State: Bush vetoes $313-million for projects

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Bush vetoes $313-million for projects

The budget items the governor cut provoke howls of protest from the lawmakers who proposed them.

By DIANE RADO and JO BECKER

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush cut a whopping $313-million from the state budget Thursday, stunning and infuriating even his closest Republican allies.

By the end of the day, angry lawmakers were talking about going to court to restore some of the programs that Bush wiped out with his veto pen:

Bush gave a break to college students by scaling down a tuition increase that administrators were counting on. He wiped out nearly half the funding for Florida to experiment with a longer school year of 210 days. And he vetoed millions of dollars in projects dear to lawmakers' hearts: parks, festivals, museums, sewer projects, road improvements and historic preservation programs.

In his first year in office, Bush had promised a "turkey-free" budget, void of projects that benefit only special interests. But those are the projects that often impress the folks back home.

"I don't think the governor has any idea of the members' feelings about these projects and how deep they go. We have members that are screaming and yelling," said Senate Majority Leader Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor.

But college students were cheering: Bush vetoed half of the 10 percent tuition increase that most university students were expected to pay this fall. The Legislature had approved a 5 percent increase for all universities, and then allowed university presidents to increase tuition by another 5 percent. Bush vetoed the across-the-board increase of 5 percent, a loss of about $17-million to the university system.

"I do not believe in times of fiscal prosperity that the state should increase students' education cost significantly," Bush wrote in a veto message Thursday. A large tuition increase "may place a financial hardship on many students and adversely impact access to higher education."

The veto stunned the Board of Regents, meeting Thursday in South Florida. While Bush was holding a news conference in Tallahassee to announce his budget vetoes, the regents were approving the additional 5 percent tuition increases requested by eight of the 10 state universities. It would have pushed tuition up from $46.99 to $51.69 per credit hour at those universities.

Regents discovered what Bush had done when Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher's staff faxed him a copy of the governor's vetoes. "Everybody was shocked by it," said regents spokesman Keith Goldschmidt.

But Kevin Mayeux, executive director of the Florida Student Association, was thrilled: "This was an extremely pleasant surprise." Students had objected to the tuition increases at a time when lawmakers had so much cash that they doled out about $1-billion in tax breaks to residents and businesses.

But proponents argued that Florida has bargain tuition rates compared with the rest of the nation and that college students should pay 25 percent of the cost of their education, which would require more than a 10 percent increase in tuition.

Bush originally had proposed a 6.5 percent increase. And Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, who worked his way through college, has been opposed to large tuition increases.

In all, Bush said he cut more individual items in the state budget than any governor in at least 20 years. In his first year of office in 1991, Gov. Lawton Chiles cut $106-million in so-called line-item vetoes. (In 1992, Chiles vetoed an entire state budget in a fight over new taxes.)

The veto process is delicate: While it is important that a governor ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, it's almost as important that a governor be able to work with lawmakers

Thursday, Bush strained his relationship with lawmakers.

Senate Budget Committee chairman Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach, said he thinks Bush may have used his veto power in an unprecedented way that could provoke a court challenge.

For example, instead of vetoing the entire $40-million appropriation to extend the school year from 180 to 210 days in certain schools, Bush vetoed just a part of that budget: $16.6-million. The leftover money will still allow certain schools to plan, but not implement, the longer school calendar.

Burt said he doesn't know if Bush can legally veto just a portion of the appropriation. After researching the issue, senators will consider going to court to challenge Bush. Also questionable was the way Bush vetoed only some of the tuition increase, Burt said.

Sen. Donald Sullivan, R-Seminole, was unhappy Thursday. Since his election to the Senate in 1992, Sullivan has been pushing the concept of extending the school year. Bush's veto, he said, "sends a message to school districts that there is not a commitment by the administration."

Sullivan wasn't the only one disappointed. All day, lawmakers complained about Bush's vetoes, saying their projects were worthy of state funding.

Bush said in his veto message that he cut projects based on his core beliefs about a government and its citizens.

"It is a privilege to spend other people's money. We must take care to ensure that our appetite in exercising this privilege does not become ravenous," Bush said. "What ultimately goes to fund a special project comes straight from the dinner tables of working class families, the desks of schoolchildren and the savings of our elderly."

Bush vetoed $7.5-million that would have allowed Indian River County to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers' spring training facility, a move that would benefit team owner Rupert Murdoch.

In another veto, Bush cut $1.7-million that would have paid an Alabama company with a spotty track record to test the vision of Florida's schoolchildren. For the past two years, state health officials and local school districts objected to the program, but it managed to get funding because of backing by influential lawmakers.

Overall, Bush praised the state budget for increasing public education spending, and funding long-neglected social services programs. But he also said Florida continues to have great needs:

"New students will continue to place increasing demands on our schools. . . . Seventy thousand children still remain without health care insurance. There will still be nearly 4,000 seniors on a waiting list, anxious to receive community-based care so they can keep living in their own homes instead of in nursing homes," Bush wrote.

The dollars he vetoed in lawmakers' pet projects "could have been, and should have been, applied to those pressing demands," Bush said.

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