The two biggest counties together will shoulder more than a third of the $332 million in cuts to K-12 classroom spending in the proposed budget lawmakers will approve when the legislative session ends Friday.
Those school cuts are a fraction of the total slashed from education: $2.3 billion -- 55 percent of the total cuts -- which will reduce spending on everything from construction to class programs in kindergarten through graduate school.
But classrooms won't be the only ones feeling the pinch of a $66.2 billion budget that represents the largest one-year drop in state spending. In the next few months, Floridians will pay more for boat registration, driver licenses and court fees as well as drunken-driving fines and college tuition.
Meanwhile, reimbursements for hospitals and nursing homes are decreasing, as is money for foster care and financial aid for students at private colleges.
The biggest budget winner: prison builders. They'll get $305 million to build one private and two public lockups. By the end of the budget year on June 30, 2009, the prison population is anticipated to swell to 107,000.
''If you build them, they will come,'' fretted Sunrise Democrat Sen. Nan Rich. She said higher prison spending was tough to justify, even though the social-services budget she helps oversee had the lowest percentage decrease: 1.9 percent, or $451 million.
SMALL CUTS `DECEIVING'
Rich said the relatively small social-service cuts are ''deceiving'' because programs for the elderly and the disabled are still being reduced, the need won't go away and local charities and taxpayers will have to make up the difference. Lawmakers plugged part of the hole in health programs by dipping into state reserves.
Meantime, there's enough money to keep giving the owners of 20 sports stadiums and arenas -- including the ones used by the Miami Dolphins, the Miami Heat and the Florida Panthers -- tax subsidies as high as $2 million each. Lawmakers also peppered the budget with millions of hometown spending projects and items such as $160,000 for ``alligator marketing and education.''
All in all, Florida's schools, colleges and universities had the biggest cut in dollars as well as share: 9.7 percent. As a result, K-12 construction spending is $10 million lower than prison construction.
The chief of the Senate's criminal justice budget, Republican Victor Crist of Tampa, said the prison spending skewed his bottom-line budget, which actually reflected an average 1.5 percent decrease that court advocates say could lead to future layoffs.
But Crist predicted no troubles for now. ''Our budgets are so huge, there are nickels that you don't even know are there. There's stuff buried deep, deep, deep,'' he said. ``We've squeezed out some money. I think there's more to be squeezed.''
An overwhelming number of Democrats plan to vote against the budget, saying it doesn't represent their way of thinking.
''Our priorities are upside down and backwards,'' said Rep. Joe Gibbons of Hallandale Beach. ``There's a direct correlation between failure in schools and numbers of people going to prison. We're funding what we're causing by not funding education. We're not investing money on the front end. We're just spending it on the back end.''
Gibbons said he was particularly surprised that Broward and Miami-Dade schools will see such deep cuts, considering that the Republican leaders, House Speaker Marco Rubio of West Miami and Senate President Ken Pruitt of Port St. Lucie -- whose district includes part of Palm Beach County -- have South Florida ties. The Democrats' leaders, Rep. Dan Gelber and Sen. Steve Geller, do as well.
But South Florida Republicans say the area would have fared worse had Rubio not been in charge. For instance, Miami-Dade would have lost $68 million on K-12 classroom spending, but instead lawmakers plowed $7.5 million of cost-of-living money back into the county school system for a net loss of $60.5 million. Broward didn't get an adjustment and lost $59.9 million. Monroe's reduction: $2 million.
In the end, the cuts were inevitable because the economy is tanking, Florida's tax collections are flat and lawmakers won't raise taxes in an election year.
Republican lawmakers made sure to roll back the tax rate on the state-required property tax for schools. But in order to make up for some of the lost money, the Legislature then redirected tax money meant for construction projects to pay for classroom operations.
This marks the first time the state's share of education money is lower than that paid by local school boards.
HOMETOWN PROJECTS
Democrats call it ''sleight of hand'' -- and an attempt to avoid showing deep cuts to the base education formula. But the House's Republican education budget chief, Joe Pickens of Palatka, defended it as an attempt to give the school districts the one-time flexibility they want in this difficult budget year.
Yet even in austere times, lawmakers still found ways to get some money steered to hometown projects, many of which were not recommended by Gov. Charlie Crist or state agencies. Some of these projects include:
• $1 million for a Doral park irrigation project requested by Rep. David Rivera and Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, two Miami Republicans.
• $12 million for a connector road serving a new Panama City airport that has been pushed by Florida's largest private land owner, the St. Joe Company.
• $700,000 to study whether to build a rail line connecting western Miami-Dade County with the city of South Bay.
• $1.2 million to bury electric lines, bicycle paths and sidewalks alongside a state road in Orange County.
• $840,000 for Exponica International, the annual Latin America cultural festival held in Miami. Gov. Crist vetoed money for this event last year.
Senate Republican leader Dan Webster of Winter Garden said he expects Gov. Crist will spot them easily: ''I would suspect that the governor will get most of those'' with vetoes.
Miami Herald staff writers Mary Ellen Klas and Breanne Gilpatrick contributed to this report.
