The Progressive States Network (PSN) is a fantastic organization which acts as a Center for American Progress at the state level. They have a very strong focus on public policy and ideas, and focus less on back and forth politics.
At the end of legislative sessions around the country, PSN evaluates each legislature. Today, PSN came out with their evaluation of our recent legislative session. They focus mostly on the positive, but as you can imagine the overall picture wasn’t pretty:
With the voters enacting a $9.3 billion property tax cut in January and a projected $7 billion dollar state revenue shortfall, the largest one year drop in revenue in the state’s history, Florida’s recent legislative session was marked by hard budget choices. With legislative leaders committed to raising no taxes to fill a huge budget shortfall, draconian cuts were implemented in state services.
With an economy and real estate market in crisis, serious environmental concerns, continuing election problems, and the fourth highest rate of any state in residents’ lacking health insurance, legislators either made things worse, failed to act, or merely nibbled around the edges of reform.
The concluding paragraph says it all:
Faced with a precipitous falloff in revenue, lawmakers decided to fund prisons over schools and waste considerable time on issues that will not improve the lives of Floridians. On almost every issue, lawmakers failed to take the bold steps necessary to deal with mounting challenges.
Make sure you read the whole post – it’s nice and short. In addition, there are some interesting bills which we missed during our various legislative roundups here at FPC.
Thanks for posting this, Ray. Progressive States truly is a fantastic organization.