An election-year budget that includes huge tax cuts, record funding for public schools and a new initiative to bring jobs to Florida might be good politics for lawmakers. The question is whether they can afford it. When lawmakers start the 2016 legislative session Tuesday, it will have been years since the House and Senate were in the depths of the fallout from the global financial meltdown that forced painful cuts to schools and politically perilous increases in tobacco taxes and motor-vehicle fees. But for some lawmakers, the memory of those and other budget crunches are still fresh. As a result, many of them are cautious about Gov. Rick Scott’s ambitious designs for a spending plan that would slash $1 billion in taxes, boost funding for schools and set aside $250 million for a new approach to luring economic-development projects to Florida. Lawmakers also face other pressures, including a push for pay raises for at least some state employees and questions about whether property-tax increases that come with rising home values are tax hikes. Asked whether the Legislature could do everything Scott proposed in his $79.3 billion plan, Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon, said it is possible.
PIFF.net
Personal Insurance Federation of Florida
