Florida lawmakers pass $78 billion state
budget
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[June 20, 2015]
By Bill Cotterell
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida
legislators wrapped up a rancorous special session on Friday with
passage of a $78 billion state budget, narrowly avoiding a state
government shutdown at the end of the month.
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"This has been an unprecedented six months, something we haven't
seen in decades," said state Representative Richard Corcoran, a Land
O' Lakes Republican who chairs the House budget committee.
The three-week special session ended after a 97-17 House vote on the
budget.
A standoff between the Republican-controlled House and Senate over
expanding Medicaid coverage to serve about 800,000 working poor
Floridians caused the state's regular 60-day session to end in
disarray on April 28. Medicaid is a government health insurance
program for the poor.
The Senate proposed a market-based plan for using federal money to
underwrite private healthcare coverage. But the more conservative
House balked at accepting anything derived from President Barack
Obama's Affordable Care Act, a law Republicans strongly oppose.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jun/20/images/ads/current/charrons_bch041713.png) Without a budget for the fiscal year starting July 1, lawmakers
reconvened on June 1 and worked out compromises to fund a
"low-income pool" of local, state and federal money to reimburse
hospitals for care of the uninsured poor.
The Senate sought again to expand Medicaid eligibility, but the
House held firm.
Legislators gave Governor Rick Scott a $400 million package of tax
cuts, which he signed this week. A breakthrough in prolonged budget
negotiations came near midnight on Monday, with the sudden emergence
of $300 million in a wide range of programs and building projects -
dubbed "turkeys" in the legislative process - to smooth ruffled
feathers.
Democrats objected not only to rejection of federal Medicaid money,
but also to what they called a short-changing of environmental
protection spending.
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Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional
amendment last fall requiring one-third of state real estate
development taxes to be spent on land acquisition and water
protection, but Republican legislative leaders spread the money
among a wide range of programs that they said met the conservation
criteria.
Scott, a conservative Republican, can use his line-item veto to cull
parts of the budget before signing it next week.
When the Legislature adjourned three days early in late April,
unable to pass a budget, Scott had ordered state agencies to draw up
contingency lists of essential functions like prison operations and
child protective services that would have to be maintained if a
budget were not passed by July 1 and state agencies were forced to
shutter.
(Editing by David Adams and Will Dunham)
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