Gov. Rick Scott toured the state this week touting his newly proposed budget. His plan includes tax cuts, which are partially offset by cuts to more than a thousand state employee positions.
Florida’s agencies are leaner than ever, but Scott thinks the state’s government should be a little smaller.
Scott’s new $77 billion budget proposes a cut to 1,353 state positions.
He argued a large number of those positions are currently vacant, though.
“What you should expect out of your state government is it should be more efficient all the time,” he said. “And so, as we found efficiencies in state government, we’ve eliminated costs. And that is what we are going to continue to do. But, you know, a lot of those are in vacancies that we already have.”
Many state agencies have reported trouble providing services in the past few years. Officials have partially blamed staff cuts.
Recently, the head of the Florida Department of Corrections blamed job cuts in her agency for some of the deeper troubles there—including allegations of widespread inmate abuse and corruption.
However, Scott’s new budget only funds some critical positions and not the more than 600 vacancies the corrections chief requested. During Scott’s first term almost 11,000 state employee jobs were cut.
That’s the fastest state staff reduction by any governor.
