• New home construction won't see any significant uptick until 2012, in part due to an inventory of 300,000 unsold homes, according to forecasts from the Florida Homebuilders Association.

Those dynamics concern Sen. Don Gaetz, a Republican from Niceville who spent the past four months leading the Senate's Select Committee on Florida's Economy.

''Those who believe that the federal economic stimulus will be enough to prime the pump are truly betting the farm,'' he said. ``We can't base our economic future on selling real estate to each other and welcoming visitors. We need a clear, straight-forward economic policy for the state of Florida and, right now, there isn't one.''

Even prudent financial moves like building up savings have risks.

To help set aside $1.7 billion in reserves, legislators took $600 million from dozens of spending accounts called trust funds. That brings the amount of trust-fund raids in the past year to $1.3 billion.

And the losses will soon have an impact on dozens of programs, officials say.

For example, the Department of Environmental Protection won't be able to continue the clean-up needed when groundwater is poisoned by leaky fuel tanks because of a $135 million raid on the program.

The land management trust fund at DEP and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will lose $6 million intended for cleaning up invasive plants such as hydrilla -- a fish-tank plant that chokes rivers -- and melaleuca trees, which crowd out native plants in the Everglades.

And the state's transportation trust fund is the lowest in recent history, said Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos, so the state will have to scale back some road-building programs. The Legislature took 30 percent, leaving approximately $400 million in the trust fund.

Economists predict that the state's growth-dependent economy will come back, but not until 2012 -- after the rest of the nation revs up.

''It's not going to be anything like it was in the last decade or two,'' said Chris McCarthy, economist with the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

CHANCE TO CLOSE GAPS

Gov. Charlie Crist is more optimistic, repeatedly saying he is confident the state's economy will bounce back soon. But many Democratic legislators are wary.

''2011 has the potential to be an unprecedented disaster,'' said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. ``There is no way to contemplate how we close the gaps in our budget.''

Gelber said that the Senate attempted to find a way to permanently close the budget gaps by broadening the tax base. But the House resisted, forcing the Senate to back down.

''They didn't pull the trigger at the end,'' Gelber said. ``We bailed some water out without patching the holes.

Snaith, the UCF economist, believes legislators missed an opportunity this year to use the crisis as political cover to make unpopular but necessary changes to Florida's flawed tax code, such as closing corporate loopholes.

''I was looking for the silver lining of this crisis to allow for some very dramatic changes to take place, and I'm disappointed it didn't happen,'' he said. ``It is an opportunity that we might have blown, and it may come back to haunt us.''

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