This article was published by Published by the Florida Center for Government Accountability
Commentary by
“An epigram of uncertain origin holds that laws are like sausages – it’s better not to see them being made. That’s why Florida legislators have been known to joke about their workplace being a sausage factory.
The comparison is unfair to sausages.
That’s never more so than when the Legislature gets around – usually very late – to the only thing it really has to do, the annual state budget.
It often comes out full of surprises. The biggest this year strips the University of South Florida of its Sarasota-Manatee campus and gives it to the much smaller New College of Florida, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has converted into a right-wing showpiece complete with a baseball team it never knew it wanted.
The transfer wasn’t in either of the budget bills that were introduced and passed in a special session last month. There was profound local opposition when it was discussed during the regular session earlier and yet the House approved it. However, the Senate Appropriations Committee never took it up and it died on adjournment.
The transfer was not in either of the House or Senate appropriation bills when the chambers took turns rejecting them and setting up a conference committee.
However, anything goes when conference committees meet to negotiate the final budget.
And a well-intentioned reform that was supposed to discourage such surprises has nurtured them instead.
Here’s how that happens.
There’s always disagreement between the two houses on how much to spend and where to spend it, so the final formalities fall to a conference committee composed of equal numbers of senators and representatives.
In reality, the critical decisions are made not how they ought to be – i.e., by the committee members in an open meeting. They’re settled instead by the Senate President and House Speaker in private negotiations with each other. They may consult with the budget subcommittee chairs and other members of their leadership teams.
The governor and influential lobbyists may know more about what’s coming down than the rank-and-file legislators do.
The process permits – even invites – surprises that were never properly aired in either the House or Senate and are put before them as a choice between swallowing the budget whole, without any amendments, or staying in Tallahassee longer than they had planned or cared to.
The worst such snooker in this year’s final budget is the New College land-and-building grab.
New College is the school once known for its progressive students and faculty that Gov. Ron DeSantis is converting into a public version of the famously conservative private Hillsdale College in Michigan. It has 716 students according to its website. According to an estimate published last year, New College spends about $134,000 on each student annually, more than 13 times what the other state universities do. That’s nearly half a million dollars for each degree. “
The full story is at https://floridatrident.org/new-college-takeover-of-usf-sarasota-manatee/
