State: Bush calls session to finish budget

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush has called lawmakers back to town the week after Thanksgiving to finish plugging a $1.3-billion hole in the state budget.

Flanked by Senate President John McKay and House Speaker Tom Feeney, Bush on Tuesday pledged a more cooperative special session than the one last month and elaborated on the deal the three men made over the weekend to delay a controversial tax cut.

"There's been a lot of talk about rancor, a lot of talk about things that don't really apply to public service," Bush said, referring to the special session that ended abruptly last month when Feeney and McKay failed to agree on the tax cut.

"Now it's time for us to adjust the budget," Bush said.

The deal Bush cut involved an 18-month delay in a cut in the state's intangibles tax on stocks and bonds and a commitment to cut at least $1-billion out of the $48-billion budget.

But the very deal the three Republicans made to establish peace within that party has handed the Democrats an unusual opportunity to flex their muscle.

If all 43 Democrats agree to delay the cut instead of repeal it as many said they'd prefer, Bush still has to persuade 18 Republicans to vote to temporarily keep a tax many despise. Every Democrat who rejects the delay is another Republican vote Bush must find to total 61 votes, the number needed to pass a bill.

Anticipating possible Democratic mutiny, Feeney cautioned: "This is not the time to be playing partisan politics." And if Democrats try to hold up the deal on the intangibles tax cut, Feeney said, "We'll let them go back and explain to the voters why the Democrats blew the fix in the special session."

Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch rejected what he called Feeney's attempts to pin any special session failures on Democrats.

"I'd be talking about pots and kettles here if it weren't laughable," Welch said. He said he was bothered by Feeney's words of advice for Democrats.

"It's essentially saying, 'Don't do what the Republicans did,' " Welch said.

The Republican-led Legislature last month cut short its special session over a disagreement on whether to shelve a cut in the intangibles tax. McKay wanted to repeal the tax break and use the resulting $128-million to soften budget cuts, but Feeney didn't even want a delay. They left behind an $800-million budget-cutting package most said would fall short.

Bush has persuaded the two to come back together and try again. But how solid is their pact? McKay and Feeney offered words of praise for the other's chamber, but neither they, nor Bush or House chief budget negotiator Rep. Carlos Lacasa offered many details during their news conference to announce the agreement. The men took a few questions, then quickly left the room.

All acknowledged there is still much work to do.

"It will be difficult to bring this plane in for a landing," McKay said. The second special session begins Nov. 27, ends Dec. 6 and covers the budget as well as security and economic stimulus issues.

Wayne Blanton worries that the continued uncertainty over education cuts will further hurt schools.

"I want to know the figure we have to work with. Having one special session and getting one amount and having a special second session to get another doesn't help us," said Blanton, director of the Florida School Boards Association.

"The parents are going to notice that the class size is going to increase," Blanton predicted.

Education, health care and human services tie up the bulk of the state's general revenue fund. That is the fund that is losing money, and lawmakers have struggled to cut in those areas while minimizing the effects on children, the elderly and the poor who rely on those services.

The Senate plan lawmakers approved last month cut less drastically than the plan House members drafted, and it delayed some of the cuts it did make until July 2002.

Sen. Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey, chief budget negotiator for the Senate, said the Senate likely will push to keep those delays.

She and her House counterpart, Miami Republican Lacasa, have run through a series of possible cuts in the past few weeks, she said.

"We came up with a lot of different options" to seek some common ground, Carlton said. She offered few details of those cuts, except to say the Senate will have to agree to cut a little more out of education. But that would have happened anyway had last month's special session not been cut short, she said.

Now, the House and Senate likely will each use its original budget cutting package as a starting point, and the bill lawmakers passed last month won't even be sent to Bush to sign.

"It's in McKay's golf bag," Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan joked.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk