Bud Chiles is asking Gov. Charlie Crist to keep his promise.

The son of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles who secured an historic $11.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies, wants Crist to appoint the panel established in Florida law to oversee the endowment named after his father.

Chiles first asked Crist in December to appoint the panel after lawmakers and Crist diverted more than $350 million from the fund, then worth about $2 billion, which pays for health programs for children and the elderly.

That never happened.

Instead, lawmakers took another $700 million from the endowment, raising the total trust fund raid to more than $1 billion, as they struggled to balance the budget with a two-year $6 billion spending gap.

Bud Chiles today sent Crist a letter asking him to appoint the 16-member panel, which has apparently not met in about five years. Under Florida law, the advisory group is supposed to give recommendations about the fund to the governor by Nov. 1 each year.

Chiles said he and his lawyers considered filing a complaint but decided to bank on Crist’s goodwill instead. He thinks the legislature and Crist might not be so keen on raiding the fund in the future with the oversight the panel should provide.

“If these people aren’t doing it then whose going to protect the rights of these children that are not getting the funds?” he said.

The committee established by law to make recommendations to the governor about how to spend the state’s historic tobacco settlement has not met in more than a decade.

his latest raid on the fund brings the total taken from the endowment to over $1 billion. In 2008, Gov. Charlie Crist convinced legislators and children’s advocates to allow a withdrawal of more than $350 million from the endowment to meet a budget shortfall, then surprised advocates with a second raid on the fund that led to today’s $700 million withdrawal.

Ellyn Bogdanoff?

The once adamant opponent to the tax hike [Sun-Sentinel: "Bogadanoff on cigarette tax: no way"] is now carrying the bill in the House. Bogdanoff, the House Finance & Tax Council chairwoman, said she’s being a team player, but she still might vote against the bill tomorrow.

One of the reasons the Fort Lauderdale Republican could be hesitating: Republicans don’t want to rely on Democratic votes to pass anything tomorrow.

In some Q-&-A about the bill on the House floor today, Bogdanoff repeatedly referred to the
$1-per-pack hike as a “surcharge” so often, some Democrats are wondering whether she’s going to change the name of her committee to the “Finance & Surcharge Council.”

Lawmakers closed out the $65 billion budget this morning that includes nearly $2 billion in taxes and fees, including a $380 million property tax increase if school boards approve it.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander and House counterparts David Rivera and Marcelo Llorente resolved most of their disagreements over the weekend and sealed the deal this morning without sending any unresolved disputes to Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul.

One of the losers in the deal: Florida Forever, the state’s land-buying program received no new money. But the budget chiefs did agree to issue $250 million in bonding authority from this year. They could not sell the bonds because of a decline in real estate transaction taxes used to pay them back.

The legislature closed a real estate tax loophole during the session that they hope will generate enough money to keep Florida Forever running next year.

A last-minute change this weekend shifted $25 million for Florida Forever to the Everglades clean-up program, bringing the total for that to $50 million.

Also included in the budget are more than $800 million in fees, including a hike in driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations and court filings. And smokers will pay an extra buck-a-pack for cigarettes to raise about another $800 million to be spent on the state’s Medicaid program.

State workers earning more than $45,000 a year will see a 2 percent salary cut but university workers are exempt. That amounts to a $30 million cut from general revenue, far less than the $100 million in state employee pay cuts the House had original proposed.

School boards, meanwhile, got the OK to hike property taxes an additional 25 cents per $1,000 of value with a majority vote. Voters would have to sign off on the tax increase at the general election in 2010. The tax increase would raise $380 million for school districts statewide if implemented by all 67 counties, including nearly $17 million for Palm Beach County.

Bright Futures will no longer cover tuition hikes, including the 8 percent tuition increase included in the budget. Lawmakers also gave universities the ability to raise tuition up to 15 percent.

With the clock running on the legislative session, a pair of television ads popped up on airwaves around the Capitol this weekend.

The first, from Florida Energy Solutions Coalition (which is the Florida Petroleum Council and Associated Industries of Florida) cites the state’s 9.7 percent unemployment rate as a reason lawmakers should open more of the state’s waters for drilling. Watch the sspot here.

The second is from Floridians for Tax Fairness, which shares a Miami mailing address with the Dosal Tobacco Corp.

