South Florida; $30-million for seven construction projects at Edison Community College in Kyle's hometown (including $706,692 the college did not request for a golf course building); $7-million to buy the historic Freedom Tower for Miami-Dade Community College in the home county of Majority Leader Marco Rubio. There also are the smaller gifts -- $600,000 for a bicycle-pedestrian plan in St. Petersburg, $250,000 for mobile computers for Tarpon Springs, $225,000 for Pinellas Park to buy 14 hybrid-fuel vehicles, $100,000 for a softball field in Altamonte Springs.

In a better economy, with money to go around, these budget turkeys might produce mostly grins in the Legislature. But this is not a normal year, and the budget the House produced will lead to teacher layoffs, university cutbacks and the specter of poor, elderly people dying for lack of proper medical care.

Byrd's only response is to glibly restate his commitment to "live within our means," never acknowledging that the "means" he proposes to employ for Florida would rank it behind at least 45 other states. He talks about making the same "hard decisions" that families make in their own households, except that few families would turn their backs on their grandmothers while purchasing new luxuries.

The new way Byrd claims to govern is not really so new after all, except for the size of the gap between what he says, what he does and what Florida needs.

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright