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.