Rick Scott scrubs ‘toe nail clipper’ highrise funding in veto

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Developers who want to build that Disneyesque-looking Skyrise Miami building downtown will have $2 million less for construction, now that Florida Gov. Rick Scott included that little legislative gift in the budget items he vetoed on Monday.

While this year’s $77 billion budget may have set a state record, these $69 million in cuts may also have made history — as the smallest cuts, especially proportionately, ever. Last year, he vetoed $368 million from the budget and he was able to cut $142 from it the year before, right after he took office.

Why the difference? It’s an election year, dear readers. And while he doesn’t want to look like he supports runaway government spending, he can’t afford to piss off too many Republican legislators by killing their pet turkey projects, which included museums, parks, a police training gun range and that SkyRise Miami tower that looks a lot like a toe nail clipper. Or some terrible ride at Orlando’s Universal Studios.

Originally, the ask from developers was for $10 million. They only got $2 mil. Only.

Now they got nada.

Miami-Dade had the most line items in the budget — a total of $1.82 billion for a range of water and transportation-related projects, as well as schools, historic preservation, cultural facilities and community services. It includes the smallest appropriations, $20,000 for the nonprofit arts advocacy Cannonball Miami Inc., to the largest: $137 million to widen a three-mile section of the Homestead extension of Florida’s Turnpike from six to 10 lanes.

Likely forced by a great expose in the Miami Herald on the failures of the Department of Children and Families to protect abused and neglected children, Scott will be able to say that he increased spending for the state’s neediest kids, with an extra $18 million for DCF to hire and train 270 case workers.

Scott will also be able to say that he cut waste while he increased funding to public schools. The state budget also sets aside almost $19 billion for public schools — or $6,949 per student, an increase of $176 a head. That’s the most money he’s ever spent — but it still falls short of the $177 per-student record established when Charlie Crist — his likely opponent — was guv.

  Charlie Crist, Rick Scott