Dear Colleagues:
Very well-placed sources indicate that higher education supporters’ calls and e-mails are having an impact. Those sources further indicate that it is IMPERATIVE that contacts focus NOW on the five legislators listed below. Please call or write to these legislators now, using non-College phones and computers, of course, to urge that new funding sources be developed to support higher education and avoid devastating cuts.
The message is NO MORE CUTS TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Charlotte Sweeney, President
UFF-PJCFA Chapter
House:
*Dean Cannon 1- 407- 623-5740 or 1- 850- 488-2742 (Talla.)
Representative Dean Cannon
Room 422, CAP
402 S. Monroe
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1300
Dean.cannon@myfloridahouse.gov
Anitere Flores 1- 305 - 227-7626 or 1-850- 488-2831 (Talla.)
Representative Anitere Flores
Room 422, CAP
402 S. Monroe Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1300
Anitere.flores@myfloridahouse.gov
Will Weatherford 1- 813 - 558-5115 or 1-850 - 488-5744 (Talla.)
Representative Will Weatherford
Room 223, CAP
402 S. Monroe Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1300
Will.weatherford@myfloridahouse.gov
Senate:
Jeff Atwater 1-561-625-5101
Senator Jeff Atwater
Room 312, SOB
404 S. Monroe Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1100
Atwater.jeff.web@flsenate.gov
JD Alexander 1-863-298-7677
Senator J. D. Alexander
Room 412 SOB
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1100
Alexander.jd.web@flsenate.gov
More complete legislator contact information, including e-mail addresses for all legislators, is now available as follows:
House: http://www.uff-fsu.org/art/house.csv
Senate: http://www.uff-fsu.org/art/senate.csv
Talking points and other information are available at http://www.uff-fsu.org
5 comments:
Where can people see the minutes or agenda of each PJC Board of Trustees meeting such as the one coming up?
Today's news:Regardless of who's to thank, the stimulus dollars have filled about half of a $6 billion gap between expected revenue and expenses. Both chambers have cut spending, shifted money around and raised fees or taxes to make up the difference.
The Senate budget also includes significantly more revenue than the House from expanding gambling at Seminole Indian casinos and pari-mutuels.
The House also would increase tuition for community college and university students by 7 percent. The Senate has an 8 percent tuition increase. Bills are pending in both chambers that would let individual schools impose additional increases that would bring the total up to 15 percent.
On the spending side, one of the biggest differences is over employee pay. The House plan would cut wages for state workers making more than $26,700, including university employees, of 4 or 5 percent depending on their salary levels. The Senate bill would cut pay by 1 percent but only for high-paid employees making more than $100,000.
Democrats criticized the House pay cut, but Republicans said the alternative would be to lay off employees.
"Do you want a haircut or an amputation?" asked Rep. D. Alan Hayes, R-Umatilla. "That's your choice,
Florida House, Senate budgets $600 million apart
By Bill Kaczor
Associated Press Writer / April 3, 2009
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Proposed budgets released by both Florida legislative chambers for the next fiscal year are $600 million apart, with the Senate's on the high side partly because it includes Seminole Indian gaming money not in the House plan.
Gov. Charlie Crist, meanwhile, on Friday stepped up efforts to persuade both Republican-controlled chambers to approve a compact he originally made with the tribe to expand gambling at its seven Florida casinos before the state Supreme Court ruled it needs legislative approval. Both chambers have since drafted separate plans, with Crist's version somewhere in the middle.
The Senate's proposed $65.6 billion spending plan for the budget year beginning July 1 is about $100 million more than the state's current budget. The House plan weighs is $65 billion, or half a billion less than now being spent.
Both proposals were distributed to lawmakers late Thursday. Appropriations committees will consider them next week. Floor votes are expected the following week.
The Senate's budget bill includes $538 million from the Seminole compact. That includes $288 million carried over from the current budget year. The tribe has put that much aside awaiting the Legislature's approval of Crist's compact. The Senate is considering a more expansive proposal that could bring in nearly $400 million a year.
The House has no compact money in its plan, not yet formally filed as a bill, but Friday its Select Committee on Seminole Indian Compact Review approved a scaled-down proposal expected to bring in about $100 million a year.
The Senate's compact would let the Seminoles have full-blown casinos including roulette, blackjack and craps. It also would let pari-mutuel facilities -- dog and horse tracks and jai-alai frontons -- put in more advanced slot machines.
The House version would permit the Seminoles to have only the same type of slots currently allowed at South Florida pari-mutuels.
Crist's proposal would allow the Seminoles to have Las Vegas style-slots and card games including blackjack. He said it would provide the state with $2.6 billion over 25 years, and most of that would go to education.
Officials from the Florida Education Association, which is the statewide teachers union, and organizations representing school boards and superintendents joined Crist and Seminole leaders at a news conference to tout the governor's plan.
Crist said he wouldn't settle for the House version. The House's GOP leaders, though, are reluctant to expand gambling and could tell the governor and Senate it's their plan or nothing.
"That would be ill-advised I think and not very polite," Crist said. "We try to be polite and work with each other."
Another key budget difference is higher education. The House has appropriated $4.1 billion for community colleges and universities. That's $459 million less than the Senate, which would leave their budgets virtually unchanged from the current year.
