{"id":18582,"date":"2013-05-16T13:13:47","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T17:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=18582"},"modified":"2013-05-16T13:53:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T17:53:15","slug":"education-budget-turkeys-include-college-buildings-charter-school-database","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/05\/16\/education-budget-turkeys-include-college-buildings-charter-school-database\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Budget &#8220;Turkeys&#8221; Include College Buildings, Charter School Database"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_18583\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 299px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/05\/16\/education-budget-turkeys-include-college-buildings-charter-school-database\/turkeys\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-18583\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18583\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/05\/Turkeys.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"238\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Margie Menzel\/News Service of Florida<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert Weissert (left) and Kurt Wenner of Florida TaxWatch reveal the group&#39;s annual budget turkey list.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>UPDATE: We&#8217;ve added Senate President Don Gaetz&#8217; response at the end.<\/p>\n<p>Florida TaxWatch has released its annual <a href=\" http:\/\/www.floridataxwatch.org\/resources\/pdf\/2013TurkeyWatchFINAL.pdf \">list of \u201cturkeys\u201d found in the proposed state budget.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TaxWatch bills itself as an \u201cindependent, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy<a href=\"http:\/\/www.floridataxwatch.org\/Home.aspx\"> research institute and government watchdog<\/a>.&#8221; The group targets 107 items for veto, including some education-related projects.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Rick Scott has until May 24 to make a decision on the legislative spending plan for the budget year beginning July 1. Scott has a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Line-item_veto\">line-item veto, which means he can strike down individual budget items<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just because a project is labeled as a &#8220;turkey,&#8221; doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not a worthwhile expenditure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we&#8217;re looking for is that they followed the established budget processes, that the things that were funded were subject to public scrutiny,&#8221; said TaxWatch&#8217;s Robert Weissert. &#8220;That&#8217;s not a judgement of the value of the project.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, these turkeys didn&#8217;t go through the normal debate process among lawmakers or the public may not have had a chance to review them.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a sampling of this year&#8217;s TaxWatch education turkeys:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$14 million for Gulf Coast State College to construct a <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/03\/18\/will-floridas-push-for-high-tech-degrees-pay-off\/\">STEM building<\/a><\/li>\n<li>$6 million for Old Jackson County (Marianna) High School<\/li>\n<li>$9 million for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to construct lab space<\/li>\n<li>$1.6 million for Juvenile Justice education programs<\/li>\n<li>$110,000 for the Literacy Jump Start pilot project<\/li>\n<li>$300,000 to an outside entity to study accessibility and credit for online courses<\/li>\n<li>$400,000 for a statewide database for charter school waiting lists<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Gov. Scott is being asked to take a closer look at projects on the turkey list when he picks up his veto pen.<\/p>\n<p>The report notes that money not spent on turkeys can be used for other things, such as:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/08\/03\/back-to-school-shoppers-get-a-sales-tax-break\/\">Back-to-school sales tax holiday<\/a> weekends \u2013 The state could add three more sales tax-free weekends for school-related purchases.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Early learning enrollment &#8212; Add 46,821 children to early education programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 More teachers \u2013 Hire 3,000 new teachers at the minimum salary of $34,856.<\/p>\n<p>TaxWatch is also calling on the Legislature to create a systematic review and competitive selection process for supplemental education programs for reading, math, arts, culinary training and more.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This line-item in the budget is consistently a place where numerous member projects show up, often growing even larger in conference,&#8221; the report states. &#8220;This was especially true this year when 44 of these programs&#8211;worth $23 million&#8211;were funded.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Several of those programs have been funded before and many more\u00a0programs were added, with no accountability for performance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>TaxWatch recommends that the governor and the Florida Department of Education review projects which only appeared in the House or Senate budget on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n<p>The group wants assurance that the projects are needed and are serving the taxpayers. Those that don&#8217;t pass muster, it says, should lose their funding.<\/p>\n<p>Senate President Don Gaetz issued a response to TaxWatch, which can only be characterized as an instant classic. Here it is in it&#8217;s entirety:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe TaxWatch list is built on the unconstitutional perversion that if an appropriation isn&#8217;t recommended by unelected agency officials it shouldn&#8217;t be considered in conference by elected legislators.\u00a0 This is an arrogance of the elite who spend too much time in Tallahassee and Washington listening to the echoes of their own invented wisdom\u00a0and thinking they&#8217;re hearing the voice of God.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo agency put in its budget a $3,500 raise for Florida&#8217;s most effective teachers, yet that was funded.\u00a0 No agency testified before the Legislature asking for a raise for state employees who had been without one for six years, yet we passed it.\u00a0 No bureaucrat in the Department of Education asked for a career-technical pathway to a high school diploma or an online pathway to a university degree, but we funded them.\u00a0 Not a whisper of criticism from TaxWatch on any of these and a hundred other similar items.\u00a0 So, apparently, their indignation is not only ill-informed but selective.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTaxWatch has dismissed as \u2018turkeys\u2019 mobile medical and dental units to bring health care to poor people in rural areas, documentation and education about the Holocaust, housing for disabled veterans, rehabilitation for severely wounded soldiers who want to return to duty, and\u00a0replacement of 50 year old educational facilities that produce workforce for companies\u00a0bringing jobs\u00a0to Florida.\u00a0\u00a0In most cases, those who put together this\u00a0list\u00a0couldn\u2019t find\u00a0these projects on a map and haven&#8217;t put five minutes into finding out\u00a0anything about them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf our founders had shared the slavish devotion of TaxWatch to unchallenged decisions and dictates of faraway bureaucrats, we&#8217;d all be drinking English tea and singing God Save the Queen.\u00a0 A good song.\u00a0 But not an American song.\u00a0 The Constitution obligates and empowers elected legislators, who come from communities and go home to communities, to write the state&#8217;s budget.\u00a0 If TaxWatch staffers want to test their budget theories in the public square, let them stand up in front of conference committees and testify in public.\u00a0 More than thirty public, open conference committee\u00a0meetings were held during the recent legislative session.\u00a0 Every item in the state budget was proposed and adopted during those public meetings.\u00a0 Testimony was requested and welcomed at every meeting.\u00a0 Not once did any person from TaxWatch ask one question, offer one idea or say one word.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is little wonder that TaxWatch is irrelevant 364 days a year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE: We&#8217;ve added Senate President Don Gaetz&#8217; response at the end. Florida TaxWatch has released its annual list of \u201cturkeys\u201d found in the proposed state budget. TaxWatch bills itself as an \u201cindependent, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy research institute and government watchdog.&#8221; The group targets 107 items for veto, including some education-related projects. Gov. Rick Scott [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[785,1036,1009,590],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18598,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18582\/revisions\/18598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}