Opinion: Budget uncertainty

A Times Editorial

Budget uncertainty

It is uncertain what Gov. Jeb Bush will do with the Legislature's "balanced budget,'' but his statements seem to indicate that it's not over yet.

It is uncertain what Gov. Jeb Bush will do with the Legislature's "balanced budget," but his statements seem to indicate that it's not over yet.

Florida legislators left Tallahassee without having sacrificed their $708 pay raises to the state's financial crisis. That promise was yet another casualty of the warfare between the Senate and House over a tax break for affluent investors, which wasn't repealed either. Whether they actually accomplished $800-million in budget cuts remains in doubt despite Gov. Jeb Bush's praise for the outcome of the special session if not for what he called the "level of rancor" and the "inside-the-building gamesmanship" that went into it.

Despite his statement in a press conference Wednesday that the Legislature had balanced the budget -- though it might have to be cut yet again -- the governor didn't know whether he will sign it, veto it in whole or part, or put it on the shelf and invite the Legislature to try again. He seemed, however, to be leaning toward the last option; to a journalist's speculative question about a possible renegotiation, he answered, "Bingo!"

Contributing to the uncertainty, as he acknowledged, is the issue of whether the entire budget bill violates the Florida Constitution, as both Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Senate President John McKay strongly assert. When senators first voted on it, not imagining that it would also be their last vote, they had seen the final version for not even 72 minutes let alone the 72 hours the Constitution requires. Bush said he can't pose the question to the court before he gets his official copy of the bill -- and even then, the court would not be obliged to answer -- but it's in everyone's best interest that he ask for an advisory opinion as soon as possible.

Florida has not seen a muddle quite like this. Not since Claude R. Kirk Jr. has a governor weighed in so late with urgently needed specific leadership in a serious crisis. With a teachers' strike looming in 1968, Kirk took himself off to California, to Disneyland. Bush did no such thing, but he was symbolically absent when he gave the Legislature only general "principles" of how to confront an estimated $1.3-billion deficit with a third of the budget year already gone by. He didn't even put the intangibles tax on the table until Speaker Tom Feeney had already circled the wagons against that.

In a similar situation, Lawton Chiles didn't shirk the painful, dirty details. Bush maintains the House and Senate leaderships did not want his suggestions; some individual Republican lawmakers say they would have been welcome. Regardless of whether his advice was wanted, it was owed. Not to the Legislature, but to the people. If it all has to be done over, it will be as much his fault as anyone's.