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No-new-taxes budget laden with ‘member projects’

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The budget that hits lawmakers’ desks Tuesday has only a paltry $1.22 increase in per pupil spending for education and it is laden with cuts to substance abuse and mental health programs. But the budget will include $8.5-million for a Florida A&M Crestview Education Center, in the district of Sen. Durell Peaden; $3.5 million for a neuroscience center at Florida International University; $2-million for FIU’s Center for Ethics and Professionalism; $1-million for Fort Lauderdale’s Discovery Center museum; $800,000 for storm water improvements in the River Oaks neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale; and $150,000 for emergency generators for the town of Golden Beach in Miami-Dade.

“I wouldn’t necessarily name them all as projects,” said Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, the House budget chief, who ran the meetings after he jetted home from D.C. on a charter flight from a fund-raiser for his Congressional campaign “I think that’s relative. We tried to make it balanced in these offers, to have spending that has a statewide impact.”

Excerpted from the Miami Herald.  Continue reading here.

Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises and is the publisher of some of Florida’s most influential new media websites, including SaintPetersBlog.com, FloridaPolitics.com, ContextFlorida.com, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. SaintPetersBlog has for three years running been ranked by the Washington Post as the best state-based blog in Florida. In addition to his publishing efforts, Peter is a political consultant to several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella.

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