Opinion: Noble end but wrongful means

Florida's budget debate has taken a wrong turn with a Senate proposal to shuffle $100-million from environmental land trust funds to the budgets for schools and health. It breaks the promises on which voters approved the land-buying programs, it pits friend against friend for a place in the lifeboat when they should be bailing together, and it risks the unraveling of Florida's fragile Everglades coalition.

The stratagem may be legal because, technically, the money goes to buy land for the Everglades restoration program, in turn freeing up $100-million of general revenue that Gov. Jeb Bush had earmarked to that year-old commitment. But in every other sense it deserves Sen. John Laurent's criticism that "a raid is a raid is a raid." It is a troubling precedent.

What's really going on, of course, is the familiar legislative game called "hostage." The Senate's priorities lean more to health and education than those of the governor and House of Representatives do, and the Senate wants no part of the tax cuts that matter so much to the others. If Bush and Speaker Tom Feeney wondered how tough Senate President John McKay could play the game, now they know. Bush, having promised to pay for Florida's share of the Everglades project with general revenue, not the trust funds, is in trouble.

The Senate's motives are noble, but what of the principle that a good end does not justify a wrongful means?

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