Guest Blog - Roy Miller's Legislative Update: Budget Storm Makes Landfall in Tallahassee. Posted by Geniusofdespair

If the size and breadth of the impending budget cuts passed this week by the Florida Senate and Florida House were a hurricane, it would be a Class Five Storm. It’s mammoth enough and powerful enough to sheer off long-standing and world class programs and unearth the support structures for an incredible number of hopeful, needy and, yes, frail children and families trapped in its surge. The budgets now go to conference committee for final resolution. There is still time to rescue our children.

But it’s not only about the children. It’s about all of Florida. And not one word in this Legislative Update should be bent or construed in a way to suggest that we don’t get the big picture. Our hearts ache for all who will feel the pain of what DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth aptly labeled as “unconscionable” budget reductions (Miami Herald) in so many areas: the elderly, healthcare, the environment, schools, parks, libraries, the arts, everyone.

We are all in this together:
Parents want the best for their kids. Teachers want to educate – not “deal with issues.” Florida’s colleges want qualified applicants. Business wants a qualified and viable labor force. All Florida citizens want to see our kids as the hope of the future, our future, not problems to be managed.

Florida’s journalists are weighing in through their editorials, columns and news stories. A Daytona News Journal editorial expressed it succinctly this week, “… cuts go on, as Florida lawmakers wring their hands and talk about the agony of making “tough decisions”. Yet few in legislative leadership have the courage to address the truly tough decisions: Facing up to and rectifying the mistakes of the past.”

It isn’t fair. While the most frail in Florida are being forced to make sacrifices, many of the strongest will go unscathed. Healthy Start is slated to be cut at least $3-million – exactly the amount of state subsidies for the Golf Hall of Fame and sport-fishing museum. Is the $63-million dollar subsidy of the charter fishing industry the best use of our money when foster care and childcare programs are being cut by $50-million? Levying a sales tax on those charter excursions would help our children and fund the charter fishing museum too, if that shrine is core to our state’s interest after all.

As the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy makes clear, money can be found to lessen the agony. The priorities of the leadership of the legislature are simply not the priorities of children’s advocates.

Do Floridians agree with the choices being made? Past polls by the Children’s Campaign say not. Our pollsters have queried Floridians again and again. What would you support – tax cuts or programs for children? In every poll, in every demographic group, in every cross-section by political affiliation, the answers are always the same: take care of the kids.

Of course, one can ask logically, “If that’s the case, then why did a majority of Floridians vote for property tax relief? Good and fair question.

The answer: because they were told that tax relief can be accomplished without cutting back on education or vital services.

Is that the debate inside the debate? What is vital? In our world, birthing healthy babies is vital. For children literally facing life on the street when they age out of Florida’s problematic foster care system, a helping hand is vital. Stopping educational failure dead in its track with high quality pre-k is vital. Keeping kids safe before and after school while their parents work is vital. Providing the right help at the right time for troubled children is vital. Lest we fail to make the point, this state budget shows deep, deep cuts to public education too.

Is the word getting out? Do the citizens of Florida realize what is taking place and are they concerned about it? Look at the poll of Florida voters released by Quinnipiac University. Florida citizens are changing course and now believe the state is heading in the wrong direction. We expect those numbers to move again as the impact of the budget decisions are felt. While the state is evenly split on raising taxes to save important programs from budget cuts, even a tie represents a shift in thinking. 68% of Floridians support a $1.00 per pack cigarette tax increase to pay for health care.

So propose it! Pass it! Salvage something from the knife. Some legislators are standing as strong as they can in the face of this storm. We say thank you.

$5-billion in cuts, the number that may be reached, is not “fat”, “pork”, “belt tightening”, or any of the metaphors used to denote government waste. Our at-risk children will suffer and they will suffer greatly.

The programs to be cut are working and they are effective. They save the state money. Should we fund Healthy Start now or spend millions more on Medicaid later? What about Juvenile Assessment Centers? Eliminating programs that have achieved national acclaim – like the Miami-Dade Juvenile Assessment Center - as the House has proposed, leaves “incarcerate everybody” as the dominant, and expensive, theme of juvenile justice.This approach is wrong. It is not good for kids and it is more expensive. It runs in the opposite direction of the known benefits of investment spending.

The state-sponsored services at the precipice of being swept away literally rescue children at critical moments in time: when they are born, when their brains are developing, when they are susceptible to negative peer pressure, when they are being physically and sexually abused.
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