Let the budget battle begin.
Hours after the Senate announced it would delay the release of its budget to align its timing with the House, the House unveiled its spending plan.
The $113.58 billion proposal would be nearly $1 billion less than the current budget.
The release of the budget comes more than halfway through the 60-day legislative session, and hours after Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ed Hooper sent a memo to members Thursday saying the Senate's spending plan won’t be unveiled until next week at the earliest.
“We will not be presenting our budget today. Our goal remains to roll out our budget in concert with our House partners,” Hooper wrote. “Taking into account public notice requirements in the Senate Rules, the next opportunity to roll out our budget is next week.”
The budget is the only bill the Legislature is required under the state constitution to pass each year. The next fiscal year starts July 1, but lawmakers usually approve the state spending plan well before that deadline, during the regular legislative session.
The current session is slated to end March 13.
Typically each chamber will pass their preferred spending plan, then enter formal negotiations to hash out the differences. Last year, a dispute between House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, and Senate President Ben Albritton over tax cuts led to an extra 45 days of the session before a compromise was reached.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has less than one year left in office, was at the center of the disagreement last year. He preferred a large property tax cut and feared Perez’ plan to cut the state’s overall sales tax from 6% to 5.25% would crowd out his proposal.
Lawmakers, though, haven’t advanced bills in line with DeSantis’ property tax push this year. The House has advanced several bills, including a proposal to phase out all non-school property taxes for homestead properties, that would appear on the November ballot as a constitutional amendment requiring 60 percent support from voters.
DeSantis has called those House proposals “milquetoast,” and said the inclusion of many proposals on the November ballot would confuse voters and doom the effort.
Hooper in his memo stated “we have great partners in the House, and I have every expectation we will work well together moving forward.”
But the chambers have struggled to reach agreements on any substantive legislation. So far this session, only two bills have been sent to DeSantis' desk.
House Budget Committee Chairman Lawrence McClure told reporters earlier in the week the session wasn’t “scripted,” but held out hope for finishing the session on time.
“You want the ending to a movie that I’ve never seen, that I didn’t write the production, that I have no idea,” said McClure, R-Dover. “The process is going to work itself out.”
