May 4, 2008
Josh Hafenbrack, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sun-Sentinel.com

TALLAHASSEE - In spite of a leaner budget year for Florida, Palm Beach County has pulled in millions in state money for projects ranging from environmental cleanup to a medical school at Florida Atlantic University.

Local residents, though, have been handed a mixed bag from the annual session of the Legislature that ended Friday. They’ll miss out on summer sales tax holidays and could get pinched by higher fees and fines.

But they could see cleaner drinking water and nicer lakes and lagoons. The state’s $66.2 billion annual budget includes almost $1 million to improve West Palm Beach’s troubled drinking water pipelines and build a new water-treatment plant in the poverty-stricken Everglades communities.

Also included: $1 million to build a scenic biking trail along the rim of Lake Okeechobee, $1.3 million to clean up the Loxahatchee River and $500,000 for the Lake Worth Lagoon.

Now, for legislators and lobbyists who helped stuff the projects into the budget, just one task remains: avoiding Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto.

“Getting anything in a budget year like this is a miracle,” said Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, chairwoman of the county’s legislative delegation.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said the Republican-led Legislature made good on a pledge to balance the budget without raising taxes.

“We’re going to right-size Florida’s government to a level that the people of Florida can afford,” he said.

Still, county residents won’t get sales tax holidays on hurricane items and back-to-school clothing and schools supplies. And they’ll face 6 percent higher tuition at Florida’s public universities and community colleges, as well as increased fees on a host of items from drivers’ licenses to court filings.

Landlords such as Elizabeth Bates will be among those feeling the pinch. Fees to evict tenants are scheduled to spike from $75 to $265 when the new state budget takes effect July 1.

“We’re having to evict tenants because they haven’t paid their rent,” said Bates, who rents apartments in Lake Park and Margate. “So in addition to losing rent money, we’re now going to have to spend more money to get legal possession of the property.”

The county’s biggest funding coup was $3.3 million for the FAU medical school — the fourth and final year of state funding. With the money in hand, the medical school, affiliated with the University of Miami, can begin turning out 60-plus doctors a year, said Hasner, who helped secure the money.

“With the shortage of physicians that we have, that’s why it’s so critical that we have this medical school,” he said. “It’s going to transform the delivery of health care for our community and our region.”

The budget also includes cash for a number of local projects, such as an Everglades exhibit at the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation in Loxahatchee ($300,000), a recycling program in Belle Glade ($127,500) and a fitness center in Delray Beach ($61,000).

Crist vetoed almost $500 million for similar local ventures in last year’s budget, though the governor has said he’s not inclined to cancel as many proposed expenditures this time.

Perhaps fretting most about the veto threat: Palm Beach Community College, which got $13 million for a public-safety training center, maintenance and new classrooms in Lake Worth and Palm Beach Gardens. Last year, Crist vetoed $17 million in similar expansion projects for the college.

Palm Beach County lobbyist Todd Bonlarron said that to avoid a veto, county officials tried to push “worthy projects that we thought had the full support of the governor’s office and had the highest need in our county.”

Issues affecting Palm Beach County were in the thick of the Legislature’s 60-day session from start to finish.

At the last minute, budget chiefs decided against shutting down the A.G. Holley tuberculosis sanatorium in Lantana, but legislators slipped in language to privatize the hospital.

State planners were stripped of authority to review the development plans for the life sciences industry expected to build around Scripps Florida’s Jupiter campus.

A pair of bills — to allow the county to install red-light cameras at busy intersections and give Callery-Judge Grove a boost in its attempt to build subdivisions in the county’s vanishing orange fields — died in the session’s final hours.

A transportation bill was passed to allow variable toll rates on Florida’s Turnpike; it could mean higher tolls during rush hour to ease congestion.

Legislators passed another measure to stop the dumping of sewage off South Florida’s coast. The change could increase consumer sewer rates.

Staff Writer Tonya Alanez contributed to this story.