Budget Update
The House and Senate spending plans are expected to pass their respective chambers next week, setting the stage for budget conferencing.
The House plan totals $89.9 billion, a relatively conservative budget compared to the Senate’s roughly $90.3 billion spending proposal and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recommendation of $91.3 billion.
But DeSantis, speaking to reporters this week, suggested that he’s content with the House and Senate budgets. He noted that the two chambers followed through on his environmental spending plan — one of his top priorities.
It appears that the sticking point between the House and Senate is education funding. Budget Chairs Rep. Travis Cummings and Sen. Rob Bradley have pointed out initial discrepancies in preK-12 and higher education spending.
In the preK-12 portion of the budget, the Senate has proposed a $1.1 billion increase to the Florida Education Finance Program, an operating funding source for Florida’s 67 school districts. The increase is about $520 million more than what the House has set aside.
The House has proposed a number of higher education cuts that were not in the Senate’s budget.
Among other reductions, the House wants to reduce university base funding by $100 million.
But both budget chairs, who hail from Northeast Florida, are confident that any differences in the budget can quickly be resolved in conference.
The roughly $400 million sticker-price difference between the two spending places is “not a tremendous variance coming out of the gate,” Cummings said last week.
“These are all manageable differences between the two sides,” Bradley said on the budget as a whole. “I’ve seen the spread a lot greater than it is now.”
