The Florida Legislature is convening again to find ways to make up for the budget's $1.3-billion deficit. Lawmakers should look at each cut they propose very carefully.

Believing that the cure for a troubled conscience is to ignore it, the governor and Legislature several years ago rid themselves of a tiny agency, the Florida Commission on Government Accountability to the People, whose job was to monitor the state's progress toward a better quality of life. Inconveniently, however, other sources persist in quantifying how poorly Florida measures up. The latest of these is a national study by the United Way of America that ranks Florida among the least caring of the 50 states, a sad 43rd. The bottom 10 were, predictably, all Southern or Sun Belt states. Minnesota ranked first in the charity's "State of Caring Index" for 1999, followed closely by New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine.

This latest disparagement comes with a thin silver lining, in that Florida had improved, albeit very modestly, from 45th place when the study begin in 1988. That owed significantly to dramatic improvements in the posted rates for infant mortality and teenage pregnancy, which reflected a personal crusade by the former governor, the late Lawton Chiles.

But of course these precise gains are in tremendous peril as the Legislature reconvenes today to try again to cut some $1.3-billion from a budget that was inadequate even before the recession and the terrorist acts of Sept. 11 undercut the revenue estimates. Because education and social services account for most of the budget, it would be impossible to spare them the brunt of the budget cuts. Legislators must understand, however, that virtually everything they are asked to do this week and next will make Florida a less caring state, an unhealthier state. They will be voting to make Florida more vulnerable to crime, more heedless to hardship, and less able to compete for the modern industries that would make Florida less vulnerable to slumps in tourism. There is little if any virtue in this necessity.

To make the best of it, however, the legislators are duty-bound to defer the latest cut in the intangibles tax, as Gov. Jeb Bush has asked them to do. For lack of any clue as to when the economy will improve, it would be wildly irresponsible to repeal the entire tax effective in 2004, which is the price tag some diehard Republicans are demanding for the deferment. Lawmakers should also take the opportunity to put an end to certain abusive tax shelters such as a well-known loophole for trusts, and to abusive subsidies such as the ridiculously low penalties for overweight trucks. Pains should be taken to spare programs that are indispensable, such as maternity care for poor women and supervision for children on the borderline of lives of crime. School boards and program administrators must be given maximum flexibility in the use of their diminished funds.

There should also be full debate of each cut and its likely consequences to Florida's already inferior quality of life. If nothing else, the dialogue will shed light on why Florida desperately needs the sort of long-term tax reform that Senate President John McKay advocates. It's a lesson that should have been learned from the recession of 1991, and to ignore it yet again would be unforgivable.

As if the economic choices weren't trouble enough, some senators are still spoiling to undercut Florida's open-records and open-meeting laws -- two of the few things about which Florida can be justly proud -- under the pretext of fighting terrorism. The worst of these bills, all sponsored by Sens. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, and Rod Smith, D-Gainesville, would enable the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to secure court orders indefinitely sealing records that are normally public, such as crime reports and booking dockets. The nation has already seen enough secret jailings under John Ashcroft's Justice Department that no Florida agency should be encouraged to follow suit. Tyranny inevitably arrives under cover of some emergency, and it would be rash to assume that it couldn't eventually happen here, too.

Another of these incredibly bad bills would allow public officials to keep secret not just the location of the pharmaceuticals that are stockpiled against terrorism, but also the type and amount -- and no one might know there weren't enough until the corpses began to pile high in the streets.

The House, to its credit, seems more resistant to the hysteria for secrecy that overcame the Senate during the last special session. That is the only good news from Tallahassee right now.

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