The preliminaries are finished. Now, the real budget game can begin.
The Florida House and Senate on Thursday approved budget proposals and are ready to negotiate a spending plan for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
The House proposal totaled about $115.5 billion, while the Senate proposal weighed in at about $115.9 billion. While negotiators will have to bridge the overall difference, they also will have to work out myriad details in the nearly 500-page plans.
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It was unclear Thursday when formal negotiations will start, but the annual legislative session is slated to end March 8. The new budget will take effect July 1.
House and Senate leaders say they expect some belt-tightening. Budgets during the past few years have been bolstered, in part, by a torrent of federal pandemic-related money. The budget for the current fiscal year totaled $119.1 billion.
House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said Thursday that revenue growth is slowing and that the House and Senate are being “responsible and getting ahead of it.”
“We’re going to pay off debt early, we’re going to balance our budget, we’re going to have some tax relief and how much … I don’t know yet until we formulate that. But we’re going to do all those things in a responsible way but also start to just kind of pull back on the spending accelerator so that we’re ahead of things,” Renner said.
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The House and Senate discussed the spending plans Wednesday before voting on them Thursday with relatively little debate.
The House voted 112-2 to pass its plan (HB 5001), with Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, and Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, casting the dissenting votes. The Senate voted 38-0 to approve its plan, which for procedural reasons, was amended to the House bill.
Antone took issue with the House plan because he said it included only about $30 million in projects sought by members of the legislative Black caucus.
“I’m not trying to be negative and critical, I’m just pointing out what’s in the budget,” Antone, who is Black, said. “And so if I want to make it really personal, I got $62,500 in the budget. I can’t even start up the bulldozer with that.”
But after the House floor session, Renner pushed back against arguments that Black lawmakers and Democrats were being shortchanged in the budget.
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“Factually, it’s untrue that they’re getting any less than they have in prior years, but we’re also restraining spending,” Renner said. “We’ll see where the budget goes (in negotiations). … As we go through the process, there will probably be some more dollars there and still have a fiscally conservative, fiscally responsible budget.”
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