Scott Targets Weakest For Line-Item Veto Cuts
MIAMI (CBS4) - After using his line item power to veto more than $600 million in state spending, Governor Rick Scott is drawing heat from critics who say he has targeted the state's most vulnerable citizens.
The governor's veto pen swept across programs for the elderly, the poor and the disabled, and scrapped hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been used to protect environmentally sensitive land.
Among Scott's cuts, a $700,000 reduction in funding to Miami's Little Havana and Allapattah senior citizens centers. The centers feed lunch to mostly low income elderly residents, as well as providing other support services.
At the Little Havana center today, the dining room was crowded, despite the air conditioning being out.
"It's most important to the people who don't have the money to support themselves," said 67 year-old Juan Ferrera, his brow sweat-soaked as he ate a lunch of ground beef and salad. "It's very important to us."
Miami City Commission Chairman Willy Gort said he found the Governor's vetoes difficult to comprehend.
"It was a balanced budget," Gort told CBS4's Gary Nelson. He called the funding reduction to the senior citizens centers a cruel cut.
"A lot of these seniors, the only meal that they have in the day is what they have at the centers," Gort said.
He said Scott, who campaigned on a theme of creating jobs, will cause jobs to be lost as a result of the vetoes. The cuts to the senior centers, Gort said, will have a ripple effect, costing jobs and impacting vendors.
"It's disastrous," Gort said. "They need supplies, food, all kinds of things, and businesses are going to be affected."
Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado said he was blind-sided by the governor's cuts that are "literally taking the food from the mouths of our senior citizens. Our least fortunate will suffer at a disproportionate rate."
Regaldo vowed to fight Scott's budget vetoes, but did not say how.
Ironically, as a candidate for Governor, Scott visited the Little Havana senior citizens center last year.
"Mi nombre es Rick Scott," he said as he introduced himself around the cafeteria in July, shaking the hands and slapping the backs of the seniors whose food program he has now slashed.
All state funding to Farm Share, a Miami-Dade program that distributes surplus produce to the needy throughout the state, has been eliminated by Scott's cuts. It has the promise of putting the program out of business.
Millions of dollars in funding for cancer and other research at the University of Miami medical centers was also whacked, as was $500,000 to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.
Goodwill Industries of South Florida lost $250,000 that would have provided an additional 250 jobs to partially disabled people, Goodwill's workforce.
"This will have a profound impact on our ability to help more people." said Goodwill's CEO, Dennis Pastrana.
The squelched grant to Goodwill would have allowed the agency to buy equipment to manufacture uniforms for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and American flags that are used in military funerals.
Goodwill's Pastrana said the plan was to also put more people to work making a children's clothing line "to compete with China."
"We are deeply disappointed," Pastrana said.