Both plans include base tuition increases -- 8 percent in the Senate and 7 percent in the House. Both also assume lawmakers will pass a bill letting state universities further increase tuition up to a total of 15 percent and that all 11 schools will approve the full amount.
Tim Jones, chief financial officer for the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the universities, said all schools may not increase tuition the full 15 percent.
The House budget cuts university spending 4 percent. They probably can handle that because they've been preparing for worst, Jones said.
Both chambers include at least $2.5 billion in federal stimulus dollars and they're fairly close on public schools -- the Senate leaving spending at the current rate of $6,680 per student and the House increasing it by $30.
Neither, though, has any money for the Florida Forever environmental land-buying program, which usually gets $300 million a year.
At a special session in January, lawmakers tried to suspend Florida Forever for the rest of the current budget year, but Crist vetoed that from a deficit-reduction bill. The governor, though, would be powerless to restore money that's never been appropriated.
Both chambers plan to reduce state jobs again. In the past, nearly all were unfilled positions, but Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, acknowledged as many as 800 state employees might be laid off.
Both budget plans would cut nursing home spending -- the Senate by $81 million and the House by $69 million. Nursing homes and advocates for the elderly say $787 million in health care stimulus money could have prevented those cuts, but it's being diverted to other purposes.
"Our state is in a fiscal crisis that is soon to turn into a moral crisis," said Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston.
Budget deal reached; Legislature to go into OT
BY JIM ASH • FLORIDA TODAY CAPITAL BUREAU • April 28, 2009
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TALLAHASSEE -- The Legislature is going into overtime.
Speaker Larry Cretul announced on the House floor that a budget deal has been reached and public conferences will begin at 4 p.m. today.
"And I want you to know that this will be an open process," he said.
The session was supposed to end Friday, but House and Senate negotiators will work through the weekend and have a budget ready to go to the printers by Monday, Cretul said.
That sets up a final budget vote next Thursday.
Cretul said non-budget work will be completed by the end of this week.
Senate President Jeff Atwater said the Legislature is ready to begin the conferencing process and session will obviously be extended.
"Just remember, this is an open process," said Atwater, R-North Palm Beach. "All offers and all acceptances are to be made in public."
How long session will be extended will be discussed this afternoon. The budget won't be printed until Monday, Atwater said.
It's official: Session will go into overtime
Cretul puts kibosh on House, Senate pet projects
BY JIM ASH • FLORIDA CAPITAL BUREAU CHIEF • APRIL 29, 2009
State workers and universities won't see the drastic cuts that House leaders were threatening, smokers will see a $1 a pack tax hike and Florida Forever, the state's premier environmental land-preservation program, will go away next year.
Those are just some of the results of a broad agreement spelled out late Tuesday between House and Senate Republican leaders who were stalled for weeks trying to craft a $65 billion-plus budget proposal.
House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala and Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, agreed late in the afternoon on how much to spend, and cut, and set their lieutenants to work in conference committees to hash out the details.
The agreement means the Legislature will extend by at least six days a 60-day session that was supposed to end Friday.
"I have complete faith and confidence in the members of the House and know that you will produce a budget of which we, as members of the House and as Floridians, can be proud," Cretul announced on the floor.
Cretul gave unusually strict marching orders, saying the House would not propose any member pet projects and would not accept any proposed by the Senate.
Like Cretul, Atwater was careful to tell his conferees to take their time, and keep the process open. Both leaders have been slammed for conducting most of the budget negotiations this session behind closed doors.
"If we can come to an agreement on allocations we had to agree not to short change or truncate the conference process," he said.
Taxes and spending were the biggest stumbling blocks that kept negotiations stalled since both chambers passed competing spending plans April 17.
The Senate wanted to raise millions in new taxes, including $400 million closing a corporate tax loophole and $1 billion taxing cigarettes and cigars and smokeless tobacco by the ounce. The House wanted to avoid tax increases and instead enforce steeper cuts, including as much as $500 million to state universities.
In the end, the House agreed to accept the cigarette tax, minus cigars, and agreed not to cut education and state worker pay so deeply.
Senate budget chief JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said state universities would instead see about a $100 million spending cut.
The House backed off a proposal to save $330 million by imposing a 4 percent pay cut on workers earning as little as $26,400, and a 5 percent cut for those earning $80,000 or more, a move that would have affected 133,000 workers.
It will move closer to a Senate position that socked managers earning more than $100,000 with a 1 percent pay cut, and eliminating 2,200 full-time positions, 800 of them filled by live bodies. The Department of Corrections would absorb the brunt of the job loss under the original Senate plan.
The state worker cuts won't go to public conference committees, however. They will be worked out exclusively by Cretul and Atwater.
"That, in general terms, has been agreed to," Cretul said. "These issues will be handled by the presiding officers."
The House proposal for state universities would have slashed Florida State University's budget by $77 million and Florida A&M University by $22.7 million.
The Senate plan would have cut FSU by $6.9 million and FAMU by $6.9 million.
Negotiations for a final spending plan for universities will begin at 8 a.m. today.
"At this time, we're a little more hopeful," said Kathleen Daly, an FSU lobbyist.
· Capital Bureau reporter Stephen D. Price contributed to this story.
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