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Sink: Florida Not Getting Its Share Of Fed $$

Posted Mar 4, 2009 by William March

Updated Mar 4, 2009 at 01:07 PM

State Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink released a report today saying Florida is 45th in the nation in the amount of federal grant money it receives per capita, and needs to pursue federal grants more aggressively.

Florida gets a ton of federal money, Sink said in her report—$147 billion in fiscal year 2007. But the vast majority of it comes in the form of Social Security and Medicare payments—the biggest single chunk—plus unemployment compensation, food stamps and pay for federal employees. Even counting those payments to individuals, Florida still gets less federal money per capita than most states, Sink said.

But if those programs aren’t counted, Florida drops down to near the bottom—$1,098 per person, or about $20 billion, in federal grants. If it got the national average per capita, $1,429, the state could have spent another $6 billion in 2007, Sink said.

“Florida’s taxpayers are not getting our fair share,” she said.

Among her recommendations: Pursue federal grants more aggressively, including requiring the state’s Washington office to report each year what it has done to enhance federal funding, and move the state’s federal grant clearinghousoe from the Department of Environmental Protection to the governor’s office.

But one problem, Sink noted, is that the state often doesn’t want to spend the state matching money required to get federal grants.