Gov. Rick Scott will never win any popularity contests with the liberals at Florida's teacher union. Now, his curious call to shift budget savings back to education threatens to undermine his conservative base, as well.
Scott won in 2010 as the consummate outsider who promised tough spending cuts and no-nonsense reform. But his budget-signing muddle looked more like an insider's game of smoke and mirrors.
In total spending, the budget Scott signed was closer to Charlie Crist's than his own. The governor's $615 million in line-item vetoes, while a record, represented less than a 1 percent cut and failed to bring the bottom line below $69 billion. (Scott's original plan was $66 billion, but, hey, what's a few billion among friends?)
The meager trims were disappointing enough to fiscal conservatives. Then Scott compounded his problem by urging lawmakers to funnel the paltry nixed expenditures back into K-12 education. In other words: no budget savings at all.
Moving public money around for no net reduction isn't the hallmark of a fiscal hawk, and Scott's shell game on schools wasn't even clever. If it was an attempt to deflect political heat onto Republican legislators, it failed dismally as House Speaker Dean Cannon riposted that only $100 million could be shifted because the remainder of the vetoed outlays came from dedicated sources.
Whether $100 million or $615 million, these are tiny paper cuts compared to Florida's K-12 budget of $16.6 billion. This much larger figure is the one the public, the press and the politicians ought to keep in mind when thinking about education.
Amid much gnashing of teeth over his original school budget, Scott rightly pointed out that some of the reduction actually stemmed from the expiration of $100 million in federal stimulus funds. That was Washington's call, not Tallahassee's.
Scott also noted that his original pension reforms could have saved local school districts more than $1 billion in personnel costs.
Even after the Legislature weakened the pension repair (thereby re-upping the taxpayer burden), budget analysts estimated that the net school budget reduction was 3.8 percent -- not the 8 percent to 10 percent falsely reported in other media.
Because any cut of any size is "disastrous" to educrats, Scott's reallocation proposal won no favor with the Florida Education Association. In the FEA's typically understated way, union president Andy Ford dismissed it as "a cruel suggestion for school employees that face layoffs, furloughs and for school children who attend Florida's inadequately funded school systems."
But are the state's schools really "inadequately funded"? Must Scott offer a nine-figure rebate after signing a budget that actually contained more school funding than he proposed?
Focusing solely on the state's allocation (remember that $16.6 billion figure?), the FEA and its media handmaidens never referenced the additional $7.2 billion in K-12 funding that comes from local property taxes.
In fact, roughly half of all local property taxes collected in Florida's 67 counties go to schools. If you take just that local tax revenue (not including the state funds) and divide it by the number of students in any local district, you'll get a five-figure per-pupil outlay that far exceeds the state's $6,200 per-pupil spending. Indeed, that price tag surpasses the annual tuition at the costliest private prep school.
And, on top of that, local school districts can raise their levies if they still don't think they have enough money.
Scott's failure to explain the rudiments of school finance is damaging to him and weakens the conservative cause. Patricia Sullivan, head of the Florida Tea Party Network, said the governor also missed an opportunity to debunk the myth that higher school spending necessarily produces better academic performance.
"Over the last 30 years, we have pumped how many billions into increasing education budgets, and what do we really have to show for it?" concurred Henry Kelley, head of the Fort Walton Beach Tea Party.
But Scott's omissions do help explain why he is not regularly ranked among cost-cutting governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Ohio's John Kasich and New Jersey's Chris Christie.
Scott spokesman Lane Wright defended his boss Tuesday, saying: "From day one, Governor Scotts priority has been to deliver a world-class education system to the students of Florida. He accomplished this through the Student Success Act -- the first bill he signed -- and has always supported the expansion of charter schools and giving Floridas families more choices.
"In the budget, Governor Scott proposed billions more in tax relief for individuals and businesses. The Legislatures budget had other priorities. Governor Scott believes investing in our childrens future is an area we should all be able to agree on."
Still, it's a monumental head-scratcher that Scott would want more money funneled back to a bureaucratic, top-heavy educational system that he previously characterized as badly in need of reform and competition.
Even in his veto message, the governor warned that "throwing more taxpayer dollars at an outdated system is not the answer." And yet there he was, telling Floridians that more money "oughta be put back into education."
Was this bout of mush-minded munificence an isolated "off moment" for Scott, or a sign of things to come? Which direction he takes on the SunRail commuter-train boondoggle will go a long way toward settling that question.
"What baffles me is why we still have SunRail dollars in the budget," Kelley said.
Meantime, the axiom stands: The more an elected official is perceived as unprincipled, pandering or just plain feckless, the less credible that politician becomes. Just ask Crist.
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
