by Michael Peltier
The News Service of Florida
At the halfway point of the 2011 legislative session, Florida lawmakers spent much of their time last week teeing up spending plans, setting up a month of negotiations over retiree benefits and other budget differences.
Wednesday marked the midpoint of the 60-day session, a symbolic milestone.
Optimists see the chambers’ early vote on their respective budgets as a welcome sign while skeptics maintain the session’s early efficiency will be more than offset by the time it takes to settle a $3.3 billion difference between the $66.5 billion House blueprint and the Senate’s $69.8 billion budget.
Leaders in both chambers say they hope to have overall allocations out this week, a necessary step before conferees can begin their work.
Two of the budget’s biggest sticking points remain what to do about retirement and how much to reduce benefits to the state’s most needy.
With the question of whether to make changes to the Florida Retirement System decided, House leaders want to share the pain equally among workers at all salary levels by requiring all system recipients to contribute 3 percent of their income regardless of how much they take home, and what job they do.
The Senate plan would set different charges on different levels of income, ranging from 2 percent on the first $25,000 of pay to 6 percent on any pay above $50,000.
Leading by example, lawmakers and statewide elected officers would kick in an extra percentage point at each salary level, meaning most lawmakers will contribute 5 percent of their compensation package.
On the health care front, the Senate budget proposal calls for spending $28.4 billion on health- and human-services programs, about $800 million less than the House.
That difference shows up in areas such as the Medically Needy program, which the House would not cut, and in deeper Senate reductions in hospital Medicaid rates.
The Senate proposal would cut those rates 10 percent, while the House would cut them 7 percent.
There were other issues pending before lawmakers outside the budget as members wrangled over pill mills, the courts and other reorganizations.
In response to criticism from court officials and other stakeholders, House Speaker Dean Cannon scaled back ambitious court reform proposals that critics said were thinly veiled attacks at a judiciary, especially the Florida Supreme Court, which has scuttled a few Cannon-backed constitutional measures.
Last month, Cannon unveiled a controversial slate of proposals that would have split the Florida Supreme Court in two. Other Cannon proposals would make it more difficult for judges to be re-elected and easier for the Legislature to impeach them once they were seated.
Under the new proposed amendment, the Supreme Court would stay as one, but would add three justices and have a civil and criminal division of five justices each. The Senate would also have to confirm any new justice appointed by the governor.
The plan would also give the House access to investigative files of the Judicial Qualifications Commission to review possible cases for impeachment and would set aside at least 2.25 percent of general revenue every year to fund the judicial branch.
The House and Senate, meanwhile, have taken vastly different positions to combating unscrupulous pain clinics that dish out painkillers to drug addicts and traffickers.
House leaders say the answer is to ban doctors from dispensing drugs in their offices. They also want to eliminate a series of regulations approved during the past two years, including a requirement that the state use a new database to better track prescriptions.
Scott wants lawmakers to scuttle the database, which he says is intrusive.