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Finish Line in Sight

June 15th, 2015 by flanews

It’s the home stretch for lawmakers hoping to wrap up a special session, pass a budget, and avoid a government shutdown. As Matt Galka tells us, the House and Senate took a big step forward Monday in getting everything squared away – but a few hurdles remain.

It was all smiles Monday after both the Florida Senate and House sent a 430 million dollar tax cut to the Governor’s desk.

The tax cut includes a 10 day back to school sales tax holiday and a cut to a cell phone tax that would save the average Floridian around 20 bucks a year.

State Senator Maria Sachs argued that Floridians care more about health coverage – which the House voted against expanding – than they do about tax cuts. She still voted “yes” for the plan.
“I am not going to hurt other hardworking Floridians just because a few leaders in the House would not give us what we are all here for,” said Sen. Sachs (D-Delray Beach).

The vote was a big step in the right direction for getting a budget passed before the current year’s expires at the end of June.

 

One of the final hurdles lawmakers will have to clear this week: education spending. State universities have a long and expensive list of requests that probably won’t be granted.

“When you take over 400 million out of the budget and put it into healthcare, there’s going to be impact, and I think you’re going to start seeing that,” said Senate President Andy Gardiner.

The view was shared on the House side.

“Those are big ticket items obviously and we have less resources to deal with big items like that,” said House Speaker Steve Crisafulli.

Both sides say they’ll be ready to vote and pass a budget by Friday. A budget would have to be available by Tuesday in order to meet the 72 hour constitutionally required “cooling off” period before a vote on Friday.

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