Senate cuts hospital, library spending; may spare schools

TALLAHASSEE — Hospitals, nursing homes and programs that help disabled people are facing cuts, nearly 250,000 more Medicaid patients would be moved into managed care programs and state money for libraries would be eliminated in budget bills approved by Senate committees Friday.

Public schools would be spared from spending cuts, but only if 25 more county school districts raise property taxes for the budget year beginning July 1.

The emerging Senate version of Florida's budget also makes room for $76 million in tax breaks for businesses in a bid to stimulate Florida's economy.

All six Senate appropriations committees completed separate pieces of the budget that will be cobbled together next week by the Ways and Means Committee into a single bill for floor action.

House budget leaders, meanwhile, released a series of spending proposals for committee consideration that include an 8 percent tuition increase for college and university students and cuts to public schools and health care.

If Congress extends a temporary increase in Medicaid payments to the states, now set to expire at the end of 2010, Florida would get $1 billion, which would allow state money committed to Medicaid in the new budget proposals to be shifted elsewhere, reducing or avoiding some of the spending cuts. But lawmakers are not counting on that federal money yet.

The Senate's health and human services budget would spend about $1 billion more — $27.2 billion — than in the current year. Most of the increase would cover rising Medicaid costs, including more people qualifying for the state-federal program that provides health care for low-income patients.

Sen. Durell Peaden, a Crestview Republican who chairs the appropriations committee overseeing that part of the budget, said the same economic woes depressing state revenues have created a greater need for services due to higher rates of unemployment and poverty.

Peaden represents Holmes and Washington counties.

The Senate plan for public schools would increase the average spending per student by $15.41 to $6,881.18. It would reach that level, though, only if all 67 school districts increase property taxes by $25 per $100,000 of taxable property. Only 42 counties have passed the optional tax. The House proposal would reduce per student funding by about $31 to $6,835.

Down the hall from where the Senate Transportation and Economic Development Committee voted out its budget plan, a lone protester held a sign urging lawmakers to restore $20 million in public library funding. But the committee's plan eliminates library funding, as does the House proposal.