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The state budget only provides money until the end of June and state lawmakers remain deadlocked over health care spending. They will return to the Capitol in June, and as Mike Vasilinda tells us, state government hasn’t faced a shutdown over budget disputes since 1992.

Signs like this one appeared on state buildings on the last day of June 1992. And as the clock ran out at midnight June 30th…lawmakers still working jokingly turned out the lights, but the state was officially without a budget.

I don’t think the governor agrees with this program” said then State Senator Curt Kiser during an early morning in the Senate.

Kiser was a key negotiator at meetings during the wee hours of the morning.

Q:“Your advice to this legislature asJuly first gets closer every day?”

“They’ve really just need to sit down across the table and have some give and take, sometimes you do a fix for one year and you come back next year, and things will be better” says Kiser

Then Governor Lawton Chiles waited until the day before a shutdown to sign two executive orders to keep state government running.

State employees promised to keep coming to work without pay…but Mark Neimeiser of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal employees wanted to make one thing clear: “Workers can come to work, and expect to be paid” said Neimeiser.

Today, Neimeiser still represents some state workers.m Q:”Were your worried they were going to lock you out?”

“Back in 1992? No. I felt annoyed because people kept trying to manufacture this crisis mentality. Come on, the way we solve things is to work through them.”

Governor Rick Scott is already being criticized for sending this letter to state agency heads, asking for a contingency plan if there is no budget July first.

Scott is being accused of feeding into a crisis mentality by sending the letter so early,  and for taking a shot at the state Senate, which could make compromise difficult.

The state budget was agreed up in the early morning hours of July first.  The 1992 lesson is that some state services can keep operating, but many routine offices would have to close without money appropriated to operate them.