A decade ago, then-Gov. Jeb Bush created the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund to use market earnings from the Florida tobacco settlement as an ongoing source of money to finance anti-smoking campaigns and the state's KidCare health insurance program.
The trust fund is a testament to the late Mr. Chiles' passionate defense of children even under the most trying fiscal times in the early 1990s when the state faced a recession. He pursued tobacco companies with a vengeance, and the state's multibillion-dollar suit became a national model to raise money for health programs for kids.
Fast forward to Gov. Charlie Crist, who has promised to protect the state's most vulnerable. Again this year the Legislature raided the Chiles trust fund to cover other state needs. And again this year Mr. Crist didn't fight the move.
A stealth move
Instead of expanding healthcare insurance for kids whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy private insurance, with its ever-escalating costs, legislators raided the trust for $700 million.
They made a stealth move this session and inserted obscure language into the budget that allows the governor to extract $700 million from the fund. The new legal gobbledygook apparently would quash any attempt by Mr. Chiles' family to sue the state to restore the fund to its original intent.
The Legislature's intent is crystal clear in the Department of Revenue's website:
The Chiles trust fund will ''provide a perpetual source of funding for the future of state children's health programs, child welfare programs, community-based health and human services initiatives, and bio-medical research activities.'' The trust fund will ``use tobacco settlement moneys to ensure the financial security of vital health and human services programs.''
Raid a `betrayal'
Mr. Chiles' son, Lawton ''Bud'' Chiles III, rightly calls this latest raid of the fund a betrayal of his father's legacy.
It is these types of shenanigans that give politicians a bad name and hurt public trust. Everyone understands that this is a tough economy and that the Legislature was faced with difficult choices. But raiding the fund shouldn't be the easy fix -- not on the backs of sick kids.
This move won't save the state money.
It will effectively push children to hospital emergency rooms because, without adequate preventive care that can be covered by the state's KidCare program, children without insurance will wind up in hospital emergency rooms for treatment.
And guess who pays for that care?
The costs are spread to those families who can afford insurance -- and, in the case of public hospitals like Jackson Memorial, to taxpayers, too.
It's a vicious cycle of neglect, double-talk and broken promises.