Couldn’t find a copy of the ad on the internet, but it essentially paints the Dosal company as a family business that might be crushed by a tax-hungry legislature. Dosal was not included in the state’s tobacco settlement, but companies that were have asked lawmakers to consider additional fees for Dosal.

Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker, left, and Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami, talk during House session Tuesday.(AP Photo/Phil Coale)

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Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, said the state House would consider the Senate’s cigarette tax hike and gambling package as a way to boost slumping state tax collections, if Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, would accept about $500 million in budget cuts from the House.

Listen to Cretul’s message here.

The message is significant, because the House has refused to discuss tax increases this year.

But Cretul said he doesn’t want to approve a budget that will lead to future shortfalls. The current Senate budget, he said, would hand lawmakers a $2 billion shortfall in 2011.

“The availability of stimulus dollars will begin to decline and the state’s budget deficit will once against expand,” Cretul said. “We need to look at the state budget from a three year perspective.”

Senate and House lawmakers still have not met in formal budget negotiations, which were scheduled to start Saturday. Before the two chambers can meet, Cretul and Atwater must agree to a set dollar amount for the budget. Only then can conference committees meet to hash out how the money will be spent.

Or, in the House’s case, not spent.

Lawmakers have until Tuesday, April 28 to agree on a budget in order to finish on time on May 1.

Sen. Durell Peaden, Jr., motioned with his hand for a reporter to enter his office while he was on his cell phone telling his wife that she’d be proud of him: He was offered some of the best apple dumplings he’d ever tasted that afternoon and only had a few bites. “She’s got me on a diet,” the Panhandle Republican explained after hanging up.

Peaden, the Senate’s top health & human services budget writer, isn’t just trying to manage his own health. He’s also in the middle of a hot debate over how the state should use a shrinking supply of tax money to pay for the increasing demand for public health services.

This 13-minute podcast starts off with a discussion with Peaden about A.G. Holley in Palm Beach County, the last free standing tuberculosis hospital in the country that was nearly axed from the state budget last year. It’s on the chopping block again with neither Gov. Charlie Crist nor the Senate including money for the hospital in their budget proposals (not sure about the House as of this moment).

Peaden, whose relatives have helped shape Florida policy since before statehood, discusses an equally long personal history with TB (including his own son being diagnosed with the disease that killed most of his ancestors).

“Somewhere there will be funding for AG Holley. It will not be neglected. Trust me. Because we’ll have the court on us or the governor or DCF … That will not go unfunded or uncovered. Trust me.”

Peaden also discusses the cigarette tax increase included in the Senate’s budget.

“Smoke ‘em, chew ‘em, dip ‘em or whatever. We have to tax ‘em. We have to tax cigars. Doesn’t matter if its … smuggled in from Castro. It doesn’t matter. They need to be taxed.”

Peaden says the money should not be earmarked for anything more specific than the state health budget (Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, wants to tie some of the new money to cancer research). But he says the new money shouldn’t replace what the state already spends on health care.

Listen to the podcast here (Or right click on the link to download.)

A proposal from Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, to increase the tax on cigarettes from 34 cents to $1.34 per pack would generate $871 million for Florida next year, according to this estimate released Sunday.

The estimate is higher than Deutch’s estimate of about $600 million from the tax hike. And in the wake of dire budget numbers on Friday, the bigger number could increase pressure on House Republicans to support the proposal. (Support appears to be mounting in the Senate, according to this twitter from the Florida Association of Counties.)

Deutch, who wants to earmark the new money for health programs, sent out this press release this morning saying his proposal would “significantly narrow the gap in what the state collects annually from tobacco users ($430 million) versus what Florida spends on tobacco-related illnesses through the Medicaid program ($1.3 billion).”

“Everyone is looking for an acceptable recipe to address our budget crisis,” Deutch commented. “My bill is equal parts common sense and fairness, and more than 70 percent of Floridians consistently say they want this issue on the table.”

Gov. Charlie Crist this morning reiterated that he’s not feeling “warm and fuzzy” about a cigarette tax increase, but indicated his feelings may change Friday, when state economists give lawmakers an update on the budget.

“I’ll give a clear direction at the appropriate time,” Crist said.

Some argue that direction should have come during his state of the state speech last week (see some discussion about that speech here).

But today Crist said he was trying to strike an appropriate balance in that address.