The State Board of Administration, the office that oversees about $185 billion worth of investments, will ask Gov. Charlie Crist and the Cabinet on Tuesday to increase its budget by nearly 5 percent.

However, the additional $1.4 million for a board riddled in controversy is down from the original $3 million in budget increases that SBA Director Ash Williams sought last month. The board operated with a $29.2 million budget in the fiscal year that ended June 30.

Williams withdrew his request for a 10.5 percent increase at the Cabinet meeting last month after state CFO Alex Sink asked him go through a “re-evaluation process” and “diligently” cut costs.

On Tuesday, Williams will attempt to define diligent by returning with a budget that adds 4.5 new positions instead of 7.5 and cuts the $800,000 travel budget by 6 percent instead of seeking a $2,000 increase.

Williams slashed $1 million from his budget by cutting cash to retain and recruit employees and by eliminating money for compensation owed to workers who leave mid-year. (See the amended budget request here.)

It will be interesting to see how Crist and the Cabinet react.

On one hand — keeping in mind that Crist is readying his U.S. Senate Republican primary campaign and Cabinet members Sink, a Democrat, and Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum are competing against each other for the governor’s office — all three want to appear as fiscally conservative as possible during the state’s economic storm.

But on the other hand, Williams insists that most of the increases are due to audit recommendations and compliance issues — priorities of the Cabinet — that arose after a $30 billion investment fund of local government dollars was nearly obliterated under the SBA’s watch.

“We have essentially moved ahead in our preliminary budget recommendation with … a very strong focus on safety, soundness, independent compliance, open communication and transparency,” Williams told Crist and the Cabinet last month. “These things involve people and consulting dollars.”

Tags: Alex Sink, investments, State Board of Administration

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Cabinet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.