A Times Editorial

Bushwhacked budgets

Sifting the state's budget for efficiency isn't a bad idea. But doing it the way Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed cannot possibly reorder government priorities in any sensible way.

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

Maybe it's the heat, or just the boredom of summer, but Gov. Jeb Bush has been seized by one of those moods that would seem to call for a long nap or a cold shower until it passes.

He wants agencies to scour the state budget for up to 25 percent in job cuts and 5 to 8 percent in reduced spending over the ensuing five years. That would be 30,000 positions and $1.6-billion. He says those represent a "planning process," not mandatory targets.

Sifting the budget for efficiency isn't a bad idea. Doing it that way is. Individual departments acting separately cannot possibly reorder the state's priorities in any sensible way.

"Every program cuts across a whole bunch of agencies, even transportation," explains Lance deHaven-Smith, associate director of the Florida Institute of Government at Florida State University. "If you ask the Department of Transportation to tell you what their priorities are, you're not going to get the complete picture."

To effectively reorganize the state's budget priorities would require an interagency review, with the Cabinet and the Legislature equal partners in the process. That's a prospect that Bush may not relish. But to do it his way would recall the parable of the blind men trying to describe an elephant without touching all of it.

The last Florida politician to fantasize something like that was Sen. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee in 1995. He told agencies to identify 25 percent in possible cuts. The exercise achieved nothing but the sacking of Jim Towey, head of Florida's brutally underfunded social services agency, for showing program-by-program how it would make Florida a "Third World" state. The Senate refused to confirm his reappointment by Gov. Lawton Chiles.

Another problem in seizing on fixed percentages is that some spending either can't be cut because it is earmarked to bond debt or is tied to federal aid that would be forfeited. Another is that most agencies have become shrewd at the game. They'll put up those programs that legislators are least likely to want to cut. Or they'll sacrifice those with the weakest lobbies.

Bush's fundamental misconception is that the state budget is ripe for such massive cuts. Florida's state tax burden per capita fell two places to 41st among the states last year, and is 42nd in terms of the tax burden as a share of personal income. However, a price for Tallahassee's frugality is being paid by county and city taxpayers, whose per capita burden has risen to 20th in the nation. That should sound another note of caution about what the governor may have in mind.

What he called a "work in progress" is obviously still far from well worked out. The governor himself noted there's a teacher shortage, which would seem to put that component, the single largest slice of the budget, out of reach. Would the universities be affected? He didn't know.

The concept presumes even more privitization at a time when the proof of that pudding remains in serious doubt. Current news pertains. If it turns out to be true that two Tallahassee lobbyists promised someone a $24-million consulting contract for an under-the-table $1.2-million fee, what would it say about fat in Florida's consulting contracts? Meanwhile, two employees of a Tampa truckers' school are charged with taking bribes for passing applicants who didn't pass the state's road-skills test. Florida allows 450 private firms to conduct commercial driver testing for the state, a practice plainly vulnerable to corruption and tragedy. Who is supervising this venture in privatization? Why did it take an Illinois licensing scandal to bring Florida's to light?

Florida law allows the Legislature to request its own budget information independent of whatever conditions the governor imposes. Its leaders should insist on that prerogative even though the governor's department heads are unlikely to be frank.

But it would be better for everyone if the governor simply chose a responsible way to reprioritize the budget.

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