Not much, actually.
The Florida House and Senate have different proposals on 2015-16 school spending, each of which differs slightly from what Gov. Rick Scott requested.
But discussions to reach consensus haven’t begun. Ruth Melton from the Florida School Boards Association described it best in her daily update to members:
Normally, at this point in the legislative session, budget conference committees would be working on resolving differences between the House and Senate budget bills. However, negotiations have been at a stand-still for a few weeks due to a significant disagreement between the House and Senate on funding for the Low Income Pool (LIP), a program that provides funding to hospitals and health providers that provide care for uninsured and low-income Floridians and for an expansion of the Medicaid program. The Senate budget included $2.2 billion for a modified LIP program and set aside another $2.8 billion in federal Medicaid-expansion funding, but the House budget does not include this funding nor does it support the policies related to this funding. The disagreement about these issues has been escalating in recent weeks and today legislative leaders acknowledged they won’t be able to wrap up budget negotiations before the scheduled May 1 end of the 2015 session and that an extended session or special session is likely…
