FROM WIRE AND STAFF REPORTS: Education gets whacked, Medicare gets revamped, and government jobs get cut as the GOP has its way.

The Florida Legislature ended a session of potentially historic measures – dominated by the biggest need to cut spending in a generation, but marked by the most far-reaching overhaul in decades in how government provides health care to the poor and a fundamental change in how teachers are paid.

Democratic Reps. Jim Waldman, left, and Perry Thurston, right, react during discussion of the education budget at the end of the regularly scheduled House legislative session last week. (COLIN HACKLEY/NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA)

Budget writers say they were left with few choices but to slash spending when faced with a $3.75 billion budget hole, and said they tried to shield education from the more severe cuts that hit other areas, such as prisons. Still, the education budget slashed funding by $542 per student.

Tougher than ever

This year’s budget was particularly harsh for public schools because it comes on top of years of falling property tax revenue, drops in enrollment and cuts or at least stagnation in what the Legislature sends to schools.

"If you look at the budget we’re coming out with, it could be a lot worse," said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee. But Montford explained that schools will have a hard time coping with even a very slight cut.

"If this were the first year, (schools) could absorb it," said Montford, a former school superintendent. "We’ve been absorbing these cuts now for five years."

Cutting ‘bone’

Already, school districts have drafted spending plans that include layoffs and salary cuts, furloughs, cuts to afterschool programs and school bus transportation. The Miami Herald reported that the Miami-Dade school district, for instance, is considering teacher layoffs for the first time and salary cuts to guidance counselors and maintenance workers to help close its budget hole that is estimated at over $100 million.

"It’s not cutting fat, it’s cutting into bone now," said Ron Meyer, a lobbyist for the Florida Education Association. He also found it troubling that school funding is cut while voucher programs that divert state funds to private schools are being expanded.

Scott wins some battles

The 2011 legislative session, the first for new Republican Gov. Rick Scott, was also notable as a session when unions were under the microscope – many would say under attack – in a way they haven’t been in years. ??And, it was notable for what it didn’t do: crack down on illegal immigration in a year when tea party voters around the country were demanding that states do that.

For Scott, who went into the legislative season imploring lawmakers to focus laser-like on creating jobs, it was a session of partial successes, with legislators pulling a corporate income tax cut out of the hat at the end of the session – though nowhere near the size cut the new governor sought.

?"This was my first legislative session, and it has been a memorable one," Scott said in a statement released just before the session’s end.  "Among the highlights are $210 million in property tax relief, a complete reorganization of state agencies with an eye toward economic development, a sensible drug testing program for welfare recipients, a reformed state retirement system that is beginning to mirror the private sector, expanded education options for parents, including virtual and charter schools, opportunity scholarships, teacher merit pay and the elimination of teacher tenure so that school principals can get rid of bad teachers and reward the good ones."

‘Red meat’ for GOP base

There were other major themes that ran though a session that weren’t surprising in a year in which Republicans enjoyed their largest House majority in modern times, an 81-39 advantage and a super majority in the Senate as well. The GOP pressed its new supermajority – delivered in 2010 as part of the national Republican and tea party tide – by passing contentious bills tightening restrictions on abortions and trying to strengthen gun rights, red meat for the GOP base.

Republican domination of the Legislature also made it easy for lawmakers to send a strong message on the federal health care law, so-called "Obamacare." The Legislature passed what may turn out to be a largely symbolic protest to refuse to participate in the nation’s law.

?"It’s a tea party train wreck," a frustrated Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, one of several Democrats who were vociferous but largely unable to affect policy, said on what was supposed to have been the final day Friday. "What guided the principles of this chamber was the Republican Party primary of 2012."

Business wins big

Lawmakers passed a number of bills sought by the business community. Those included a measure sought by the insurance industry that will make it harder for people to collect on sinkhole and wind damage claims and a bill designed to insulate businesses from a heavier unemployment insurance burden – a measure that will, assuming it’s signed by Scott, result in reducing jobless benefits to the out-of-work. The nursing home industry won big with a reduction on the required number of hours they must provide in hands-on care to residents.

One of the biggest losses for labor unions was also one of the potentially most far-reaching things the Legislature did – dramatically changing the way teachers are paid.

This change wasn’t new –lawmakers passed a bill tying teacher pay to student performance instead of tenure last year, too. But this year the bill was sent to Scott, instead of former Gov. Charlie Crist, who vetoed it last year. Scott signed the bill.

Cuts drove agenda

That need to cut government spending drastically dominated everything. Even the other major far-reaching change made by lawmakers – shifting nearly all Florida Medicaid patients except the developmentally disabled into private managed care, – was related to the budget.

So lawmakers, in addition to managing to cut $3.75 billion in spending from government programs, including many entrenched ones; in addition to revamping the way teachers are paid; also completely altered the way Florida society will provide that health care to poor women and children and elderly people needing long-term care. Lawmakers basically said, "We can’t do this anymore, so let’s give the money and the patients to the private sector and see if they can."

Bold move

The enormity of Medicaid changes was understated during much of the session. At the final passage of the bill overhauling the $20 billion system, House Speaker Dean Cannon alluded to it, remarking that it was the biggest change in the way government in Florida provides health care since the entitlement programs were created by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the mid-1960s.

But the prospect of shifting almost all Medicaid beneficiaries into HMOs and other types of managed-care plans caused Democrats to line up in opposition. They argued that a pilot managed-care program in five counties has been hampered by problems that affect patient care.

"With HMOs having to deny services in order to make a buck, I see the same problems that happened in the pilot program,’’ said Rep. Elaine Schwartz, a Hollywood Democrat who is among the most outspoken opponents.

There’s still a big hurdle – Washington has to approve the changes, and that’s not a given.

More cuts

Numerous smaller programs also will get whacked in the budget. For example, the Healthy Start program, which serves at-risk pregnant women and babies, will lose $5.4 million, while Area Health Education Centers will lose $4.8 million. Earlier, the Senate had proposed almost wiping out funding for adult mental-health and substance-abuse treatment, but the House fought the move and prevented cuts.

Another group that played a prominent role in this year’s legislative session was government workers.? Many may face pay cuts if their jobs are privatized – many of the prisons around the state are open to possible privatization under the Legislature’s budget, for example. And some state workers will be just plain downsized.

Environmentalists moan

Environmental groups are surveying the damage done by this year’s legislative session, and saying it was one of the worst sessions for the environment in recent memory.

The Legislature approved a raft of bills that generally favor developers over environmental protections in the name of reducing bureaucratic red tape and increasing jobs.

The approved bills include a major overhaul of the state’s growth management laws that reduces state oversight, a change to environmental permits that give developers more power in environmental disputes and more legislative oversight of the state’s water management districts as well as a cut to their budgets.

David Royse of the News Service of Florida contributed to this story.