Posted on Sun, May. 04, 2008

A souring economy and a worrisome election year forced Florida's Republican-led Legislature to moderate its politics in the session that ended Friday because it had no other choice.

To ease the pain of $5 billion in budget cuts over a year, Republicans abandoned a handful of basic conservative tenets: They tapped savings accounts, raised $200 million in user fees on everything from driver's licenses to boat registrations and, in a handful of cases, they made government bigger.

The one thing they stuck to: They refused to raise taxes.

''Nothing we could have done this session could help politically,'' said Sen. Carey Baker, a Eustis Republican. ``We could only hurt ourselves.''

Counterbalancing the move to the center on the budget, GOP lawmakers returned to conservative roots by pushing prolonged debates on evolution, guns, abortion and even Baker's plan to ban lewd ''Truck Nutz'' accessories from vehicles. They also lessened government mandates on health insurers in order to provide more coverage to the growing ranks of the uninsured.

But then they turned around and added a government health-insurance mandate for kids with autism.

Democrats spent hours warning about the harm the budget would impose. They pleaded unsuccessfully to fill holes by closing corporate tax ''loopholes.'' They blasted legislators for not digging deeper into savings accounts to offset a record $2.3 billion cut to education and finally voted against the budget.

''As soon as the dust settles, there is going to be a lot of pain in this state and people are going to wonder why we balanced this budget on the least vulnerable and our schoolchildren,'' said House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. ``We're going to be cutting summer school, after-school programs, reading coaches -- and that's just in public school.''

But the final budget could have been worse. At the urging of Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, lawmakers agreed to tap $355 million from the state's tobacco endowment to close deep budget gaps in social services for the disabled and poor, and raised $200 million in new fees to offset cuts, mostly to the courts and criminal justice system.

Crist called his approach ''investing in Florida's future'' and also suggested legislators raise property taxes $358 million to offset school cuts. He recommended using $400 million in interest earned by the Lawton Chiles Endowment -- the trust fund account devoted to healthcare programs -- and wanted lawmakers to raid other trust-fund accounts to avoid the most painful social-service cuts. He also wanted additional Lottery games.

Republican leaders rejected the concept at first. ''I'm a termed-out legislator. The easiest thing for me to do would be to go into trust funds and reserves,'' House Speaker Marco Rubio said at mid-session.

But Republicans came around and spent the trust-fund money.

''We just delayed our principles for a year,'' said Sen. Dan Webster, the Senate Republican leader from Winter Garden. ``I don't see us doing it ever again.''

The House's first budget proposal would have eliminated dentures, eyeglasses and hearing aids for elders on Medicaid, while cutting hospice care and trimming a program serving the chronically ill working poor. But faced with the prospect of campaigning after taking those tough votes, House leaders backed off.

Rep. Franklin Sands of Weston, the incoming House Democratic leader, said the explanation Republicans gave them for cutting hospice care was ''they're going to die anyway,'' an attitude, he said, Democrats could have easily exploited on the campaign trail.

But their decision to restore the money for those programs, Sands said, ``was a good choice -- unfortunately, it wasn't their first choice.''

TAXES TO HOLD STEADY

Republican leaders held true to their promise not to raise taxes and rejected Crist's call for expanded Lottery games and a property-tax hike to pay for schools.

''No Tax Increases,'' read the sign in bold lettering on the floor of the House as it debated the final budget bill.

House leaders even pushed for more tax cuts -- a plan to cap all annual property-tax assessments at 1.35 percent of just value. But the more moderate Senate wouldn't buy it, and last year's promise to bring additional tax cuts dissolved in the face of the deepest budget cuts in state history.

The Republicans' opposition to bigger government also melted when legislators needed to stop a rise in hurricane-insurance premiums for policyholders of Citizens, the state-run insurer. Rather than let market forces dictate the rates, legislators froze Citizens premiums for another year.

''This session was certainly more pragmatic than ideological,'' said Rep. J.C. Planas, a Miami Republican. ``But in hard times, pragmatics outweigh ideology.''

Few issues reflected legislators' pragmatism like healthcare. They increased a government mandate on some insurers to provide coverage to kids with autism, while cutting $180 million from programs serving people with autism and other developmental disabilities.

But they reduced government mandates to create new, affordable health plans. Then they increased government again by creating a public-private partnership -- ''a bureaucracy,'' in Crist's own words -- to administer some of the health plans.

But by cutting $450 million in social-service spending, legislators might wind up worsening the very healthcare system that they want the private market to fix.

''That's government for you. You do what you can do,'' said Sen. Durell Peaden, a Crestview Republican and chief of the senate's health budget. ``It doesn't matter what your political philosophy, you do what you need to do when you need to do it.''

POLITICAL FALLOUT

Baker, the Eustis Republican, acknowledged that despite their attempts to avoid damage, ''Republicans are very nervous'' about the upcoming election.

''We're considered the party in power. We're being held responsible for the economy. The war in Iraq trickles down. The president's lack of popularity has a negative effect on Republicans at all levels. The Democrats are turning out in record numbers,'' he said. ``Any incumbent Republican should be concerned. And it doesn't matter if they're doing a good job or not.''

Miami Herald staff writers Marc Caputo, Breanne Gilpatrick, Laura Figueroa, Nicole Bardo-Colon and Gary Fineout contributed to this report.