Task force looks to save Florida $4B

By Jim Ash ,florida capital bureau chief
August 13, 2009

An elite group of business and government leaders vowed Wednesday to find as much as $4 billion in savings from efficiencies in the state budget in time to recommend them to the Legislature this spring.

Sponsored by TaxWatch, the government watchdog group, and chaired by a health care executive from Jacksonville, the Government Cost Savings Task Force packs substantial corporate and political firepower. Its ranks include executives from AT&T, Publix, SunTrust and Gulf Power, as well as the House speaker-designate, the House minority leader, the Senate budget chairman, the attorney general and the chief financial officer.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat running for governor, recalled years of frustration as a former TaxWatch board member working from the outside to make government run a tighter ship.

"Businesses have good intent; they want to get involved and to help," she said.

Sink boasted about finding savings large and small since she was elected to the Cabinet nearly three years ago, either through consolidating a call center managed by the Department of Financial Services, or approaching executives with Publix and Walt Disney for advice on how to reduce worker-compensation costs.
House Speaker Larry Cretul, a Republican from Ocala, promised the group that he would take its recommendations seriously when lawmakers convene in March.
"We've got to approach this whole process differently," Cretul said.

He told reporters after the meeting that he will likely continue a ban on local-budget requests from his members and will make the committee meeting schedule more efficient so that legislation flows more smoothly between the two chambers.

Taskforce chairman David Smith, chairman of PSS World Medical, said the stakes are going to be high.

Lawmakers used $5.2 billion in federal stimulus dollars this year to offset plunging state revenues, but that money runs out in the next two years.
"Our objective is to come up with $3 billion to $4 billion in cost-saving initiatives that we can do today," he said. "It's doable."