CFO Sink blasts "penny wise pound foolish" cuts
State CFO Alex Sink just whacked the Florida House (she'll likely nick the Senate later) in a letter to House Speaker Ray Sansom and Senate President Jeff Atwater, criticizing plans to raid the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund and the Budget Stabilization Fund.
Sink, a Dem, offered no solutions to patching the $2.4 billion budget hole, but said the Repubs' near-emptying of the funds was "penny wise and pound foolish."
Specifically, Sink said the House's plan to take $600 million from the BSF would leave just $72 million in the account. Assuming there were a continued downturn, she said, there would be "no cushion" to pay the state's bills. The House proposes patching that hole with $600m from the Chiles fund, an annuity that once produced $55m annually to serve children and seniors. But doing so "would be effectively killing" the fund because the House wants to take $400m from it already.
The letter targets the House because it had the good fortune to pass out its budget first. The Senate plans to take $700m from Chiles, but no earlier than June 10. Like the House, the Senate proposes paying that money back if economic stimulus money comes in. The House, though, would only pay back about $400m of that.
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