If Gov. Jeb Bush really wants to restore full funding for Florida's nationally acclaimed antismoking program, he doesn't need to wait a year.
Published May 31, 2003
There's no reason to wait until next year, as Gov. Jeb Bush insists, to restore the antismoking program U.S. Surgeon General Rich Carmona hails as a "role model" for the nation.
If the governor is serious about saving it, he can act on June 16, when the Legislature returns for a special session on the medical malpractice issue. Tight budget and all, there's plenty of money available right now. Florida is getting a $947-million windfall from Washington. The antismoking program would do fine with merely $38-million of that. The schools, colleges and universities could be hugely helped with just part of the rest.
But the governor wants to hoard the money instead. For what? Could it be, as many in Tallahassee suspect, to forestall tax increases yet again next year? When a Florida tax hike might be unhelpful to the re-election of his brother, the president?
The windfall comes by way of the bonus for states - or the bailout, as some call it - in the tax cut bill that President Bush signed into law Wednesday. That was a day after Florida legislators had quit Tallahassee, leaving behind a budget that sacrificed the smoking prevention program for the sake of treating substance abuse.
Of the $20-billion Washington is giving to the states, Florida's total share is $947.5-million. About 40 percent of that is earmarked to increasing the federal share of the state's Medicaid budget. The rest, some $543-million, can be spent with few restrictions to maintain any existing state program. Because the federal and state budget years don't coincide, only half of that is on tap now; the rest is available after Oct. 1.
So unless there were any serious objections among legislators - and it's hard to think there would be any - a supplemental appropriation for the tobacco program could be enacted within the four-day special session. At least one influential lawmaker is eager to help.
"It's literally to be a bailout for us from the federal government," Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, the Senate appropriations chairman, said Friday, "and I'm hoping the governor will use it for those funding shortfall areas such as the tobacco education program and the school districts when they start writing their budgets.
"He has the ability, of which about $500-million is flexible money to do any way he sees fit with the Legislature's approval, and it's an opportune time when the Legislature is in special session for him to do just that . . . I'll champion it for him in the Senate"
Bush, however, said Thursday he doesn't want to reopen the appropriations debate during the special session. To a followup question - would he consider using the new federal dollars? - Bush made it explicit Friday that he intends to reserve them, spending not a dime on smoking, schools or anything else.
To be sure, there's always a problem with spending windfall money on continuing programs. Other sources have to be found to replace the windfall. But that would be true whenever Florida gets around to spending it.
To wait until the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2004, would defeat what Congress had in mind. The intent was to help states get past their naggingly persistent economic troubles that began with a recession and were aggravated by the Sept. 11 attacks. Why else incorporate the bonus into a law entitled the "Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act?"
According to the National Conference of State Legislators, Congress intended the money to nourish "essential government services" that might suffer otherwise. Certainly, nothing could be more essential than the campaign that has seen smoking fall since 1998 by 50 percent among middle school students and by 35 percent in high schools.
Tobacco is no less addictive - some say more so - than some illegal drugs; anything that prevents children from smoking in the first place saves lives as surely as the other substance abuse programs that legislators considered less expendable. There needs to be money for both.
One legislator who ought to know better said she couldn't get the point of the hard-hitting antismoking ads that will go off the air if the budget isn't restored. Small wonder; the ads are designed in large part by young people for young people, not for adults. That's why they have been so effective.
The governor knows that, which is why it's hard to fathom why he would prefer to let a year go by with nothing to counter the tobacco industry's massive advertising barrage. Especially when there's so much money waiting to be so wisely spent.
