The biggest cut: A $160 million raid on the state Department of Transportation trust fund. The money was tied to K-12 spending in an effort to block Crist from making a veto or risk cutting education spending.
Crist did it anyway, all but daring the Republican-led Legislature or whomever else to sue him in order to cut money from road projects -- the only projects that conservatives across the board said represented true ``stimulus'' in the stimulus package that they maligned before gobbling up all that extra federal cash.
``We should not have to chose between jobs for Floridians or funding for our children's education,'' Crist said in his veto statement.
But since the money is tied to schools, Crist technically cut school spending by $160 million, unless he can find a way to plug money back into the classroom. Technically, legally, the Legislature is the only entity that can appropriate money. So it's unclear how Crist can avoid being forced to ``chose between jobs for Floridians or funding for our children's education.''
Crist has made legally questionable vetoes before, such as his decision to block a tuition increase in 2007 or his veto last year of a pay cut for state workers. Like this year's road-schools issue, those spending items were intertwined with other parts of the budget that should have suffered as a result of a veto.
Florida governor slammed for hospital-money veto
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