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Hospitals and schools are the biggest losers in this year’s 69 billion dollar state budget.The state will also privatize about a fourth of the state prison system. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, public employees will begin contributing to their pensions for the first time in more than forty years.

School funding is being cut by 1.3 billion. The eight percent cut means that school districts will have about 500 dollars less per student than they did last year. Rep. Seth McKeel of Lakeland says there was no other alternative in a no new tax year.

“Reducing school funding is a challenge. It’s one of the challenges in a budget. We had to cut 4.5 billion dollars out of the state budget, and reducing school funding is a challenge,” Rep. McKeel said. “Hopefully, what the budget makes up with the pension contributions will be helpful to them. But there’s no question that reductions are going to be made in school districts, just like they’re being made in school government.”

Hospitals are the second biggest loser. They are taking a 12 percent cut in the money they get for treating the poor.  Nursing homes will see 8 percent less. That will result in smaller staffing levels. Teachers, firefighters, police and state employees will all start chipping in three percent of their salaries toward their pensions. That will dampen purchasing power.

Overall, state government will shed 4500 positions, although some of them are already vacant. Budget negotiator Sen. Alan Hays says government will be smaller.

“Government is going to look leaner and more efficient,” Sen. Hayes said.

Thousands of other jobs are also on the line as the state seeks bids to privatize prisons in 18 counties. Corporations will get a small tax break, averaging just over a thousand dollars. There will be a 30 million dollar back-to-school sales tax holiday.

There is just over 150 million dollars in the budget for hometown projects often referred to as  “Turkeys”. Governor Rick Scott promised to sign the budget when he got his corporate tax cuts, but he made no promise on whether he would cancel some of the special projects.