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(Tallahassee, FL) - The Florida legislature has finally passed a $115 billion balanced state budget for the next fiscal year.
The final budget comes in $3.5 billion less than last year’s adjusted total and is $500 million less than the governor’s proposed budget.
The Senate posting on X, "Our balanced budget will reduce state spending, grow strong reserves, pay down state debt, lower per capita spending, reduce the growth of state government and account for broad-based tax relief with new reporting requirements to safeguard tax dollars."
The final bill does eliminate some state jobs but includes tax breaks for families, and billions in school vouchers.
The regular session was supposed to wrap up in May, but tax cut disagreements forced lawmakers to extend the session until late last night when the hanky dropped.
House Speaker Daniel Perez says that the back-and-forth between the Governor and the legislature was necessary to strike a happy medium on tax exemptions and eliminations.
The budget includes sales tax exemptions, elimination of business rent taxes, and tax cuts for special interests including casinos, airlines and NASCAR.
Floridians also will get sales tax relief on hurricane supplies, and on clothes and supplies for school each August.
The budget now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is still in France on a trade mission, for his signature.
The governor has line-item veto authority and could use his pen to cut a fair amount of spending.
Florida TaxWatch has also released its Turkey Watch Report for the newly passed state budget. Florida TaxWatch president Dominic Calabro says both budget turkeys and member pet projects have accelerated, and it postpones property tax relief.
Florida TaxWatch Executive Vice President and General Counsel Jeff Kottkamp said, “While we commend the Florida Legislature for constructing a smaller budget than last year’s by approximately $3.5 billion, Florida TaxWatch encourages Gov. DeSantis to provide ‘especially close scrutiny’ to the $799.5 million in specific line-items identified in our report. Moreover, while a project may be worthwhile, items identified as Budget Turkeys tend to serve a limited – not statewide – area, are often not core functions of state government, are more appropriately funded with local or private dollars, and circumvent well established budget procedures, competitive selection, oversight and accountability. Florida TaxWatch will never stop advocating for the hardworking taxpayers of Florida, which is exactly what we are doing with today’s report.”
Florida TaxWatch Senior Vice President of Research Kurt Wenner said, “The lack of a systematic review and selection process in some areas of the budget has become a glaring problem. Member projects are peppered throughout the budget, but there are several line-items where numerous projects end up, and the number of projects that are funded in these line-items is increasing. Not that long ago, funding for some of these types of local projects was rare. Funding them through the state budget has now become standard. Florida TaxWatch recommends that, if the Legislature is going to fund such projects, it must create a competitive review and selection process in statute for each of these areas.”
The Turkey Report is a roadmap for the governor to follow when he wields his line-item veto pen.