DeSantis cut the state budget within reason | ANOTHER VIEW/SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE

By Florida standards, it was a flush annual spending allowance, reflective of an encouraging trend among a new generation of pragmatic Republicans who realize that not all government spending is inherently wasteful. And two cornerstones of this emerging philosophy -- a $500 million lift for public school teachers' salaries and a $625 million investment in water quality projects-- survived Gov. Ron DeSantis' billion-dollar belt tightening this week.

More than half of the cutbacks, he said, consisted of budget items he had personally championed. The pain is real, but appears to be judiciously distributed, necessarily afflicting the two largest silos of public expenditures: health care and education. All of the letdowns and postponements affecting this area come as a disappointment, especially the loss of $895,000 to expand the capacity of the nursing program at Daytona State College. That's a double blow, impacting education and also health care. We need those nurses.

No matter how skillfully DeSantis may have wielded this scalpel, the fact remains that the more democratic approach to pandemic-imposed cuts would have been to convene the full Legislature, and let Floridians' local representatives have a say. The deployment of some $4.6 billion in federal CARES Act stimulus funds without these lawmakers' input is a clear overreach on the governor's part.

"We should be meeting to rework our budget priorities," Rep. Ben Diamond of St. Petersburg, a Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote to House and Senate leaders. "We should be doing this work in an open, transparent and bipartisan way."

Particularly deserving of a public airing is the question of whether our state should sock away additional dollars to swell an existing $6 billion reserve account, or unleash federal stimulus money for an immediate boost to Florida's economy. DeSantis drew his own conclusions, choosing to bow to the possibilities of rainier days to come.

It's a defensible position. But he should be required to defend it, repeatedly, as inevitable COVID-19 damages unfold.

The $92.2 billion spending plan that remains, still robust under the circumstances, has some bright spots. One is the $41.5 million DeSantis raked back from an underused program designed to teach school employees how to wield firearms on our campuses. That's money much better spent elsewhere.

And it's heartening to think that all the attention that this vicious virus has focused on our residents in elder care facilities could have had a beneficial effect. DeSantis retained a badly needed $105 million increase in Medicaid reimbursements for nursing homes -- ending a Draconian rate freeze that has been imposed since 2009.

This budget makes good on another commitment to incapacitated elders, with a generous $8.7 million to amplify watchdog capacities at the Office of Public and Professional Guardianship. This agency was formed by a 2015 bill sponsored by Sen. Nancy Detert, now a Sarasota County commissioner, after a Sarasota Herald-Tribune series exposed flaws and abuses in the guardianship system.

With some $800,000 in initial funding, the watchdog had eyes but no teeth. This is a small but precious victory for Floridians who cannot speak for themselves.

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