Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland would emerge as the state’s 12th public university, under legislation signed into law Friday night by Gov. Rick Scott.

The bill (SP 1994) was shepherded through the Legislature by powerful Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales. The term-limited Alexander said accelerating the independence of the University of South Florida’s Polytechnic campus would prove a key job creator in the state.

Scott, who has anchored his administration on rebuilding Florida’s economy, apparently agreed. Plans for creating the new schools developed even as lawmakers cut $300 million from the budgets of Florida’s 11 other universities.

The $24.7 million reduction facing Florida Atlantic University forced that school’s board of trustees this week to proposed closing its Fort Lauderdale and Treasure Coast campuses.

“This move is nothing more than an appalling and wasteful power play by the Republicans in Tallahassee,” said Florida Democratic Party spokeswoman Brannon Jordan. “The people of Florida didn’t ask for this university, they don’t need it and can’t afford it.”

University of South Florida President Judy Genshaft and Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander held a closed-door huddle Monday over the Senate’s deep cut in financing for the Tampa-based school, which supporters said was retribution for the administration’s alleged resisting of  Alexander’s push to make USF Polytechnic an independent university.

Genshaft and Alexander met with reporters following the meeting, but provided little detail.

Genshaft said USF planned to provide more data to Alexander about its financial needs and proof of its effort to meet the benchmarks set last fall by the State University System’s Board of Governors. The benchmarks are to be reached before Polytechnic, based in Alexander’s home Polk County, achieves independence.

For his part, Alexander said he would reexamine the proposed budget cut, which currently takes $400 million from the state’s 11 universities.

USF would absorb the biggest cut, $78.8 million. Florida Atlantic University is facing a $47 million reduction, which FAU President M.J. Saunders called “devastating” for her institution.

Alexander said he was willing to take another look at the spending plan.

“We’ve got to work through what fair is,” Alexander said, flanked by Genshaft.

Dean Cannon covered the tall tasks facing lawmakers in balancing the state’s budget and completing once-a-decade redistricting, but in convening the 2012 House, the speaker moved higher education up on his priority list.

Cannon said he didn’t have a clear direction. But setting the state’s 11 public universities and two dozen colleges on a new course should be one of the session’s goals. Clarifying the role of the State University System’s Board of Governors is one area that needs work, Cannon said.

“Since we have contributed to the muddying of the waters, it is my hope that the Florida House can play a constructive role in clarifying them,” Cannon said. 

 Cannon said the House Higher Education Committee will hear Friday from the presidents of Florida State University and the University of Florida, followed next week by testimony from leaders of the states’ nine other universities.

 In his opening speech to House members, Cannon acknowledged that legislation may not emerge this year — but that a dialogue should begin.

The speaker’s pitch on higher education follows a year in which Gov. Rick Scott made news by saying universities should be producing more graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, ridiculing those who study such subjects as anthropology in the process.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, also played a central — critics called it divisive — role in advocating for the University of South Florida’s Polytechnnic campus in Lakeland to become an independent 12th university. The move was delayed by the Board of Governors, helping prolong a bitter fight between Alexander and USF administrators.

“Our State has reached a moment in our history where we must find new pathways for success,” Cannon said.  “The undeniable fact is that the stability and diversity of our state’s economy are inextricably linked to the maintenance of a strong and dynamic system of higher education.”

House and Senate budget negotiators reached a deal Tuesday morning on a state budget — after leaders broke an impasse over health and human services funding and also tucked millions of dollars in hometown projects into the spending plan to satisfy key lawmakers.

The deal keeps lawmakers on track for an on-time adjournment Friday, the final scheduled day of the session. It also may allow Gov. Rick Scott to claim a modest achievement — with $308 million in tax breaks tucked into the proposal.

That’s far from the $2 billion Scott demanded. But Senate budget-writer J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said the first-year governor should be satisfied.

“We all fight hard for the things we believe in,” Alexander said. “But at the end of the day, I think the governor has got a lot of the things he’s interested in, including some reduction in the corporate tax.”

Scott came into the session seeking a more than $450 million cut in the corporate income tax. Instead, lawmakers have advanced a $30 million reduction — a level close to what they’re also setting aside for a three-day back-to-school tax holiday in late summer.

In other issues, the Senate abandoned its push to slash spending on the state’s Medically Needy and Medicare Aged and Disabled programs, which serve 90,000 severely sick and elderly Floridians. Instead, the programs have maintained current-year funding.

But hospitals will absorb an even deeper reduction in Medicaid rate payments than earlier proposed by either the House or Senate. Hospitals will lose 12 percent of state reimbursement payments and nursing homes will absorb a 6.5 percent reduction.

The budget deal also was flavored with pork.

 The University of South Florida’s Polytechnic college in Lakeland, which has long been helped by Alexander, drew a stunning $46 million in state funding in the budget — about one-third of the state’s Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) total — far outstripping the University of Florida, Florida State University and other bigger schools.

House budget chief Denise Grimsley, R- Sebring, also represents a district that includes a large chunk of Polk County.

“There’s a lot of advocates for every part of the budget,” Alexander said.